Oct 26, 2023
Israel Is Using Civilian STARVATION As A Weapon Of War, According To Oxfam
International agency Oxfam said that civilians in Gaza are starving, and that the very little food that is being delivered to them is unusable.
- 7 minutes
Yesterday, Oxfam International
declared that Israel is using
starvation as a tactic and a weapon
of war against the people of Gaza.
You're probably wondering
what that looks like, and
you're probably familiar with
some of the statistics by now.
But just to give everyone a frame
of reference, before this war,
[00:00:17]
this most recent war happened.
Gaza again was a fully sealed strip
territory controlled by Israel
in terms of electricity and water,
goods that come in and out.
There was a blockade on the people of
Gaza because of the Hamas government,
[00:00:33]
so they couldn't get access to basic
food and medicine and supplies.
However, they would rely on
a lot of international aid.
So the United Nations and other entities,
104 trucks would deliver food
to Gaza every single day.
So that was incredibly important,
one truck about every 14 minutes.
[00:00:53]
Now, what's it looking like
when it comes to food?
Despite there being 62 trucks of aid
being allowed to enter southern Gaza
via the Rafah crossing since the weekend,
only 30 contained food.
And in some cases not exclusively slow,
[00:01:08]
this amounts to just one truck every three
hours and 12 minutes since Saturday.
Again, 30 contains food for
2.2 million people.
Oxfam analyzed UN data and
found that just 2% of food would have
been delivered has entered Gaza.
[00:01:26]
Since the total siege was
imposed on the 9 October,
clean water has virtually now run out.
It's estimated only three liters of clean
water are now available per person.
The UN said that a minimum of
15 liters a day is essential for
people in the most acute humanitarian
emergencies as a bare minimum.
[00:01:44]
This is on top of the electricity,
the fuel, all of that.
Very little has come in,
there's a shortage of bottled water.
Let's see, bottled water stocks are
running low, the cost of bottled water has
surged beyond the reach of
an average Gazan family.
[00:01:59]
Prices spiking fivefold in some places.
A spokesperson for the UN Agency for
Palestinian Refugees pointed out that
some of the food aid allowed in, rice and
lentils is useless because people do not
have clean water or fuel to prepare them.
Right, you need a stove
to cook your lentils,
[00:02:17]
you need clean water to
actually eat any of that food.
More from Reuters about Rafah.
The Rafah crossing is the main entrance
and exit to the Gaza Strip from Egypt,
it's controlled by Egypt.
Aid officials say Rafah's principal
goal in the past had been as a civilian
[00:02:36]
crossing that was not equipped for
a large scale aid operation.
In response to the cross border
infiltration by Hamas fighters on the 7th
that killed more than 1400 Israelis.
Israel did impose that total blockade of
Gaza, leaving Rafah as the only route for
[00:02:52]
humanitarian aid and the only exit point
for Gaza residents seeking to flee.
This is on top of the fact that bakeries
have been bombed, so there's no bread.
Supermarkets have been
damaged in airstrikes.
[00:03:07]
Electricity has made it difficult for
farmers, livestock breeders,
refrigeration, crop irrigation.
Israel has cut off the fishing industry
from the ocean, they've done that before.
Oxfam says it's basically
physically impossible
to deliver food to Gaza City because
of how deteriorated the roads are.
[00:03:26]
So even when you're getting the aid in,
the roads are deteriorated and
without a ceasefire, again,
if you do manage to survive,
if you are one of the lucky ones,
how are you going to eat?
And I,
as someone who [LAUGH] knows that there
[00:03:42]
is an American warship off
the coast of Gaza, my God,
if only we lived in a world where
that wasn't a warship from the US.
That was a ship full of aid,
Gaza is a coastal area people.
We could help people,
we could get there by sea.
[00:04:01]
But instead,
we just decide to send more and
more millions of dollars
in weaponry to Israel.
Waz, your thoughts on this?
>> Speaker 2: I mean, this isn't really
that complicated, it's a disaster.
It's more than a humanitarian crisis,
there's just no other way to put it.
[00:04:19]
And again, if you wanna be charitable
to what the Israelis are doing,
you say, this is something you got to do,
to, quote, unquote,
choke Hamas out, or
something to that effect.
And again,
I would say not to be a broken record.
[00:04:35]
To what end, I'm not sure.
And again, people need to understand.
It's not as if there's never been a period
of time where these folks tried to do it
the sort of South African way, right,
where it's just, we're gonna protest.
[00:04:52]
We're gonna put international pressure on
the people we deem to be oppressing us.
That kinda stuff got stamped out,
it certainly wasn't rewarded.
That's the environment under which
an organization like Kamas could even get
some support, they say, all you do
good is, what good does it do you?
[00:05:10]
They got nowhere with it.
And so, yeah, these kinds of tactics,
it's my belief that it
inspires people to be extremely
extremists and deranged, right?
Everybody agrees that what Hamas did was
an atrocity, nobody believes otherwise.
[00:05:28]
There might be people who say,
they were chasing some military end, but
nobody could say that
this wasn't an atrocity.
But again, I don't think these militants,
they don't float in from outer space,
there's a context that
produces these folks.
[00:05:45]
And doing the exact same thing over and
over again and thinking that,
this time it won't be a crazy,
unhinged group that emerges.
It'll be reasonable people, I don't
see how that can be the calculation.
>> Speaker 1: Well, and especially since
Hamas in it throughout its history,
[00:06:02]
has been supported and given aid by
Israel vis a vis other entities, but
they've basically invested in
the creation of Hamas because, why?
Because when you divide and conquer,
when you support extremists,
it undermines their ultimate
political goals, and it helps yours.
[00:06:19]
Because obviously,
anyone looking at Hamas is saying, yeah,
these guys are bloodthirsty and
they're terrorists.
And so when you lump, as the Israeli
military has done, Hamas and
all Palestinian civilians in together,
it's like it undermines the cause
[00:06:37]
completely, which is literally just
the right to eat food at this moment.
And out of the current president's
mouth said something to the effect of,
look, Gazan civilians had their chance.
They could have risen up against Hamas,
and they chose not to.
[00:06:54]
I don't know what the tactic
is now to starve them so
they'll rise up against Hamas.
When you rise up,
you might need a little food,
you might need some calories when you
wanna rise up against Hamas internally.
I mean, this is all a cruel joke,
obviously, and I'm being incredibly
[00:07:13]
facetious, there is no safe place for
even children in this area.
And so I'm glad that Oxfam and so
many of these international groups and
communities are speaking out.
Just as an update, we know that because
of UN Secretary Gutierrez's call for
[00:07:30]
an immediate ceasefire,
Israel has denied visas to the UN.
So UN workers and personnel cannot get
access to Israel, obviously, or to Gaza.
And so that is because they
had the audacity to call for
[00:07:46]
a humanitarian ceasefire.
It's the UN, that's what they do.
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