Starving Gaza is monstrous evil

Picture of Editorial staff

By Editorial staff

Journalist


Apologists for Israel like to decry what is happening in Gaza.


Predictably, Israel and its supporters have rejected a United Nations declaration of a famine in parts of Gaza because of Israeli blockades on aid supplies, accusing officials of the world body of lying and the Hamas government of constructing a false narrative.

That would ascribe to Hamas the powers of ultimate manipulator, able to orchestrate the actions of tens of thousands of people to pretend for the cameras that they are hungry.

What next? Is the world imagining the wreckage of Gaza’s buildings, levelled through relentless Israeli bombardment?

ALSO READ: Israel accused of starving Gaza ‘by design’ — South Africa addresses ICJ

Apologists for Israel like to decry what is happening in Gaza as “not a genocide” because the death toll is nothing like the Nazi-initiated Holocaust.

Never mind that the definition of genocide does not depend on numbers. Defenders of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like to say the International Criminal Court never issued a warrant for his arrest for genocide, saying it was “only” for war crimes.

Israel wants to purge Gaza of all Palestinians, and its settlers in the occupied West Bank clearly have the same intention.

You can play semantics about whether that is a genocide, but you cannot deny the monstrous evil unfolding every day before our very eyes. And the latest outrage is starvation.

ALSO READ: SA condemns Israel’s bombing of hospitals in Gaza