Israel is purposely starving the people of Gaza. That’s a war crime.

I guess Israel has forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust, because a nation founded to protect the lives of innocent Jews has been wantonly killing innocent Palestinians since its war against Hamas began.

Many thousands of those killed are women and children. They've been blown apart by bombs, shredded by bullets, and most horrifying of all to my mind, starved by uncaring Israeli leaders who have blocked almost all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for several months.

What kind of monsters stand by and watch children starving? The monsters in charge of Israel, who are extreme right-wing zealots unashamed to say that the only way to finish the war against Hamas is to starve the people of Gaza into submission.

This goes against every norm of human decency, along with the tenets of international law. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been properly designated a war criminal by the International Criminal Court. 

One of the crimes Netanyahu was found guilty of is using starvation as a method of war. Hopefully one day Netanyahu will be imprisoned where justice demands that he go hungry for lengthy periods to remind himself that starvation is a horrible way to die.

I'll never look upon Israel in the same way again.

I used to think that Israel was a beacon of democracy in a Middle East dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. Now it's clear that under Israel's current right-wing government dominated by Jewish fundamentalists, the country has become a backer of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times story published today, "What to Know About Starvation in Gaza and Deadly Violence Near Aid Sites." (That's a free link from my online NYT subscription.)

Displaced Palestinians thronged on Wednesday in front of a charity kitchen in western Gaza City. 

The head of the United Nations said on Friday that it was “a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.” The president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said it had “long exceeded every acceptable standard — both legal and moral.” The leaders of 28 countries jointly declared that it “deprives Gazans of human dignity.”

The growing spread of starvation in Gaza, following months of Israeli restrictions on food, has shocked the world and heightened calls for Israel and Hamas to end their war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.

Though there have been food shortages in Gaza since Israel restricted aid supplies soon after the war began, the situation has never been as dire as it is now. The current crisis began in early March, when Israel cut off all food supplies to the enclave, saying without evidence that Hamas was systematically stealing it.

While Israel partly lifted the blockade in late May, it has changed how most food is distributed. The new method, which largely relies on private contractors instead of the United Nations, requires Palestinians to walk for miles through extremely dangerous areas to reach the distribution sites, making it almost impossible for Palestinians to find food safely or cheaply.

Israel publicly says the new system is needed to prevent Hamas from stealing the aid. Privately, its officials acknowledge they have no proof that Hamas is systematically stealing it from the United Nations, which was, until March, the main supplier of food in Gaza.

The U.N. World Food Program said this week that nearly a third of Gaza’s population was not eating for multiple days in a row. The hunger and malnutrition is largely linked to Israel’s decision to block aid between March and May, and to the way it chose to end that blockade.

Before March, food handouts were mainly distributed from hundreds of points close to where people lived, in a system overseen by the United Nations. Since late May, handouts have mainly been supplied from a few sites run by private contractors that, for most Palestinians in Gaza, can only be reached by walking for miles through Israeli military lines. To contain crowds walking along these routes, Israeli soldiers have shot and killed hundreds of people, according to the United Nations, often turning the daily search for food into a deadly trap.

Some food is still available from shops in Palestinian-run areas, but only at astronomical prices that are unaffordable to the largely unemployed civilian population. A kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of flour costs up to $30, and a kilogram of tomatoes costs roughly $30; meat and rice are mostly unavailable on the open market.

That has forced Palestinians to routinely choose between two deadly options: risking death by starvation, or risking death by gunfire to reach food aid sites that often run out of supplies by the time most people arrive there.

The sites are in areas under Israeli military control in the central and southern parts of Gaza. To reach them, Palestinians must often walk for miles. To arrive before the food runs out, they often set off at night.

That has led to large crowds moving chaotically across the devastated landscape of Gaza, usually at night, when visibility is poor. Sometimes scuffles break out or people veer off the designated route, witnesses have said in interviews. Responding to that unrest, Israeli soldiers have repeatedly fired at the crowds, killing hundreds of people over the last two months on the paths that lead to the sites.

The Israeli military has acknowledged firing “warning shots” when people approached military lines. But international doctors who have treated the wounded say that the location of their injuries indicated that soldiers systematically targeted their torsos.