The threat of starvation in Gaza only gets worse as time and the Israeli invasion go on. The UN World Food Program (WFP) is now warning that Gazans are facing ‘full-blown famine’. After Israel closed a major humanitarian aid entry point…
The faces of famine in Gaza…
It’s hard to imagine something like this happening in this day and age. The 2.3 million people in Gaza are literally facing starvation as the Israeli government presses its invasion of the Arab territory. As it stands today, the only route for relief supplies to enter Gaza is by sea. And that route can handle only a relatively small volume of food.
UN condemnation
Cindy McCain is the widow of the late US senator John McCain. He was a controversial character and something of a renegade Republican who infuriated his political brothers by defying the party line. He and Cindy were also well known and respected as a human rights advocates.
Mrs. McCain is now the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP). And she spoke out recently about widespread starvation and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
In an interview with NBC News this week, McCain claimed that WFP personnel have ‘seen and experienced’ evidence of ‘full-blown famine in the North, and it’s moving its way South’. McCain called for an immediate ceasefire, and unfettered entry of humanitarian aid. It’s notable as the first time a top UN official has spoken out about the situation.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to open up humanitarian aid routes. Twice. But Israel has not complied.
Level 5 famine
The situation has been described in dramatic terms by the IPC Global Initiative, a food security monitoring organization, in a Special Brief: “North Gaza and Gaza Governorates are classified in IPC Phase 5 (Famine),with reasonable evidence, with 70 % (around 210,000 people) of the population in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe).”
Human Rights Watch has declared: “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.”
Some countries, notably Turkey, have echoed that charge.
Protests decried
Massive protests about Israel’s treatment of Gaza, by students and human rights activists – many on US university campuses – have been condemned by many. And they’ve been decried as anti-semitic.
But the protests are not about the state of Israel, the Israeli people or the greater Jewish culture, which has so enriched so many other cultures around the world.
The protests are about the current Israeli government, and what it’s been ordering its armed forces to do in Gaza.
My take
I sincerely hope the Israeli Government comes to its senses, and stops starving the Gazans. Israel says it’s not even after the Gazan people, just the Hamas militant anti-Israel group. Why, then, are 2.3 million people facing an official ‘famine catastrophe?”
More importantly – what can be done to help them? And who is in a position to do it?
~ Maggie J.