- Colombia has requested permission from the International Court of Justice to intervene in South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide in Gaza, aiming to protect Palestinian safety and existence.
- The ICJ has ordered Israel to ensure timely food supplies to Gaza and previously instructed Israel to refrain from actions under the genocide convention and to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians, which Israel denies, attributing its actions to targeting Hamas rather than civilians.
There is no comparable conflict in world history. The tunnels are unprecedented.
Plus the numbers are dropping. 1.5% right now, and people have been saying that number for the last two months. Catastrophic famine has been imminent for four months.
I wish I had time and skill to make a graph of cumulative death toll, month to month, and then extrapolate the number of deaths per day, so we could visualize how the conflict has been winding down almost since it began. By my rough estimation from a few news articles about the death tolls, spread out through March anyway, is that monthly deaths have decreased 20%, month over month. Doesn’t take very many months to see that the genocide apparatus of Israel either doesn’t exist or is utterly incompetent.You know, the death toll has been “1.5%” for two months.
1.1 million people are on the verge of starvation
And have been for four months.
But contrary to the grim ragebait of most news articles, aid has been flowing. Is it Schrodinger’s humanitarian aid? Simultaneously existing in such quantities as to be landing on people’s heads and killing them while also not existing?
Yazan Kafarneh and at least 31 others have died of hunger in the past 6 weeks. Why do you think people are dying grizzly deaths from pallets of food droping out of the sky?
There’s been easily 50+ highly upvoted articles posted to several topical communities lambasting the evil Israelis for what virtually all agreed were intentional military and political attacks on food aid, and of literally using hunger as an instrumentality of genocide, and the whole of the evidence amounts to 31 cases? How does that fact not throw up a massive red flag to your rational brain that your cumulative media diet has left you with a grossly exaggerated, emotionally-colored view which does not match reality?
Western interests and policies concerning the middle east are based on the state of relations, and especially the military posture, as between Israel and Iran, the homes 100,000,000 people, and the serious implications of a broader war in the region.
Are you saying you’ve know for five months that all these indictments against Israel for weaponizing hunger were slowly ticking up from a few, to a dozen, to a couple of dozen to, thirty-one people, and your concern for them is such that, in your personal calculus, you would set mid east policy with greater regard for the thirty one then the perhaps 31,000,000 who could die in a broader war? The concern I have is for a cascade of failed states, each crumbling under the weight of the masses of refugees fleeing the place before, which would spread through North Africa, into some of the Afrotropic states, especially those already facing catastrophic food shortages, up through eastern Europe and the Balkins, Greece, Italy, blast through the stans and into Inner Asia, where maybe the crisis will spill over enough into India and Russia.
The evidence for Israel using hunger as a weapon of genocide is vast. There are thousands of trucks held up at the Gaza border. There have now been several flour massacres where Israel fires on citizens trying to get food from trucks.
On Dec. 21, the WHO said:
Despite this, The Washington Post reported that “In February, just 98 trucks per day crossed into Gaza on average, according to the United Nations, compared with an average of 170 per day in January.”
Senator Van Hollen visited the Rafah border crossing in January and observed:
On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."
Don’t believe their words? Look at their actions. Don’t believe their actions, look at the results. Don’t believe the results? Well, I can’t make you believe your lying eyes.
I’m not living in imaginary land, I believe the facts you’ve described to be substantially true but with context, on balance, I don’t think they are evidence of what you’re saying. Water purification systems that can be used to sustain Hamas down in the tunnels are clearly dual use. Dual use isn’t a total ban, importer just needs specific permission, and they consider known intelligence, who is sending, who is receiving, what do they say it’s for, is that true, etc. United Arab Emirates is building three new water plants in Gaza this year and one already opened. Obviously, Israel isn’t blocking all water purification systems, right?
The Defense Minister made that statement on October 9, two days after the terrorist attack, and days before Israel took part in a multilateral group of states, including the US, Egypt, and Qatar, to open aid corridors and coordinate food and medical shipments. I note that at no time since then have all aid corridors been shut down. A couple of aid trucks have been blown up, for whatever reason, but many many more were not. At least a couple of people were killed when food aid packages literally fell out of the sky and landed on them. As I said, new desalination plants are opening. So, obviously, what the Defense Minister said, you must agree, is not what ended up happening, right?
31 people have died from starvation in the course of five months, and 31 is the high estimate. Of those I know at least a few were said to have been trapped under collapsed buildings and tunnels for days or weeks, unable to access available food. Horrible either way to be sure, but part of a general strategy? I don’t see that.
Miles of trucks may have been backed up on that day at that crossing but not every day at every crossing, right? 170 trucks per day down to 98. Okay, why? Without explaining why, it’s not really evidence of anything other than the fact that fewer trucks entered. Certainly you would agree that with a war going on, trucks going in must be inspected? Otherwise, what’s to stop Iran from snuggling in anything it wants, even nuclear material for dirty bombs? There are 400 trucks per day, lately, and that figure on average continues to rise, as it has been, since the early days of the war. That evidence doesn’t say “weaponizing food,” to me.
Aid has not been flowing in until recently and Israel would not allow an atom of food in if they could.
This is not ragebait, it’s real news, but you just call whatever you fear a bunch of names and move on.
“Winding down” my fucking ass. Go ahead, do it, show us how 80 people dead per day instead of 100 is “winding it down”.
The stench of death is all over Gaza, they will find dead bodies for months, and some of that blood is on your hands and it will never ever wash off.