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<h1 class="gmail-single_title">Why Israel\u2019s blackmail over
humanitarian aid reveals weakness and fear</h1>
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<h3><a href="https://english.palinfo.com/authors/Adnan-Hmidan"
moz-do-not-send="true"> <i
class="gmail-fa-solid gmail-fa-quote-left"></i> Adnan
Hmidan </a></h3>
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<p class="gmail-single_date">Sunday 9-November-2025</p>
<div class="gmail-post_content">
<p>Israel\u2019s demand that humanitarian organizations recognize it
as a \u201cJewish state\u201d and renounce international law before
delivering aid to Gaza is not an act of confidence \u2014 it is an
admission of fear. No legitimate nation makes its existence a
precondition for feeding children.</p>
<p>A state secure in its legitimacy does not require recognition
before allowing food or medicine to reach the hungry. Nor does
a country at peace with itself compel humanitarian workers to
sign political pledges before delivering aid. What Israel is
doing in Gaza today is not an expression of strength; it is a
confession of weakness.</p>
<p>Since the fragile ceasefire announced in October 2025, Israel
has replaced bombardment with bureaucracy, enforcing a new
form of collective punishment: humanitarian blackmail. Every
truck, every shipment of medicine or shelter materials, now
passes through a political checkpoint, subject to ideological
vetting unseen in modern humanitarian practice.</p>
<p>Among the demands are that aid agencies publicly recognize
Israel as a \u201cJewish state\u201d and renounce cooperation with the
International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court
of Justice (ICJ). In effect, Israel is compelling humanitarian
organizations to forsake international law in exchange for
access to the dying.</p>
<p>This is not the conduct of a confident state. It is the
behavior of a power haunted by its own record, desperate to
turn relief work into a form of absolution. Israel is
attempting to use humanitarian aid as a whitewash, forcing the
world to validate its ideology in return for bread, water, and
medicine.</p>
<p>The phrase \u201cJewish state\u201d is not a neutral expression of
nationhood. It is an exclusionary project \u2014 an ethnonational
construct that contradicts the historical reality of
Palestine, a land that for centuries embodied coexistence.</p>
<p>Before Zionism sought to impose demographic dominance through
siege and expulsion, Palestine was a society of plurality \u2014 a
Muslim majority living alongside Christian and Jewish
communities in dignity and peace.</p>
<p>Israel\u2019s obsession with being recognized as an ethnically
defined state exposes a deep anxiety. A state confident in its
identity does not beg the world to validate it. To demand
ideological recognition as a condition for humanitarian access
is not an act of sovereignty \u2014 it is an act of insecurity.</p>
<p>These demands also collide head-on with the most basic
humanitarian principles. Neutrality, independence, and
impartiality are not optional values; they are the legal
foundations of humanitarian work. International humanitarian
law mandates unimpeded relief for civilians in need and
explicitly forbids conditioning that relief on political or
ideological allegiance.</p>
<p>To ask aid agencies to renounce the ICC or ICJ \u2014 to disavow
the very instruments of accountability \u2014 is to turn
humanitarianism into a loyalty test, stripping it of both its
legality and its moral purpose.</p>
<p>Such behavior reflects profound institutional fear: fear of
justice, fear of accountability, and fear of the growing
global consensus that what has been unfolding in Gaza is not a
\u201cconflict\u201d but a protracted act of genocidal destruction.</p>
<p>Israel\u2019s obsession with silencing all mention of the ICC and
ICJ betrays its awareness that it is not immune to
prosecution. The louder it claims to stand above the law, the
more clearly it reveals its terror of facing it.</p>
<p>Gaza\u2019s suffering today is measured not only in bombs, but in
the systematic denial of life itself \u2014 in medicines withheld,
shelters delayed, and food rationed through political control.
Israel now kills slowly, through paperwork and procedures,
dressing domination in the language of \u201csecurity.\u201d</p>
<p>If a Palestinian resistance group were to withhold the body
of a single Israeli captive, the world\u2019s outrage would be
deafening. Yet when Israel holds an entire population hostage
\u2014 depriving them of food, medicine, and dignity \u2014 the world
looks away. That silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.</p>
<p>Gaza is not asking for charity. Its people demand the right
to live freely, to rebuild their homes without humiliation or
political preconditions. The issue is not about aid \u2014 it is
about freedom, justice, and the right to exist without
coercion.</p>
<p>What is required is simple: lift political conditions on
humanitarian access; open the crossings for sustained,
predictable relief; restore medical evacuations and critical
supplies; and support independent investigations without
intimidation. Anything less recycles the same rhetoric of
\u201csecurity\u201d to perpetuate subjugation.</p>
<p>What Israel\u2019s leaders fear most today is not a military
defeat, but a moral reckoning; the reckoning of law, evidence,
and truth. The blackmail they practice under the banner of
\u201csecurity\u201d is the tremor of a guilty power trying to buy time.</p>
<p>Israel is not projecting strength; it is revealing weakness.
A state secure in its legitimacy would not fear the courts of
justice, nor would it need to compel the world to acknowledge
what it claims to be. Those who fear the truth have already
confessed it \u2014 and those who demand recognition of their
existence have already revealed their fragility.</p>
<p><em>-Adnan Hmidan is the Chair of Palestinian Forum in
Britain. His article appeared in MEMO.</em></p>
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