With No End Goal, Israel is Starving Gaza and Luring Civilians in for Target Practice
By Robert Inlakesh
The current Israeli hasbara utilizes the same tactics that neo-Nazis use to try and claim that Jewish people in Auschwitz never starved.
The withholding of food and basic goods from civilians in Gaza led to a wave of starvation across the besieged territory. For over 80 days all aid entering the coastal enclave was cut, an undeniable deliberate policy designed to inflict famine.
Due the evident severity of the famine unfolding in the Gaza Strip, the largely silent and complicit Western governments, along with their media machines, began applying pressure on Tel Aviv through condemnatory statements and coverage.
This then led to pro-Israel advocates online, including Israeli officials themselves, resorting to arguments that replicate those made to deny the Nazi Holocaust. Despite the policy being overt and indisputable, Zionist propagandists use photos and videos of people in Gaza – much of them old – to claim that there is no starvation at all.
The current Israeli hasbara utilizes the same tactics that neo-Nazis use to try and claim that Jewish people in Auschwitz never starved, featuring out of context photos of overweight Jews or Jews with smiles on their faces while living inside the concentration camp.
A German media outlet called Bild recently published a story in which it uses a photo of a journalist in Gaza filming people waiting to receive food, claiming that it was staged. Despite the fact that major news outlets verified that it was staged and some even released photos showing that the photojournalist has simply taken images prior to when the food was being dished out, Israel has latched onto the long debunked story.
Now, Israel’s official X (formerly Twitter) account has been pushing the Bild hoax through a paid ad campaign. It turns out that not only is the pro-Israel news outlet owned by a close personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but that the publisher, Matthias Deffner, was awarded Israel’s most prestigious prize only two weeks prior to the story having been published.
Then we turn to the US media. Take for example a recent article published by the Washington Post, written by a former speech writer for then US President George W Bush, Marc Thiessen, entitled “Hunger in Gaza has many authors, but Israel isn’t one of them”.
The WP piece peddles the lie that Israel is the only nation to ever allow food to enter an area from where they were attacked. In fact, even during the Syrian war, the government of Bashar al-Assad allowed food to enter ISIS controlled areas. It is commonplace to allow food to enter a territory of the enemy in war, preventing it is called a war crime.
Not only this, Israel is not paying for the small portions of food entering Gaza, nor is delivering the food, which it is actually bound by international law to do as an occupying power.
While the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was the sole distributor of food in the besieged territory, famine began gripping the population, as confirmed by every reputable aid organization, the UN and human rights group. The GHF aid points, instead of actually providing a life line to the civilian population, became a “death trap” where starving civilians were lured into the firing line of Israeli soldiers and American Private Military Contractors.
Israeli forces have to date murdered over 1,200 desperate Palestinians seeking aid, also injuring thousands more. As per the eye witness testimony from survivors, doctors, journalists and also GHF whistleblower Antony Aguilar, Israeli forces along with wing members of the GHF mercenary force routinely and arbitrarily gun down civilians.
Two members from my own extended family were murdered by Israeli fire while attempting to reach aid sites. One of whom was trying to receive food to feed his parents, wife and children, who had climbed onto the roof of a truck near an aid site and was shot in the head, before being run over by the vehicle that crushed his lifeless body.
A displaced Palestinian woman from northern Gaza, named Dounia, agreed to speak to the Palestine Chronicle about the starvation conditions that she and those around her have suffered recently.
“We eat a little of anything, like canned food, a little flour, and a lot of lentils, and I get it by buying it at exorbitant prices and paying a high commission as well. Everyone is hungry, everyone I know is hungry in general, and we eat one meal that is hardly enough to satisfy a person”, she said.
Dounia also explained that people are suffering from “hepatitis, third-degree malnutrition, bacterial infections” and severe weight loss on mass around her, due to the lack of sufficient food and sanitary supplies.
She says that when it comes to the small amounts of food available at markets, “Few people buy, and the commission is very high now, reaching 52%. Those who buy are wealthy, but many people who do not have any income cannot buy anything from the market.”
Dounia informed the Palestine Chronicle that she, along with her immediate family, recently went without any food for five days and that this happened “when there was no flour in the markets, and we were unable to stock up before, so it was a very tragic period because the feeling of hunger almost makes you vomit.”
When asked whether Dounia knows anyone who has died while attempting to reach a GHF aid point, she answered “Yes. My friend’s brother was killed, and my cousin was also killed while he was in the aid delivery area. He was shot in the head. This happened two weeks ago.”
A young Palestinian man, from Khan Yunis, who was injured while attempting to reach an aid distribution point spoke to the Palestine Chronicle on the condition of anonymity, testifying that in his view, “it has become a game for the Israelis”. “They wait for us to come and collect aid, so they can practice shooting innocent people, everyday they choose a new way to kill us and they are having fun with it.”
The young man also said “What can I say? I was lucky that my wound wasn’t too serious and everyone who goes to collect the aid knows there’s a possibility of being killed, but what options do we have?”
According to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, 79% of Israeli Jews said they are not troubled about reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza, with only 6.7% answering that they were “very troubled” and 13.5% saying “somewhat troubled”.
While Western corporate media, Zionists activists and Israeli spokespersons in English attempt to deny that anyone is starving in Gaza – even making excuses about some of the children that died did not directly pass away as a direct cause of malnutrition, but instead a side effect of the starvation – the vast majority of Israeli Jewish population simply does not care.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.