Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
- Palestinians in Gaza are being deliberately starved as food and medical aid are withheld or blocked, not from famine but by policy.
- Netanyahu and allied US officials are complicit, weaponizing blockade and aid restrictions to pursue ethnic cleansing and political objectives.
- Withholding aid and targeting civilians amount to war crimes, collective punishment, and possible genocide under international law, demanding moral accountability.
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(ThyBlackMan.com) “The UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” – Nelson Mandela 1997.
Recently I was listening to an NPR program talking about Palestine and the genocide in Gaza and the point was made that Palestinians in Gaza are starving. People need to be very clear on this point: Palestinians in Gaza are not just starving! I repeat, that’s just not true. The fact is that Palestinians in Gaza are being starved to death. This is not a distinction without a difference.
It would be appropriate to say that Palestinians are starving if they were the victims of a natural catastrophe or an act of God, such as a drought. One could say that Palestinians are starving if crops could not be grown and grass were burned so the animals could not graze, such as in Sudan. When natural disasters damage the food supply, people go hungry and starve to death. That brand of horror is called famine. If a massive swarm of locusts descends upon an area, consuming all vegetation in their path and causing widespread damage to crops, this would be another cause of famine. As with drought, people would go hungry and starve to death.
That’s not what’s happening in Gaza. In Gaza, there is food relief available. There is medical aid available. Both are rotting in trucks on the border because Israel will not allow them into the country. People are not starving. They are being starved. Israel’s final solution to its “Palestinian problem” is to weaponize food and medical aid to starve the Palestinians into submission and ethnically cleanse them from their homeland.
Leaders in the Israeli government such as Prime Minister Benjamine Netanyahu, Ben Gavir, Bezalel Smotrich, and their American guardians such as President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US Congress are complicit in these heinous crimes. They have chosen to deny water, food and aid to Palestinians as Israel continues its inhumane assault on children, women, medical professionals, press correspondents covering the genocide and international aid workers.
According to Haaretz, Israeli soldiers in Gaza have been ordered to deliberately fire upon desperate Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month. Doctors say aid distribution sites have become ‘a slaughterhouse’ as Palestinians have been lured to their deaths under the pretense of receiving aid. Over 550 Palestinians were killed trying to get aid in the month of June alone.
After years of using precise calculations to limit Palestinians daily caloric intake, denying access to potable water, polluting accessible water with sewage and within the last week preventing Palestinian fisherman access to the Mediterranean Sea, the Zionist Israeli government claims it will allow a limited amount of food aid into limited areas.
As convoys of trucks sit at the border with Egypt awaiting Israeli government clearance to deliver lifesaving aid, Netanyahu decides to recklessly “air drop” small amounts of supplies into limited spaces in the suffering region. This is analogous to trying to extinguish the recent California wildfires with an eyedropper and calling it “action”.
The rationalization of “justification” for this ethnic cleansing is codified in Basic Law: Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People (the Nation-State Law). According to Honaida Ghanim in Israel’s Nation-State Law: Hierarchized Citizenship and Jewish Supremacy, “The exclusivity of rights in the “Land/State of Israel” is the central organizing principle of the Nation-State Law. Jews are deemed the sole people deserving national and collective rights.
Furthermore, the law applies not only to the Jewish citizens of Israel but also to Jews from all parts of the world—regardless of the extent of their relationship, affiliation, or even desire to become part of this entity.” This is at the expense of all other non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants (Palestinians) in the area. This is also why I quoted the late President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. The parallels of apartheid between South Africa and The Occupied Territories are undeniable.
The Washington Post is now reporting, “It was not immediately clear how much more aid would enter Gaza, but U.N. officials said recently that Israel appeared willing to loosen some policies at a critical juncture when the territory is nearing a humanitarian tipping point.” By allowing “relief” into the region, Israel is not trying to solve the hunger problem, it is trying to address a political problem. The optics of starvation have become politically inconvenient for Netanyahu and his henchmen.
While Palestinians are being starved to death, American politicians are engaged in hypocrisy and equivocation. US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted against Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and supported the bill to send more military aid to Israel. According to Al Jazeera, another Democrat, “Congresswoman Grace Meng said in a statement that “as a mother”, her heart breaks to see children in Gaza starve, but…it’s important to recognize that Israel has facilitated the entry of over 1.8 million tons and over 96,000 trucks into Gaza, while Hamas continues to hold hostages, extort the aid system, and refuse ceasefire deals to stay in power and prolong the war…”
What Ocasio-Cortez and Meng, as well as other Democrats like Hakeem Jefferies and Gregory Meeks fail to recognize is that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip have been under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967. This is according to international humanitarian law (IHL), including the Fourth Geneva Convention. International law recognizes the right of occupied peoples to resist foreign occupation and to pursue self-determination. Even though, some US Democrats are calling for aid to urgently be provided to Palestinians in Gaza, very few of them can find the backbone to condemn Israel for its deadly blockade and war crimes.
As we examine the difference between starving and being starved, it’s about causation, decisions, and solutions. If starvation is caused by “Acts of God”, other nations can assist in ameliorating the circumstance, they won’t solve the problem, but their support will minimize the number of people who are starving. In Occupied Palestine, people being starved to death is the result of a decision to weaponize food, withholding food and causing people to die.
You can’t negotiate with drought, you can’t change or control the weather, you can’t negotiate with locusts. You can change a conscience decision; you can stop starvation by allowing people to be fed. Failing to do so is collective punishment. This is a war crime. This is ethnic cleansing! This is genocide!
Written by Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III
Official website; http://www.wilmerleon.com
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