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After Israel instituted its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza on March 2, it was roundly condemned by a world that had forgotten about, or never understood, Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which gives a state at war the right to withhold even humanitarian aid to civilians of an enemy state if that aid is likely to be “diverted” by the enemy; Hamas has been “diverting” — stealing — such aid ever since the Gaza war began. Now, aware that the three-month-supply of humanitarian aid that was on hand in Gaza when the blockade began on March 2 was coming to an end, Israel ended the blockade and began to again send humanitarian aid into Gaza. It is now up to 200 trucks of aid entering Gaza each day, with more to come as the system of distribution becomes established, with armed guards overseeing, and protecting, the distribution of food to civilians.

One might have thought the world would approve of such an effort. But no — Israel is being vilified for trying to now provide humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza without letting that aid be stolen by Hamas. The Jewish state is receiving the same criticism for feeding Gazans as it did for not feeding them. Israel is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t, as British journalist Brendan O’Neill scathingly notes in an article here: “Israel’s latest crime? Feeding the people of Gaza,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, May 27, 2025:

…The haughty cynicism of the West’s Israel-haters in response to this humanitarian drive has been extraordinary. The foundation started its work yesterday. Truckloads of food were dispatched on day one. Many more are due this week. It is reported that Israel’s aim is to set up four secure distribution sites in central and southern Gaza. Israeli forces, assisted by private military contractors from the US, will oversee the safe provision of food to the neediest Gazans who have fled the fierce fighting in the north of the strip. Israel’s hope is that armed guards will deter Hamas from looting the aid and hawking it on the black market to boost the coffers of its fascistic war against the Jewish nation, as has happened many times in the past 18 months.

Given how dire things are in Gaza, after a year-and-a-half of this infernal war Hamas started, this should be cause for celebration. Gaza’s innocents are as much the victims of Hamas’s fascistic writ as Israelis are. Their dignity, and in many cases their lives, have been sacrificed by Gaza’s autocratic religious regime at the altar of its racist crusade against the Jews’ homeland. These people did not ask for their land to be made into a theatre for Hamas’s demented apocalyptic showdown with the Jews. They need relief, they need food. And yet, far from breathing a sigh of relief that many of them will now receive precisely that, the West’s legion Israelophobes are raging over Israel’s life-saving aid.

Why does this aid initiative feel ‘so problematic’, asks one headline? I can answer that: it’s because the Jewish State is spearheading it. Everywhere you look there is conceited suspicion over the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It will ‘militarise aid delivery’, says the UN – big talk from an outfit whose facilities in Gaza have been used by a neo-fascist militia to propagate Jew hatred and house kidnapped Jews. Aid agencies are refusing to work with the foundation on the grounds that ‘militarising’ aid delivery is an insult to ‘humanitarian principles’. The naivety is staggering. Gaza is an active warzone. The idea that Israel could just sit back as the strip was swamped by boxes of who knows what is infantile in the extreme. It’s war – everything is militarised in war.

Israel is not “militarizing” aid delivery, but in a chaotic war zone where everyone jostles everyone else, in order to get to the front of the distribution line, with Hamas certain to steal aid if it can, the Israelis, together with American military contractors, are “protecting” aid delivery from Hamas. At the same time, they are trying to enforce a semblance of order on ordinary Gazans, stopping them from pushing and shoving one another aside in their determination to receive the aid packages. What would Israel’s critics have it do? Allow Hamas to steal so much of that aid again, as it did for so many months? Do nothing to end the chaos at the aid distribution centers?