A manmade disaster in Gaza
I know and apologize for there being only so much public and personal bandwidth. There are serious matters going unaddressed while we attempt to keep the country from collapsing into autocracy. Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza is a big one.
Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise
After four months of a near-total Israeli siege, Gaza’s few remaining hospitals now have wards for the growing number of malnourished children whose tiny bodies are just the width of their bones.
Doctors are famished to the point that they have dizzy spells as they make their rounds, medics say, and the journalists documenting their caseloads are often too weak to even walk to the clinics.
Gazans Are Dying of Starvation
Atef Abu Khater, 17, who was healthy before Gaza was gripped by war, lies in intensive care in a hospital in the north of the Palestinian enclave, suffering from severe malnutrition.
“He is not responding to the treatment,” said his father, A’eed Abu Khater, 48, who has been sheltering in a tent in Gaza City with his wife and five children. “I feel helpless,” he added in a phone call, his voice strained with grief. “We lost our income in the war. Food is unaffordable. There is nothing.”
Things got heated last night as a CNN panel discussed the crisis.
Amid the finger-pointing, the United Nations “says Israeli authorities are the ‘sole decision-makers’ on who, and how much, aid enters Gaza, as well as the type of supplies that are allowed in,” The Washington Post reports:
“Once inside Gaza, movement requires navigating an obstacle course of coordination with Israeli forces, through active hostilities, traveling on damaged roads, and often being forced to wait at holding points or pass through areas controlled by criminal gangs,” U.N. relief chief Tom Fletcher told the U.N. Security Council in New York last week. When vehicles do make it through, he said, starving people often try to grab flour from the backs of the trucks.
Gaza’s ability to make its own food has been almost entirely destroyed as Israeli military operations have wiped out farmlands and factories. As the summer heat bears down, hungry and thirsty civilians have run out of reserves to fall back on.
Palestinians in the enclave are reliant instead on humanitarian aid that most people under Israel’s new system cannot easily access. According to local health authorities, more than 1,000 people have been shot dead as they raced through territory controlled by the Israeli military toward distribution points run by U.S. security contractors, where supplies are first-come, first-served.
Chef José Andrés speaks out as World Central Kitchen forced to pause cooking in Gaza
World Central Kitchen has been forced to once again suspend cooking in Gaza due to a lack of ingredients, the food aid organization said Sunday.
In a joint social media post with its founder Chef José Andrés, the not-for-profit humanitarian group said it had “run out of food in Gaza.”
“We have finished all the stock in hand, and our trucks are stuck at the border,” WCK wrote in an Instagram caption. “We are continuing to bake bread and deliver water. But the people of Gaza still need a hot meal. Yesterday, we served 80,000+ meals — and we are ready to start cooking again the moment that aid trucks make it safely to our field kitchens.”
Lifesaving food for starving children in Gaza to run out by mid-August, warn UN agencies
I just can’t.
* * * * *
Have you fought dicktatorship today?
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense