'The Hunger War Has Started'

This is a man-made catastrophe.

Daniel Larison Dec 12

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The heads of six major humanitarian organizations have called for the U.S. government to make a major course change in its response to the war in Gaza:

Global leaders — and especially the United States government — must understand we cannot save lives under these conditions. A significant change in approach from the U.S. government is needed today to pull Gaza back from this abyss.

For a start, the Biden administration must stop its diplomatic interference at the United Nations, blocking calls for a cease-fire.

The UN is warning that half of the population of Gaza is starving, and they say that nine out of ten people there are unable to eat every day because of the lack of supplies. “The hunger war has started,” Nawras Abu Libdeh of Medical Aid for Palestinians told the AP last week. The World Food Program has said that Gaza is on the brink of famine, and unless there is a sudden halt to the war and an end to the siege millions of people are going to fall off that cliff.

The humanitarian organization leaders remind us how severe the crisis has become because of the siege that the Israeli government has imposed on Gaza:

The bombardment is not the only thing brutally cutting lives short. The siege of — and blockades surrounding — Gaza have led to a critical food scarcity, blocks on medical supplies and electricity, and a lack of clean water. There is barely any medical care to be found in the enclave and few medications. Surgeons are working by the light of their mobile phones, without anesthetics. They are using dishcloths as bandages. The risk of waves of waterborne and infectious disease will only grow in the increasingly overcrowded living conditions for the displaced.

The unfolding famine in Gaza is the direct, predictable result of putting the entire population under siege. The spread of preventable disease is likewise the direct result of cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. This is a man-made catastrophe. The Israeli government is responsible for committing a grave crime against the Palestinians of Gaza. The only good news is that the worst-case outcome can still be prevented if the U.S. and other outside governments make a concerted effort to avert it.

The UN General Assembly is preparing to vote tomorrow on a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Once again, the U.S. will presumably be one of the very few member states to vote against it. The Biden administration continues wanting to have things both ways by backing the war without conditions while claiming to support delivering more aid to the population, but the latter is impossible unless the war ends and the siege is lifted. The administration faces a stark choice between enabling the war and the humanitarian crisis that the war created on the one hand and halting the war and protecting civilian lives on the other. So far they have chosen war and supported only a token humanitarian effort, and that approach is a blueprint for mass death from starvation and disease.

Famine had been almost completely eradicated in the modern world, but in recent years it has made an alarming return. In his book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, Alex de Waal writes that “all today’s famines are caused by political decision.”¹ He observes that “it is the poor and politically excluded who are [famine’s] first and principal victims, commonly its only ones.”² Whether it is central governments using starvation tactics against a specific region, wealthy states blockading poor ones, or an occupying government starving the people it rules over, political leaders make decisions to deprive millions of people of the basic necessities needed to survive. That is what has happened in Gaza while the rest of the world looks on.

De Waal also identifies the connection between famine and other mass atrocities: “Both are primarily political projects that consider (some) human lives expendable or worthless.”³ The U.S. should repudiate any such project and its supporters. A policy of mass starvation must be rejected as a cruel and inhumane throwback to the darkest periods in modern history.

© 2023 Daniel Larison
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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