{"id":259542,"date":"2024-04-15T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-04-15T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=259542"},"modified":"2024-04-15T12:36:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T11:36:05","slug":"israels-message-dont-feed-the-palestinians-or-you-will-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/04\/israels-message-dont-feed-the-palestinians-or-you-will-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s Message: \u2018Don\u2019t Feed the Palestinians or You Will Die\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UN staff inspect the remains of a car used by US-based aid group World Central Kitchen that was hit by an Israeli air raid in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on April 2, 2024. [AFP]<\/p><\/div>\n

The killing of the seven aid workers in Gaza is a direct consequence of Israel\u2019s brutal \u2018rules of engagement\u2019.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7 Apr 2024<\/em> – The invading Israeli army ought to have erected signs throughout Gaza that read: \u201cDon\u2019t feed the Palestinians: Punishable by death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

To understand why seven aid workers were killed by Israel earlier this week in Gaza only requires a short-term memory.<\/p>\n

Their deaths were not a \u201ctragic event \u2026 that happens in war\u201d, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed<\/a> in a statement meant to blunt the \u201coutrage\u201d over the killings.<\/p>\n

No, the seven souls, employed by World Central Kitchen (WCK) travelling in a convoy in Deir el-Balah after unloading 100 tonnes of food aid at its central Gaza warehouse, were casualties of a directive issued by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9.<\/p>\n

Gallant\u2019s remarks were televised to convey to the world Israel\u2019s uncompromising resolve and intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,\u201d Gallant said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gallant has kept his word. Famine is rampant in Gaza. Israel\u2019s aim is to starve Palestinians into submission and capitulation. Anyone, from anywhere who feeds the Palestinians is, de facto, a legitimate military target and Israel has acted \u201caccordingly\u201d.<\/p>\n

The WCK staff were not considered humanitarians by Israel\u2019s occupation forces, but collaborators aiding and abetting the Palestinians who perpetrated the October 7 assault on Israel and subsequently seized captives turned negotiating pawns.<\/p>\n

That is why the WCK convoy was fired upon, and the occupants summarily killed. Gallant made clear the \u201crules of engagement\u201d on October 9.<\/p>\n

No one of any consequence in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, or Ottawa demurred, let alone objected, to Israel\u2019s designs to lay \u201csiege\u201d to Gaza in any way, and by whatever means, it, and it alone, saw fit.<\/p>\n

That is also why the so-called \u201coutrage\u201d that the killings provoked in Western capitals has struck me as largely performative and hypocritical, as have the perfunctory demands for \u201cindependent\u201d probes into the lethal attack.<\/p>\n

Beyond offering Gallant their unqualified consent to do whatever he wanted to do in Gaza, the presidents and prime ministers now expressing their calibrated outrage have, year after disgraceful year, granted Israel carte blanche to imprison Palestinians, torture Palestinians, invade Palestinian homes, steal Palestinian land, destroy Palestinian crops, and, of course, shoot, maim and kill Palestinians at will.<\/p>\n

These same, suddenly outraged presidents and prime ministers have watched, approvingly, as Israel has gone about systematically denying the Palestinians shelter by obliterating their homes and neighbourhoods; denying them care and comfort by storming and obliterating hospitals; denying them education by obliterating their schools and universities; denying them places of worship by obliterating their churches and mosques; denying them their roots and past by obliterating their libraries, museums and historical sites.<\/p>\n

These same presidents and prime ministers nodded in fulsome agreement with Gallant: Israel\u2019s adversaries \u2013 without distinction \u2013 were indeed \u201chuman animals\u201d and the inevitable consequences of the \u201csiege\u201d of Gaza were not only acceptable but warranted.<\/p>\n

So, count me as unconvinced and unimpressed by this trite, meaningless censure of Israel. For months, these same presidents and prime ministers have been spouting the same hollow bromide: Israel must do more to protect \u201cinnocent civilians\u201d; otherwise, we will trot out the same hollow bromide.<\/p>\n

It is a pathetic pantomime. These presidents and prime ministers will always choose \u201cIsrael\u2019s right to defend itself\u201d over international law and the \u201crules\u201d of war and the disposable lives of seven humanitarian workers be damned.<\/p>\n

Remember, these are the same presidents and prime ministers who instantly dismissed reports produced by human rights groups which established that, for decades, Israel has committed \u201cthe crime against humanity of apartheid\u201d in its methodical persecution of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The reports stood not only as indictments, but warnings of what was inevitably to come if the injustices set out in such clinical and persuasive detail were not finally acknowledged and addressed in tangible ways by a galvanised \u201cinternational community\u201d.<\/p>\n

Predictably, those prescient warnings went unheeded. The result: a still unfolding genocide and all the murderous madness on unrelenting display.<\/p>\n

Ah, but Israel\u2019s apologists will say: Israel admits its \u201cerrors\u201d and punishes those responsible. In this \u201cunfortunate\u201d case, two Israeli officers have been \u201cfired<\/a>\u201d and three others \u201creprimanded\u201d for \u201cviolating\u201d the \u201carmy\u2019s rules of engagement\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the outrage ebbs \u2013 as it already has \u2013 the \u201cpunished\u201d will, in due course, be rehabilitated since, as Israel\u2019s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has in effect said, the \u201cabandoned\u201d officers were just following Gallant\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chief of staff\u2019s decision to dismiss senior officers is an abandonment of the fighters in the middle of a war and a serious mistake that conveys weakness,\u201d the voluble minister wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cEven if there are mistakes in identification, soldiers are backed up in war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their penance will be short. I suspect that most Israelis, like Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, will close ranks behind \u201cthe fighters\u201d who did what they were told to do by Gallant on October 9. When your foe is a \u201chuman animal\u201d, the only rule of engagement is \u201cacting accordingly\u201d.<\/p>\n

The other part of this pantomime is steeped in politics. Nervous Democrats can count. In recent presidential primaries, more than 500,000 Democrats have registered their fury with Joe Biden\u2019s embrace of Netanyahu\u2019s plan to erase Gaza and, ultimately, to absorb it and the occupied West Bank. They have voted \u201cuncommitted\u201d \u2013 or a variation of the term \u2013 in states that the president had carried by slim margins in 2020.<\/p>\n

So, to mollify a movement that some silly observers insisted was confined to Michigan\u2019s suburbs, Biden\u2019s reliable surrogates, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are \u2013 surprise, surprise \u2013 signing a letter<\/a> dipped in Pixie dust advising Biden to make US military support to Israel contingent on the protection of Palestinian civilians in the wake of the deadly ambush of the aid workers.<\/p>\n

The letter is 33,000 dead Palestinians too late. It is not going to convince the growing legion of \u201cuncommitted\u201d Democratic voters that \u201cZionist\u201d Joe is poised to change his engrained attitudes towards Israel or his steadfast support for razing Gaza along with extinguishing Hamas.<\/p>\n

Come November, the Democratic Party establishment will have to reckon with this fact: A Democratic president sacrificed the presidency and democracy \u2013 his strained rhetoric, not mine \u2013 to save Netanyahu and assuage Israel\u2019s killing rage.<\/p>\n

Well done, Sir.<\/p>\n

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Andrew Mitrovica is an <\/em>Al Jazeera columnist based in Toronto.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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7 Apr 2024 – The invading Israeli army ought to have erected signs throughout Gaza that read: \u201cDon\u2019t feed the Palestinians: Punishable by death.\u201d The killing of the seven aid workers in Gaza is a direct consequence of Israel\u2019s brutal \u2018rules of engagement\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":259543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[532,1854,2898,1199,2242,87,865,1643,1029,1966,1644,88,2416,715,427,124,70,965,1025],"class_list":["post-259542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-colonialism","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-ecocide","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-famine","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-hamas","tag-hunger","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-massacre","tag-palestine","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259542"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259785,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259542\/revisions\/259785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}