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Cowardly politicians fear the Hague as Israel starves Palestinians

Israel continues to starve Palestinians in its manufactured famine. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported that malnutrition amongst children under 5 in Palestine has more than doubled from March to June. Israeli authorities haven’t allowed UNRWA to bring in any humanitarian aid whatsoever for 4.5 months. And, as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have said:

the Israeli military continues to kill and gravely injure hundreds of Palestinians as they desperately seek the little shelter and food available, raising further concerns that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza.

As the Canary’s Palestinian correspondent Alaa Shamali has been reporting for months, more then 93% of people in Gaza are facing severe levels of food insecurity. Famine is not something that can immediately escalate. It requires repeated and consistent efforts. Israel has made those efforts through blocking aid, destroying infrastructure vital to life, and killing people as they line up for what little aid there is. The World Food Programme warned as far back as May 2024. Politicians have had every opportunity to stop this from happening. They have chosen to allow Palestinians to suffer untold horrors.

Israel starves Palestine as world watches

However, certain politicians have chosen this particular moment to release vague, watered down statements about Palestine.

Rabid warmonger Hillary Clinton said:

It has been widely documented that aid seekers have been brutally murdered while waiting for food and water. Flour has been laced with highly addictive oxycodone. Israel have blockaded Gaza for decades for almost 20 years and all Killary can muster is:

The full flow of humanitarian assistance must be restored immediately.

It’s remarkable the tone of voice that can be crafted – who is restricting the flow of aid? Are they restricting it politely? Can you ‘restore’ something to a terrorised population?

Racist gangster Keir Starmer released the following guff:

After years of Israel’s genocide, it takes some fucking nerve to say that:

While the situation has been grave for some time. It has reached new depths and continues to worsen.

This, coming from the same man who uses loopholes to continue to provide arms to Israel. Who has received intelligence from UK spy planes flying over Palestine. Who has refused to call the genocide a genocide. Starmer is a hypocritical disgrace. He could have picked any one of thousands of moments where Palestinians have suffered atrocity after atrocity that he could have stopped.

We are far past the point where any action from Starmer could feasibly be described as “urgent.” How can he call for “all sides to engage in good faith” when Israel have violated international law time and time again? All possible agencies who have the expertise to designate war crimes and crimes against humanity have done so. There couldn’t be more evidence and, yet, spineless cretin Starmer wants to pretend he gives a fuck.

Complicity

Unlike Starmer and Clinton, the rest of the world will not forget their abject complicity. The backlash on social media has been, rightly, swift and furious:

Far too little, far too late:

Starmer is the same man overseeing the arrest of pensioners trying to stop Israel’s genocide:

And, that’s to say nothing of the vile aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide that Starmer’s been engaged in:

Meanwhile, Clinton got a similar response for her craven posturing:

No offence to Satan:

Clinton has put in the hours to demonise and denigrate pro-Palestine protesters at every opportunity:

Curious, how adept Clinton is at ensuring even when supposedly calling for Palestinians to be saved, she can still make it seem as though some unknown entity is starving them:

Ultimately, Starmer, Clinton, and other politicians lining up their empty statements are guilty of the following:

Fuck your aid

Starmer and Clinton’s words are even more insulting considering the hell Israel have unleashed on Palestine. Palestinians have risked everything possible to recount themselves and their people in the worst possible moments of their lives, in hopes that someone might do something. Meanwhile, Western politicians have sat on their hands in defiance of not only international law, but basic moral values.

Just days ago, Palestinian journalist Motasem Dalloul outlined the death traps of supposed ‘food aid’ set up by the American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Dalloul said that GHF:

regularly posts the aid distribution schedule on Facebook. Each time, around 60,000 to 70,000 Palestinians converge at the designated site. Loudspeakers announce that when the green light turns on, people have just 10 minutes to grab between 300 to 400 aid packages—though much of the critical supplies, like flour, sugar, and salt, are snatched up first by gangs and collaborators.

Then:

After the 10-minute window, the light turns yellow, signaling that only 5 minutes remain to flee before automatic machine guns open fire indiscriminately on anyone still in the area.

Why didn’t these politicians speak up then? Why not one of the other innumerable atrocities? How could anyone defend Palestinians having their lives played with like this?

Journalist Mosab Abu Toha shared footage of ten Palestinian children between the ages of 15 and 17 who were abducted near a GHF site by Israeli military:

One child yells out:

Fuck your aid!

What else is there to say when the so-called aid comes with torture, abductions, murder, and is laced with drugs anyway? Starmer and Clinton may have one eye on the Hague coming knocking, but the hell they’ve sanctioned for Palestinians will not be forgotten.

Threatening journalists

However, Israel is, incredibly, still threatening Palestinian journalists. Al Jazeera’s Anas Al-Sharif has been a vital reporter whose recent video documents his own starvation as he trembled with hunger. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released the following statement:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely worried about the safety of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza correspondent Anas Al-Sharif, who is being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign, which he believes is a precursor to his assassination.

In the early days of the genocide, there was disbelief in some quarters over Israel’s threats to journalists and their families; over their brazen bombing of hospitals and refugee shelters; over their targeting of children and schools. How are we to describe that disbelief now, twisted and contorted as it is by the continuous barbarous actions of the Israelis over a year later?

Featured image via the Canary

By Maryam Jameela

This post was originally published on Canary.