“Not considered fully human”
But it’s not just about providing aid that can be deadly. Many civilians were killed while collecting it. In February, more than 100 Palestinians seeking food from aid trucks in northern Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on them. This is called the “flour massacre.” And Fault Lines has discovered many other similar incidents.
Fault Lines teamed up with open source investigators from Forensic Architecture, a research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, to examine the data behind attacks on people seeking help. Using social media videos, news reports, Ministry of Health data and satellite images, researchers were able to document more than 40 attacks on civilians seeking help.
“So when we hear about the Flour Massacre, it’s not an isolated incident that was an accident,” says Peter Polack, a researcher at Forensic Architecture. “As we looked further into these attacks, we began to see that they were systematic in nature and not arbitrary. »
The investigation also found that Israeli attacks did not just kill civilians seeking help. They also destroyed key infrastructure that was receiving humanitarian aid. Forensic Architecture documented 16 attacks on bakeries between October and November 2023, sometimes while people were waiting in line to get bread. And 107 shelters that received assistance were destroyed through January.
“During the first distribution of aid, flour is distributed to bakeries. Bakeries are targeted. When it starts to be distributed to schools, they become the target,” explains Julia Ngo of Forensic Architecture.
Then, at the start of the new year, attacks took place against police and civilians escorting humanitarian convoys. The police suspended their operations. Local kinship networks of influential families took over the escorts, but they were later attacked.
“They basically create a deterrent effect to send a clear message that if you receive help, if you plan for help, if you work with it in any capacity, you are at risk,” Polack said. said.
We asked Israeli authorities about the findings of this investigation. They didn’t respond.
But we know that the decision to suspend humanitarian aid to Gaza is popular in Israeli politics. Our team analyzed hundreds of messages in Hebrew on X from members of the Israeli government. We found that a majority of Israeli members of the Knesset oppose humanitarian aid to Gaza.
There were 40 messages supporting the use of starvation as a weapon of war and 12 advocating a complete siege of Gaza. An additional 234 posts expressed total opposition to humanitarian aid and another 65 posts advocated that aid be conditional on the return of captives.
South African prosecutors submitted comments like these to the International Court of Justice in The Hague as evidence of Israel’s intention to starve the population of Gaza.
“The peculiarity of this case has not been the silence as such but the reiteration and repetition of genocidal speeches in all spheres of state in Israel,” South African prosecutor Tembeka Ngcukaitobi told the court in January.
“It’s a bit like a murderer who just holds a knife and says, ‘I’m going to kill these people,’ and does it…and we always wonder if there’s any intent in this particular crime,” said Alex Smith, child specialist. and maternal health and former USAID contractor, says. USAID is the agency responsible for deploying American humanitarian assistance.
Smith was scheduled to present at a USAID conference in March on maternal health in Gaza, but he was informed the day before that his conference had been canceled. After that he resigned.
“Decisions are made based on politics and people’s identities, and some people, based on their race and ethnicity and geographic location, where they live, are not considered as fully human,” he says.
The United States “deliberately denies the facts”
The United States provides Israel with about $4 billion in security funding each year, but the Biden administration has refused calls to condition U.S. security assistance to Israel on improving the humanitarian situation there. Gaza. Instead, the United States relied on ineffective measures, such as airdrops and a now-defunct pier.
Humanitarian groups have long insisted that the most efficient way to deliver aid to Gaza is through established land routes.
The administration has even faced unprecedented levels of dissent within the administration due to its unwavering support for Israel, despite growing evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. At least a dozen officials have resigned in protest, and several dissent notes rejecting Biden’s policies have been circulated to the State Department by USAID.
In April, Gilbert, the former State Department official, was asked for her opinion on a Biden administration report to the US Congress on whether Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza. Based on information provided by its partners on the ground, it indicated that Israel was blocking aid. But when the report was released the following month, it determined that Israel was not hindering the flow of humanitarian aid. Gilbert resigned following this report.
“The administration is deliberately denying the facts on the ground because there would be consequences if they defunded security,” Gilbert says. “Weapons are the engine that fuels this war, and we are not taking responsibility for our role. »
There is a US law called 620I that prohibits arms transfers to countries that block humanitarian aid. If the Biden administration acknowledged that Israel was withholding aid from Palestinians in Gaza, it would trigger the law and the weapons would have to be immediately cut off.
Asked by Fault Lines at a press briefing about how the United States continues to support Israel with weapons despite evidence that it is breaking its own laws, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, said the United States had pressured its ally to open border crossings to allow more aid. “So I encourage you to read the report that we released on this issue a few months ago, which looked at Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and their work and whether they had done a good enough job to let in the humanitarian aid, where we said there were certain obstacles to overcome,” Miller said. “And we had worked to overcome them. And we saw Israel taking steps to authorize humanitarian aid.”