It’s not often that a columnist is forced to reference pizza in the middle of a famine caused by a rogue nation.
But the times and decency demand it given that, as the defining aspect of its iron siege of Gaza, Israel, by its own admission, has always intended to prevent food and water from reaching the devastated enclave and children, women and children. men who, for the moment, populate it.
Today, in light of the indignities that Palestinians have endured and will continue to endure as Israel strives to annihilate Gaza with relentless ferocity, pizza may seem like a banal, even distasteful, starting point. for a column that will invoke two direct words everywhere: genocide and famine.
Yet last week I came across a number of shocking images which, when viewed side by side, tell us a lot about the scale of the crimes we are witnessing committed in Gaza and beyond, as well as the disparate circumstances of victims and victims. the perpetrators of these horrors.
The first one picture features two young Israeli soldiers, each carrying a tower of pizza boxes – a gift apparently from a popular pizza franchise. The soldiers, dressed in green, smile. They seem dazed. The marketing adage on the back of the boxes reads: “For the love of pizza.”
A complementary image posted to Instagram features a bald, portly Israeli soldier with a powerful weapon slung over his shoulder. His right arm rests on a pile of free pies delivered by the same Israeli subsidiary of a famous American pizza chain. A slight smile appears on his bearded and bespectacled face.
The heart emojis on both snapshots are meant to convey, I suppose, their gratitude for their fast food generosity.
The Israeli soldiers look happy. They will be well fed. If the soldiers are troubled or disturbed by all the murderous madness engulfing the region, it doesn’t show at least in this moment captured on cell phone.
They are happy. A surreal air of normalcy reigns amidst pervasive inhumanity. Fortunately, dinner is served.
Other images, of course, tell a very different and cruel story.
A group of Palestinian boys and girls are pressed against an iron gate in a decimated part of Gaza. They wear sweaters and hoodies to protect themselves from the winter cold.
Boys and girls were conscripted or volunteered to find food and water for their families. They carry pots and a colander.
One girl stands out. His outstretched arm bends between the thick, black bars like a pretzel. She is holding a silver bowl. The girl appears to be shouting to someone in the distance to draw attention to her empty bowl.
The row of children nearby follows in frantic costume, forced to ask for help too.
Millions of Palestinians will not plead. Instead, these days, they take what they can to survive.
Two weeks ago, in the apocalyptic remains of a neighborhood west of Gaza City, dozens of Palestinian men and boys swarmed an abandoned truck like bees on a hive as they searched for flour and canned goods.
Gaza is full of hunger, need and despair. The stores have been wiped out. The houses were razed. The cemeteries have been erased. Schools have been wiped out. The mosques have been erased. Hospitals have been wiped out.
Hope has been erased.
The genocide that is taking place day after hellish day in Gaza takes two forms. One is loud and fast. The other is calm and slow. Both are deadly and, despite predictable denials from Western capitals, deliberate.
The litany of bombs and drones that Israel has dropped on Gaza, which have killed thousands of Palestinians and maimed thousands more, are intended to kill and maim – instantly.
The massive and rapid destruction of Gaza is intentional. It is designed to terrorize. It is designed to eradicate. It is designed to turn Gaza – all of it – into dust, barren and uninhabitable.
Anyone on any side who claims otherwise is an apologist for an Israeli government that has clearly and clearly stated its goal of ethnic cleansing of Gaza – openly and repeatedly.
Apologists prefer the comfort of blindness to the discomforts of honesty.
A silent, slow genocide is taking place beyond the “bang-bang” scenes that dominate the screens of Western news networks.
It’s happening in the flimsy tents that house the legion of homeless Palestinians who have been ordered to forcibly march – on foot and on the back of mules – from one part of besieged Gaza to another.
This is where, according to the United Nations, famine is spreading at “incredible speed”.
Martin Griffiths, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the “vast majority” of the 400,000 Palestinians characterized by UN agencies as at risk of starving “are actually in starvation, not just at risk of starvation.”
Famines are caused by a combination of the merciless vagaries of nature and the inevitable consequences of conflict.
The famine in Gaza is not a “natural disaster” but the direct and orchestrated result of Israel’s serious actions and inaction.
Most of the victims of Israel’s loud and rapid genocide are children. Its slow and silent genocide will also claim many innocent lives. Unfortunately, Gaza’s 350,000 children under the age of five are said to be particularly vulnerable.
“Children at high risk of dying from malnutrition and disease desperately need medical care, clean water and sanitation services, but conditions on the ground do not allow us to safely reach children and families in need,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
This artificial famine is, by any legal or moral measure, a blatant war crime.
“The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of war in the occupied Gaza Strip, which constitutes a war crime,” Human Rights Watch warned in a report released in mid-December. “Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the supply of water, food and fuel, while deliberately obstructing humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas and depriving the civilian population of the goods essential to their survival. »
Metastasizing famine, combined with the sure outbreak of disease, is likely to kill more Palestinians than Israel’s constant rain of bombs and drones.
This will be the international community’s shameful epitaph: rather than ending the famine, it encouraged Israel while its “strategic ally” attempted to starve the Palestinians into capitulation and submission.
Shame on them. Shame on them all.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.