


People are hungry in Gaza. Of this, there is no dispute. There is also evidence that some Gazans are dying of starvation.
It's hard to have a rational discussion about this issue. Hungry children who are caught up in the terrorists' war against Israel don't care what the great issues at stake are. All they care about is having food in their empty bellies.
Parents looking into the sunken eyes of their malnourished children aren't concerned about a victory for Hamas. They want food aid to stave off death from lack of nourishment.
So are Gaza residents starving to death? And is Israel responsible?
The basis of the problem is the UN's refusal to deliver aid to starving Gazans using the joint U.S.-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). There are hundreds of tons of aid piled up at the Gaza border that the UN won't deliver.
Simply put, the United Nations is refusing to deliver aid from the group, citing "unsafe conditions" at distribution points. It's a smokescreen. The UN is peeved that GHF is refusing to give any of the aid to Hamas. In short, the United Nations is playing a game of chicken with the Israeli government because Jerusalem won't let the UN decide who gets the aid.
Enia Krivine, senior director of Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's (FDD) Israel Program and National Security Network, writes, “The UN aid distribution mechanisms allowed Hamas to hijack and hoard the aid. Hamas then made hundreds of millions of dollars on the secondary market while ordinary Gazans went hungry."
Krivine added, "The GHF has managed to bypass Hamas, delivering tens of millions of meals to those who need them while cutting out the terror organization. Hamas understands that if it doesn’t regain control of the aid economy in Gaza, its days of ruling the enclave will be over. By refusing to work with GHF, the United Nations is shamefully throwing a lifeline to Hamas.”
It's not really that the UN supports terrorism — at least, that's what it claims. This is largely a jurisdictional dispute. Food is power, and the UN wants to be the absolute master of where that food is going and who gets it. Israel knows that any food that they can prevent from going to Hamas fighters shortens the war.
“The number of Palestinians seeking aid appears to be larger than what the GHF can currently handle. The United Nations and other organizations can assist in at least partially resolving this issue, which would be immensely helpful. However, it has so far refused to work with the GHF.” says Joe Truzman, senior research analyst and editor at FDD’s Long War Journal
Matti Friedman, Jerusalem editor of The Free Press, says it's impossible to know whom to believe about what's happening in Gaza.
The consensus was that there were nearly no trustworthy sources regarding reality in Gaza—certainly not the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which answers to Hamas; or Palestinian reporters intimidated by Hamas; or the international organizations, like the UN refugee agency UNRWA, embroiled in various forms of collaboration with Hamas. All of the above are engaged in a successful information campaign that uses Palestinian suffering, real and imagined, to catalyze international anger and tie Israel’s hands.
The international press isn’t the answer. During my years as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw coverage altered by Hamas threats to our staff, while this fact was concealed from readers. I know firsthand that nearly no information coming from Gaza can be taken at face value.
Information from Prime Minister Netanyahu's government has proven to be, if not equally suspect, then certainly taken with a grain of salt.
But neither can we Israelis trust our own government, which has regularly misled the public about the war’s progress (Netanyahu assured Israelis over a year ago that we were “a step away” from victory); about the shifting goals of the campaign; about the success of various operations, which have seen soldiers repeatedly return to areas that have already been cleared at great cost; and about the priority assigned to the release of hostages, many of whom were released in prisoner swaps only because of American pressure and 50 of whom remain, alive and dead, in Hamas hands.
The answer to the question of whether Gazans are starving is both yes and no. Gazans are certainly hungry. But "starvation" is a specific term with definitions and metrics determined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). It's loosely based on a formula involving calories per day.
"Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths," the IPC said. The organization added that "famine thresholds" have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip.
Gaza health authorities have been reporting more and more people dying from hunger-related causes. The total stands at 147, among them 88 children, most of whom died in the last few weeks.
Throwing around the term "famine," as most major media outlets are doing, does not accurately describe the situation. The IPC is warning that they may make a "famine" determination soon, but indicate they don't have the information needed to do so now. And blaming Israel as the sole culprit in this drama is certainly overstating its role in the aid snafus. Not even mentioning the basis of the UN's objections to GHF is a deliberate attempt to hide at least part of the truth about what's happening on the ground in Gaza.
While the first casualty of war is always the truth, the innocent dead don't care about what's true or false. They only want to be fed and for the fighting to end.
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