Famine in Gaza?

[Electric Circus]

5. "Israel claims its war is to destroy Hamas', not the civilian population, and has denied that it is intentionally starving Gaza. But some senior Israeli politicians have called for exactly that and security officials have admitted that withholding supplies is 'a lever of pressure on Hamas to release Israeli hostages'."

this thread is about the reality of what's actually happening in Gaza, not the polemic of some wingnut Israeli politicians.

This is BS and I don't know how anyone following this conflict could think otherwise. This is just the first story that came to mind:

In front of an impassioned audience of thousands of right-wing activists, 11 government ministers and 15 coalition lawmakers pledged Sunday night to rebuild Jewish Israeli settlements in the heart of the Gaza Strip, with some also encouraging the emigration of the Palestinian population after the war with Hamas is over.

Speaking amid a carnival-like atmosphere at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, extolled the virtues of creating new settlements, declaring: “God willing, we will settle and we will be victorious.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not present, and the audience that it was “time to return home to Gush Katif” — the name of the Israeli settlement bloc in Gaza that was evacuated in the 2005 Disengagement.

Reuters also covered this one.

These aren't "random wingnuts." They are wingnuts in positions of power.

The rest of your points come down to assuming that because the food exists somewhere in Gaza, it's getting to the people who need it. That's like taking a dump on the bathroom floor and calling yourself toilet-trained.

[GeneralMacArthur]

the polemic of some wingnut Israeli politicians.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party

These aren't "random wingnuts." They are wingnuts in positions of power.

yes, but they are wingnuts.  Even your own article calls them "ultranationalist" and "extreme right" (and oh, god, here we go again with people acting like Itamar Ben-Gvir is somehow representative of Israel when his position is literally a glorified police chief post that was renamed specially for him to satisfy his ego).  It's a real shame that Bibi chose to staff his cabinet with these morons, but you can not come to me when I'm saying "reality is X based on all these facts and this evidence" and say "the psychos in Bibi's cabinet say it's Y" and expect me to go, oh well I must be wrong and it's actually Y.  Like obviously I'm going to pick the cold, hard evidence available to me over the ravings of Itamar f--king Ben-Gvir.

The rest of your points come down to assuming that because the food exists somewhere in Gaza, it's getting to the people who need it. That's like taking a dump on the bathroom floor and calling yourself toilet-trained.

OK, but just to be clear we've moved on from "Israel is intentionally starving the Gazan people and denying them the aid they need" to "the aid is getting into Gaza but it is not being distributed proportionately to get to the people who need it", right?  Like, you agree that the raw volume of aid Israel is allowing into Gaza would be sufficient if it was actually getting to the Gazans, right?  I am happy to discuss the logistics of aid distribution and the many problems in this domain, and I totally agree with you on this point and think there's a lot of really interesting things we could talk about here, but just want to be clear about this because that was the original point of my post, to counteract the myriad claims being made about Israel intentionally starving the Palestinians by choking them of aid.

[AtorBoltox]

You already touched on this a bit, and it’s kind of a distasteful argument but basic logic necessitates it be made - if there’s been a famine in Gaza since November then wouldn’t the majority of the gazan population have perished by now? That’s 5 months without food

[Flats the Flounder]

You already touched on this a bit, and it’s kind of a distasteful argument but basic logic necessitates it be made - if there’s been a famine in Gaza since November then wouldn’t the majority of the gazan population have perished by now? That’s 5 months without food

Going off of this definition: https://www.ipcinfo.org/famine-facts/en/#:~:text=A%20Famine%20classification%20(IPC%20Phase,each%20day%20due%20to%20outright

A Famine classification (IPC Phase 5) is the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

Famine =/ literally no food.

[AtorBoltox]

You already touched on this a bit, and it’s kind of a distasteful argument but basic logic necessitates it be made - if there’s been a famine in Gaza since November then wouldn’t the majority of the gazan population have perished by now? That’s 5 months without food

Going off of this definition: https://www.ipcinfo.org/famine-facts/en/#:~:text=A%20Famine%20classification%20(IPC%20Phase,each%20day%20due%20to%20outright

A Famine classification (IPC Phase 5) is the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

Famine =/ literally no food.

Thanks, I was unfamiliar with this definition. But even going by this the data GMAC provided shows there is no famine, which is why NGOs despite desperately wanting to have another thing to attack Israel with haven’t said there is one, they just continually keep saying it’s around the corner

[AtorBoltox]

Anyway, when Palestine activists on Twitter say ‘Israel is starving Gaza,’ they don’t mean that technically Gaza narrowly meets the definition of a famine( which isn’t true anyway), they are trying to convince people there is holodomor style mass starvation going on

[Flats the Flounder]

You already touched on this a bit, and it’s kind of a distasteful argument but basic logic necessitates it be made - if there’s been a famine in Gaza since November then wouldn’t the majority of the gazan population have perished by now? That’s 5 months without food

Going off of this definition: https://www.ipcinfo.org/famine-facts/en/#:~:text=A%20Famine%20classification%20(IPC%20Phase,each%20day%20due%20to%20outright

A Famine classification (IPC Phase 5) is the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

Famine =/ literally no food.

Thanks, I was unfamiliar with this definition. But even going by this the data GMAC provided shows there is no famine, which is why NGOs despite desperately wanting to have another thing to attack Israel with haven’t said there is one, they just continually keep saying it’s around the corner

I think a lot of people here have already explained why just because there's a lot of aid coming in according to the "pro-Hamas" (🙄) United Nations, it doesn't necessarily mean that food is getting to where it needs to go.

There's absolutely no way that all the aid is getting to every location in Gaza, especially when there's daily carpetbombing destroying roads and infrastructure and soldiers shooting at people in line for food.

I guarantee that a good amount of the aid is sitting there, not being delivered to anyone, because that's typically how foreign aid works in practice even when you're not in an extremely dangerous warzone.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I suspect the word game being played here is that Gaza would be in a state of famine if the aid stopped.

Of course, this was true before the war as well.  Gaza has always been totally dependent on Israel for literally everything while also viciously determined to literally bite the hand that feeds it.

But yes, most of the Palestinians living in the horrendously overpopulated Gaza Strip don't have access to food and are dependent on Israel to feed them, so if Israel ever cut them off, it would be a famine.  So famine is always technically imminent, or right around the corner.

But that's not the implication people are trying to make when they say this, of course.  They're trying to make it sound like unless we do something, fast we're going to wake up next week and find that 10,000 Gazans died of starvation.

It remains absolutely bonkers to me that Israel is the villain in all this despite providing 100% of the food and medical care for an enemy state that declared a genocidal war of conquest against Israel, especially when the reason they can't just win the war immediately by cutting off the food/aid is because their enemy is a vicious, amoral terrorist group who would gladly let the entire nation starve just to put more blood on Israel's hands.

[Flats the Flounder]

Something else that I don't think has been mentioned yet: who is actually providing the aid?

Because in article after article, it seems that the aid coming into Gaza that would ostensibly feed every Gazan is largely coming from the US and other international organizations, and is not coming in because of Israel's efforts, but despite them.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Something else that I don't think has been mentioned yet: who is actually providing the aid?

Because in article after article, it seems that the aid coming into Gaza that would ostensibly feed every Gazan is largely coming from the US and other international organizations, and is not coming in because of Israel's efforts, but despite them.

It still wouldn't feed every Gazan. It takes about 300 trucks a day (which aren't all food aid) to feed every Gazan.

[Flats the Flounder]

Something else that I don't think has been mentioned yet: who is actually providing the aid?

Because in article after article, it seems that the aid coming into Gaza that would ostensibly feed every Gazan is largely coming from the US and other international organizations, and is not coming in because of Israel's efforts, but despite them.

It still wouldn't feed every Gazan. It takes about 300 trucks a day (which aren't all food aid) to feed every Gazan.

I'm sure you're right about this, I was assuming that the figures mentioned in the OP are true, although I have serious doubts they are myself

[GeneralMacArthur]

OK folks.  So on the one hand you have me taking the numbers provided by the United Nations and the truck contents ledgers from the World Food Programme and doing some basic, transparent arithmetic to figure out how well Israel is feeding Gaza.

On the other hand, you have some guy just pulling a "300 trucks" number out of his ass.

Who you gonna go with?

[dead0man]

I suppose the OP is going to claim that Oxfam hates Israel and is pro Hamas.

they were selling The Elders of Zion on their bookstore website 4 years ago cite, but yeah, I'm sure they're ALL not bigots.

[Hnv1]

There's definitely an escalating situation of famine in Northern Gaza and a mildly escalating situation of famine in Central and Southern Gaza.

Bear in mind that Israel has around 50% responsibility. 30% on Egypt and their demand to exert influence via aid. And 20% on the Biden administration that hasn't got the faintest clue how to deal with Bibi.

[CumbrianLefty]

I suppose the OP is going to claim that Oxfam hates Israel and is pro Hamas.

they were selling The Elders of Zion on their bookstore website 4 years ago cite, but yeah, I'm sure they're ALL not bigots.

Or maybe they were - albeit misguided in this case - free speech absolutists?

We have had similar arguments for the last 80 years about Mein Kampf.

[dead0man]

I suppose the OP is going to claim that Oxfam hates Israel and is pro Hamas.

they were selling The Elders of Zion on their bookstore website 4 years ago cite, but yeah, I'm sure they're ALL not bigots.

Or maybe they were - albeit misguided in this case - free speech absolutists?

We have had similar arguments for the last 80 years about Mein Kampf.

if they were also selling Mein Kampf and other controversial books I would have no problem with it and I have no idea if they were or not.  I would assume not, but that's not fair.  Frank will let us know I'm sure (by not addressing it is my guess).

[EastAnglianLefty]

It remains absolutely bonkers to me that Israel is the villain in all this despite providing 100% of the food and medical care for an enemy state that declared a genocidal war of conquest against Israel, especially when the reason they can't just win the war immediately by cutting off the food/aid is because their enemy is a vicious, amoral terrorist group who would gladly let the entire nation starve just to put more blood on Israel's hands.

This is not how the laws of war work. The occupying power is explicitly responsible for ensuring that sufficient food is provided to any occupied territories:

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

Moreover, the reason why Israel couldn't win the war by cutting off all food supplies isn't because of Hamas's inhumanity, it is because YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES.

If you are not abiding by the Geneva Conventions, you are a villain. Doesn't matter if you're fighting somebody equally villainous, you do not get a pass from the laws of war because the other side are bad people.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It remains absolutely bonkers to me that Israel is the villain in all this despite providing 100% of the food and medical care for an enemy state that declared a genocidal war of conquest against Israel, especially when the reason they can't just win the war immediately by cutting off the food/aid is because their enemy is a vicious, amoral terrorist group who would gladly let the entire nation starve just to put more blood on Israel's hands.

This is not how the laws of war work. The occupying power is explicitly responsible for ensuring that sufficient food is provided to any occupied territories:

To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

Moreover, the reason why Israel couldn't win the war by cutting off all food supplies isn't because of Hamas's inhumanity, it is because YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES.

If you are not abiding by the Geneva Conventions, you are a villain. Doesn't matter if you're fighting somebody equally villainous, you do not get a pass from the laws of war because the other side are bad people.

Yes I'm well aware and I never said Israel shouldn't.  What I said was it's wild how Israel is the bad guys for not doing it perfectly enough, while Hamas aren't the bad guys when they're the ones who do everything in their power to make life as wretched as possible for the Gazans.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

[GeneralMacArthur]

This is because Hamas are not the occupying power and do not have the capacity to bring in food.

Hamas are bad guys for very many other reasons, but as the occupier of northern Gaza, Israel are responsible for what happens there.

Israel brings in food.  Hamas steals the food and keeps it from the Palestinians.  Israel sends soldiers to protect the food.  Hamas shoots the soldiers.  Palestinians try to prevent Hamas from stealing their food.  Hamas shoots the Palestinians and says Israel did it.

End result: Hamas are the heroes, Israel are the genocidal monsters.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

OK folks.  So on the one hand you have me taking the numbers provided by the United Nations and the truck contents ledgers from the World Food Programme and doing some basic, transparent arithmetic to figure out how well Israel is feeding Gaza.

On the other hand, you have some guy just pulling a "300 trucks" number out of his ass.

Who you gonna go with?

You're right I did pull it out of my ass rather than look it up again. It's actually 500-600 trucks a day required to ensure that Gazans are minimally healthy and not merely surviving.

To meet its minimum needs, aid agencies and U.N. officials say Gaza currently requires 500 to 600 trucks a day, including humanitarian aid and the commercial supplies that were coming in before the war. That’s about four times the number of trucks getting in now.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/destruction-lawlessness-red-tape-hobble-aid-gazans-go-hungry-2024-03-25/

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

I suppose the OP is going to claim that Oxfam hates Israel and is pro Hamas.

they were selling The Elders of Zion on their bookstore website 4 years ago cite, but yeah, I'm sure they're ALL not bigots.

Or maybe they were - albeit misguided in this case - free speech absolutists?

We have had similar arguments for the last 80 years about Mein Kampf.

if they were also selling Mein Kampf and other controversial books I would have no problem with it and I have no idea if they were or not.  I would assume not, but that's not fair.  Frank will let us know I'm sure (by not addressing it is my guess).

NGO monitor accuses Oxfam of being anti Israel
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/oxfam/

which Oxfam denies
https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-oxfams-position-israel-palestine-conflict

[GeneralMacArthur]

You're right I did pull it out of my ass rather than look it up again. It's actually 500-600 trucks a day required to ensure that Gazans are minimally healthy and not merely surviving.

Ah, the 500 trucks number.  I'm honestly surprised we made it to page two of this thread without someone tossing it out.  Let's take a look at the report on what trucks were going into Gaza right before the war started.

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-august-2023

In August, 12,076 truckloads of authorized goods entered Gaza through the Israeli and Egyptian-controlled crossings. This is 18 per cent more than the volume of goods entering in July, 36 per cent more than the monthly average in 2022, and 8 per cent more than the monthly average just before the blockade in 2007. However, Gaza's population has grown by 60 per cent since 2007, and so have their needs.
Among the goods that entered Gaza, 42 per cent were construction materials, and 22 per cent were food supplies. About 3 per cent were humanitarian aid items facilitated by international organizations, primarily food and medical supplies.

400 trucks a day, but only 25%, or 100/day, were food or humanitarian aid.  Nearly half of them were construction materials, which obviously aren't relevant to the imminent famine this thread is about.

[GeneralMacArthur]

ON THIS ISSUE I CAN NOT PICK A SIDE.. I WILL LITERALLY ROLE AROUND THE FLOOR SCREAMING... I AM SO CONFUSED AND CONFLICTED HERE.

It's fine to be conflicted just don't lurch towards some extreme.  Like obviously the fact that the issue is complex and challenging is indicative that it's not the crystal clear moral imperative that the Genocide Joe crowd is pretending it is... there's not really an equivalent on the Israel side since only the Bibi circle (universally hated on Atlas) are saying "Israel has done nothing wrong and can do whatever it likes no matter what."

The middle ground I would propose is this.  The world has an absolute moral duty to rid Palestine of Hamas.  Since no other army wants to get involved, that means they have a moral duty to allow Israel to destroy Hamas.  Israel has a moral duty to protect and aid the Palestinian people to the greatest extent possible in the course of the annihilation of Hamas.  The main topics worth discussing are (A) how best to balance those two conflicting demands when they do come into conflict, and (B) whether Israel is adequately fulfilling its duty to protect the Palestinians, and to what extent it needs to do better.

I think those are both very good conversations to have but when people come into the conversation with positions like "Israel is committing genocide" or "Israel is intentionally starving the people of Gaza to kill them", it makes it impossible to have that conversation, because clearly they're only interested in scoring points, and any concession of Israeli wrongdoing is just going to be used for point scoring, rather than advancing the conversation.

Anyway, the point of this thread is to try and actually have part (B) of that conversation.  Is Israel adequately fulfilling its duty to protect the Palestinians?  I would say they are doing an adequate job of getting sufficient food supplies across the border into Gaza, which has been the main topic of discussion as of late.  I would say they are probably not doing an adequate job of ensuring those supplies are distributed effectively, mainly because the security/logistical challenges involved in that are immense.  Ironically, airdrops are a pretty good way to tackle this problem, because they shard the food and distribute it across a wide area that makes it hard for Hamas or other goons to predict the locations and steal the food.

fwiw, Joe Biden is deeply invested in (A) -- he apparently has a bunch of ideas for how Bibi could take out Hamas in Rafah while minimizing harm to the Palestinian people.  Bibi threw a little temper tantrum and refused to hear Joe out after the U.N. abstention, but now he's changed his mind.  So we'll see what develops.  It's pretty clear that Joe Biden's influence is the primary, if not the only, reason that Hamas's strongholds in Rafah haven't already been attacked.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

You're right I did pull it out of my ass rather than look it up again. It's actually 500-600 trucks a day required to ensure that Gazans are minimally healthy and not merely surviving.

Ah, the 500 trucks number.  I'm honestly surprised we made it to page two of this thread without someone tossing it out.  Let's take a look at the report on what trucks were going into Gaza right before the war started.

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-august-2023

In August, 12,076 truckloads of authorized goods entered Gaza through the Israeli and Egyptian-controlled crossings. This is 18 per cent more than the volume of goods entering in July, 36 per cent more than the monthly average in 2022, and 8 per cent more than the monthly average just before the blockade in 2007. However, Gaza's population has grown by 60 per cent since 2007, and so have their needs.
Among the goods that entered Gaza, 42 per cent were construction materials, and 22 per cent were food supplies. About 3 per cent were humanitarian aid items facilitated by international organizations, primarily food and medical supplies.

400 trucks a day, but only 25%, or 100/day, were food or humanitarian aid.  Nearly half of them were construction materials, which obviously aren't relevant to the imminent famine this thread is about.

This is an irrelevant comparison. You can say everybody involved is anti Israel, but the only quote important in that article is this:

To meet its minimum needs, aid agencies and U.N. officials say Gaza currently requires 500 to 600 trucks a day, including humanitarian aid and the commercial supplies that were coming in before the war. That’s about four times the number of trucks getting in now.
In March there has been an uptick, with an average of 150 trucks entering Gaza each day.

We know this from your link:
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-update-covering-august-2023

In August, 392 truckloads of authorized goods exited Gaza through the Israeli and Egyptian crossings. This represents a 3 per cent decrease compared with July and is 59 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2022.

Of course, that is a small percentage compared to the number of incoming trucks, however:

About 49 per cent of the goods that exited Gaza were destined for the West Bank, while the remaining 51 per cent were exported to Israel. The exiting goods included vegetables (40 per cent), textiles (23 per cent), fish (10 per cent), and other items, including furniture, scrap copper, and aluminum, among others constituting the remaining 27 per cent.

So, prior to the war Gaza exported vegetables and fish to both Israel and the West Bank.

Certainly there was humanitarian food aid trucked into Gaza prior to the war, but Gaza also had an agricultural sector that fed most of its own people. 

According to the U.N and the Aid agencies, 100% of the population of Gaza is suffering at least some food shortages.