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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/gaza--genocide-by-starvation">english.almayadeen.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Gaza: Genocide by starvation</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Jamal Kanj</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">March 6, 2024<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><p>Children,
if alive, are still hungry and cold at home, watching through a broken
window aid parcels parachuting from the skies alongside the roar of an
American-made jet delivering 2000-pound bombs over their heads.</p><img src="cid:ii_lthhscww0" alt="71217008-d148-4dce-b71e-c3670218a42f.jpg" width="395" height="311"><br><div><ul id="gmail-content-slick-0"><div aria-hidden="false"><li>
<br>Starvation in Gaza not due to a drought or natural disaster,
but an Israeli-made catastrophe enabled by Biden (Illustrated by Batoul
Chamas; Al Mayadeen English)
</li></div></ul>
<p>Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It’s dinner
time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the
propane cooking cylinder is empty, and there is no food, no electricity,
and no drinking water.</p>
<p>Your youngest child, Manar, cries, “I’m hungry. We haven’t had food
for the last four days.” She rubs her dry bluish hands together,
“Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf … I’m cold.” The words escape her chattering teeth.</p>
<p>You, let’s say your name is Nader, look at Manar’s feeble body, her
pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had become
tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a
month.</p>
<p>Ahmad asks his wife, “Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for dry food?”</p>
<p>Noora takes a deep breath, “More than ten times, our kitchen is as
empty as our stomachs.” She looked at the cold floor in despair, her
face twisted into a sorrowful mask.</p>
<p>“Press this against Manar’s stomach,” he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. “It’ll help her sleep, again.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first night they put their children to sleep with a
sack of sand on their stomachs. This has become a common method for the
people of Gaza to suppress hunger. It was after midnight when Manar
stopped crying, and that is when Nader and Noora had a chance to close
their eyes, not knowing how miserable the next day would be.</p>
<p>Unsure of the time, Nader jumps from the floor mattress to a strong
pounding at the door. Loud pandemonium and commotion outside, he looks
at his watch, 3:45 am. His first thought was that the Israeli military
was ordering residents to vacate the building before blowing it up, as
they had done <a href="https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=Awr.2lWCTOVlN3MMEQBXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?p=Isareli+soldiers+celebrating+blowing+up+homes&fr2=piv-web&fr=yfp-t-s#id=4&vid=7bb45c604e1a56d8c5ff5e6326d23f79&action=view">dynamiting blocks of buildings</a>
in his neighborhood a week earlier. Noora and the children are awake.
Manar crawls to the corner with her siblings and wraps herself around
her mother.</p>
<p>Nader leaps to the door to find his brother, Ali, who is also his neighbor on the other side panting for air.</p>
<p>“Come Nader … come, let’s go.” He stopped to catch a breath after
running up the stairs. “Flour trucks". His chest ballooned and deflated
several times, until he eventually said, “Trucks arriving at the Nabulsi
roundabout.” Ali moved sideways to make way for neighbors clumping down
the stairs.</p>
<p>The children’s faces lit up. Their eyes like laser light, wide open, were waiting for Nader’s response.</p>
<p>“There were Israeli tanks at the roundabout. They ordered me to stay
home yesterday and didn’t allow me to bring water,” Nader said.</p>
<p>“The UN is distributing the flour. The Israelis allowed the trucks
in.” Ali looked down the stairs, “Let’s go before it’s too late.” He
urged Nader.</p>
<p>Nader turns his head toward his children. Manar’s laser-focused eyes
turn into a vacant stare, open mouth. He clenched his teeth, pulled the
winter coat from the hook, closed the door behind him, and followed his
older brother Ali down to the street.</p>
<p>The above is not a work of imagination, but a reality of life endured
by thousands of individuals in Gaza for more than 150 days. It is
exactly what happened in the Flour Massacre on February 29 to thousands
of starving fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in north Gaza.
"Israel" used aid trucks to lure, murder, and injure almost <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/middleeast/gaza-food-truck-deaths-israel-wwk-intl/index.html">900 hungry civilians</a>. The blood of the starving, young and old, man and woman, soaked the flour sacks meant to feed hungry children.</p>
<p>In its efforts to render life in Gaza uninhabitable, "Israel" has not
only targeted essential infrastructures, such as hospitals,
universities, water treatment plants, and roads but has also directed
attacks toward civilian police. This deliberate targeting of police
aimed to exacerbate the suffering and provoke a collapse of law and
order. Despite <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/24/gaza-humanitarian-aid-israel-hamas-police-biden">warnings from the US</a>
against targeting civilian police who maintained public safety and
managed the orderly distribution of food, "Israel" dismissed such
concerns, seeking to create lawlessness and chaotic conditions to worsen
starvation and justify its actions as in the case of the Flour
Massacre.</p>
<p>In covering the story, Western media became willing outlets to market
Israeli disinformation cloaked in euphemisms to obscure the grim
reality on the ground. Outlets like <em>CNN, </em>along with other print media, and the <em>BBC, </em>for
example, referred to the death of at least 115 and the injury of 760
hungry human beings as “Gaza food aid carnage” or “a chaotic encounter
with Israeli troops,” blaming the death on stampedes and truck drivers.
They then broadcasted, unquestionably, Israeli-manipulated videos
showing the product of the Israeli-designed chaos and claiming the
hungry crowd posed a threat to its soldiers.</p>
<p>This wasn’t different from earlier misinformation propagated by <em>CNN</em>'s
Wolf Blitzer when hosting Mark Regev, the Israeli version of the German
Joseph Goebbels, on his show, The Situation Room, on November 15, 2023,
where he started the show by saying, “Happening now, the Israeli
military says it uncovered Hamas weapons and a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/the-situation-room-with-wolf-blitzer/episodes/fd90e144-4cd7-11ee-b7c3-23f2ccdef237">command center inside Gaza's largest hospital</a>.”
Needless to say, it was all false. Despite Regev’s abject disregard for
basic truth, the Israeli Goebbels was brought again to <em>CNN </em>this week to market the flour truck massacre, spinning lies, unchallenged, and claiming <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-gaza-large-number-gunshot-054329164.html">no Israeli involvement</a> in the gunfire and blaming the shooting on "Palestinian armed groups."</p>
<p>Unarguably, <em>CNN</em>, much like most of the American and European news outlets, has become a platform for disinformation with <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/03/03/wolf-blitzer-aipac-israel-si-kenan-cnn/">Israeli-embedded hosts</a>, such as Blitzer who honed his journalistic prowess as a <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/wolf-blitzer">pro-"Israel" propagandist</a> working for "America Israel Public Affairs Committee," serving as an editor for its Near East Report in the mid 1970s.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until<em> </em>certain international media outlets<em> </em>showed
the “chaotic” scene amid heavy gunfire around the food truck, along
with footage revealing bullet injuries in the upper bodies of victims,
that some US outlets, such as <em>The New York Times</em>, which
espouses faux professionalism, couldn’t continue ignoring the flagrant
Israeli lies. The outlets revisited the Israeli drone video that was
made available to the compliant US media outlets. After careful review,
they concluded that the footage had been altered with “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/29/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-trucks-map.html">multiple clips spliced together</a>.”
The edits conveniently erased the events just before the crowd
dispersed in all directions, evading bullets, scrambling over trucks,
seeking cover behind vehicles and structures, and falling to the ground
from direct gunshot wounds. </p>
<p>It is important to point out that the targeting of aid trucks at the
Nabulsi roundabout is neither the first nor the last of Israeli attempts
to obstruct the delivery of food aid in Gaza. Approximately three weeks
prior, on February 6, "Israel" opened fire on a crowd gathering at the
Kuwaiti roundabout, while naval gunboats targeted UNRWA <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0o3EagOjNg">humanitarian food trucks</a>.
More recently, or three days following the Flour Massacre, on March
3rd, Israel once again opened fire on a hungry crowd awaiting food
trucks at the Kuwaiti roundabout, resulting in the deaths and injuries
of several civilians.</p>
<p>The submissive prostration of Western media, providing unchallenged
platforms to Israeli PR spokespersons, is unprecedented in the so-called
“free world". By agreeing to Israeli directives restricting media
access into Gaza, Western mainstream media has no presence to report
from the theater. Gone AWOL, the media have been transformed into an
active participant in whitewashing Israeli genocide where the Gaza
coverage has been regulated, directly and indirectly, by an Israeli
Hasbara manifested by the managed evidence and narrative of the Flour
Massacre. Or to paraphrase the original Goebbels, Western mainstream
media have become a “keyboard on which Israel plays.”</p>
<p>In fact, Western, particularly American, genuflection to "Israel"
extends beyond the media. Case in point, almost two weeks ago, the White
House National Security Communications Advisor, John Kirby, disparaged
his own US army, praising the Israeli forces for taking actions to
protect civilians, stating that he was "<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/white-house-spokesperson-john-kirby-slammed-for-saying-that-israel-is-doing-a-better-job-at-protecting-civilians-than-our-own-military/ar-BB1ifviN">not sure our own (American) military would take</a>" similar actions.</p>
<p>When asked about the murdering of the hungry civilians in Gaza, Kirby’s boss, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/29/middle-east-crisis-live-updates-israel-hamas-war-latest-today-gaza-death-toll-hamas-health-ministry?page=with:block-65e0aec88f08b6f9684f4c43">Joe Biden pled ignorance</a>, stating, “There’s two competing versions of what happened. I don’t have an answer yet.” </p>
<p>In avoiding answering the question, the US President accorded equal
credence to the Israeli disinformation machine. In keeping up with his
standing, Biden is consistent in his anti-Palestinian bias hyperbolizing
Israeli victimhood, while downplaying Israeli crimes against
Palestinians under the pretext of not having enough information.</p>
<p>This week and after five months of pleading for "Israel" to allow
more aid trucks into Gaza, Biden joined other inept Arab dictators in an
inconsequential gesture dropping 38,000 meals to 2,4 million in Gaza; a
stunt by the incompetent leaders that is aimed more at mollifying
international outrage against "Israel" than a genuine desire to
alleviate the mounting starvation levels in Gaza.</p>
<p>The made-for-TV theatrical airdrop of a mere <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-military-aircraft-airdrop-thousands-144336773.html">38,000 meals</a>
was like a grain of sand on the beach of Gaza. The parachuted meals
were equivalent to providing a minuscule 0.005 of the daily meal for
every citizen of Gaza, or the equivalent of offering 5 loaves of bread
per 1000 individuals. This is a farce and rings hollow from an
administration that plans to send "Israel" almost $15 billion, in
addition to the weapons and political cover that empower "Israel" to
carry out the very siege the air drops purportedly intend to mitigate.
The starvation in Gaza is not due to a drought or a natural disaster,
but an Israeli-made catastrophe enabled by Biden, Western governments,
and blessed by Arab dictators.</p>
<p>As you read this, remember Nader, who joined his brother Ali to feed
his hungry child, Manar. He would have been most likely one of those
killed or injured in the February 29, Flour Massacre. His children, if
alive, are still hungry and cold at home, watching through a broken
window aid parcels parachuting from the skies alongside the roar of an
American-made jet delivering <a href="https://www.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html">2000-pound bombs</a> over their heads. </p>
<p>Manar, if she wasn't among the more than <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-15-children-dead-malnutrition-dehydration-gaza-hospital-gaza-health-2024-03-03/">15 children who tragically perished</a> this week from malnutrition and dehydration, will always recall how the Israeli-made starvation drove her father to death.</p></div></div></div>
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