A NEW REPORT by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has indicted Israel for using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestinian director, told Al Jazeera that there were at least five pieces of evidence to show that the Israeli regime is deliberately starving people in the Gaza Strip.
Shakir listed the evidence: ‘One, is the two-plus months of blocking entry of food and water. Second, is the blocking of all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering into Gaza. This has been documented for more than two months.’
He continued: ‘Then, you add to it some of the additional evidence that we looked at. One is the apparent razing of agricultural lands, large percentages of the green agricultural land turned into brown and desolate. Fourth, the report looks at the intentional destruction of objects necessary for survival – I am talking about the wheat mills, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities.’
Shakir listed the fifth piece in this genocidal jigsaw the Zionists have created, saying: ‘Then, you put together the last piece which are the statements of the Israeli officials spelling out in clear terms that their strategy or policy is to starve civilians as a tool of leverage to achieve political outcomes, whether it will be the release of hostages or the destruction of Hamas.’
Putting all these findings together, Shakir said ‘the clear conclusion is that the Israeli government is using starvation as a tool, which is an abhorrent war crime.’
The deliberate campaign to starve Palestinians in Gaza goes hand in hand with the carpet bombing of the Strip and the deliberate targeting of hospitals by Israeli forces.
Israeli air raids on Sunday and Monday continued to hit civilian neighbourhoods and hospitals with mass casualties reported following strikes on the Jabalia and Nuseirat refugee camps and artillery shelling of multiple residences in the Shujayea, Tuffah and Daraj neighbourhoods in Gaza City.
Every hospital in Gaza has come under bombardment and shooting by Israeli forces.
Continuous shooting has been reported at the entrance to al-Shifa Hospital, where at least 26 Palestinians were killed in a previous attack, according to reports by Al Jazeera journalists.
The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza was repeatedly targeted on Sunday and yesterday, with an Israeli tank shell hitting the maternity unit, killing a 13 year old girl and injuring several others.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra denounced Israel for attempting to ‘eliminate’ Gaza’s health sector.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that a United Nations visit to deliver medicines and surgical supplies to Gaza’s main al-Shifa Hospital found that it is providing only basic trauma stabilisation, has no blood for transfusions and hardly any staff to look after the constant flow of injuries.
Its emergency department was described by the UN team as resembling a ‘bloodbath’.
A ‘bloodbath’ is exactly what the Zionist regime is committing in Gaza and the occupied territories.
Yesterday, the latest figures of Palestinians killed were at least 18,787, including 7,729 children in Gaza and at least 301, including 72 children, killed in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli regime has been given a free pass by the US and British governments to carry on with its campaign to starve and kill as many Palestinian men, women and children as it wishes in its desire to drive every Palestinian from their homeland through terror.
The time has come for the working class, which overwhelmingly supports the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinians to defeat their Zionist oppressors, to force the trade unions to take action.
Trade unions in the US, UK and the EU must call general strikes to bring down the governments that support the Israeli murder machine.
In Britain, the TUC leaders must call an immediate general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
A workers government will give all material support, including arming the Palestinian masses, to defeat the murderous Zionist regime and go forward to an independent secular state of Palestine.
This is the way to go forward to victory of the Palestinian socialist revolution.
