The horrific famine that the Israel Occupation Forces has imposed on Gaza is world news. The IOF has cut off all deliveries of any food or medicine to Gaza for nearly three months. 

While protests of the famine have caused handwringing among spokespeople in imperialist capitals, none have taken steps to seriously challenge the Israeli regime and feed the starving people of Gaza. U.S. imperialism is directly complicit in causing the starvation and has relentlessly provided the weapons and funding to continue the war. 

Even before the October 7, 2023, seizure of hostages, Gaza’s 2.2 million people needed at least 500 trucks a day of basic food and essential supplies to survive. The Palestinian resistance’s military operation 20 months ago was a desperate attempt to break out of this strangulation.

The Israeli war machine has continued ruthlessly bombing gathering sites, including tent encampments and schools. Hospitals lack any essential supplies and are barely functioning. The IOF has targeted and executed clearly marked international aid workers and medical staff, as well as media workers reporting the genocide.

None of this policy of systematic starvation is secret. International organizations have accused Israel of weaponizing hunger and using the blockade to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The United Nations and other international organizations have issued urgent alerts, reports and graphic photos of the suffering in Gaza. 

Hunger strikes

In recent weeks, students across multiple university campuses in the United States and military veterans at the United Nations have launched hunger strikes in solidarity with Gaza’s people enduring famine.

In response to the pressure, the U.S. government publicized a program called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which had close ties to U.S. and Israeli military elements. Under the plan, a U.S.-based organization would handle the aid. Private military contractors would secure the distribution sites. The Israeli military would provide “necessary security.”

Over 100 Palestinians have been killed and 540 wounded as of June 3 while attempting to reach the GHF food aid site in Gaza. Witnesses reported that Israeli forces began firing at the crowds of people 1,000 yards from the aid site.

An open letter from 11 leading aid and human rights organizations condemned the U.S.-designed GHF as a “dangerous politicized sham” and a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing.” It continued, “The restriction of aid is being used as a weapon of war.”  (reliefweb.int, May 19)

The U.S.-Israeli plan includes displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians or abandoning more than 1 million people to famine. It includes delivering limited supplies to only 1.2 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million people. Its goal is to pressure countries to begin to take in Palestinians. It is a calculated plan for ethnic cleansing of at least half of Gaza’s population.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that “two million people are starving while 160,000 tons of food are blocked at the border just minutes away.”

Rather than resume the desperately needed aid of at least 500 trucks a day and facing mounting international pressure and threats, Israel has allowed only a few trucks to enter, with a cynical amount of publicity, while blocking any plan for future distribution.

Freedom Flotilla Coalition

Eleven activists with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition sailed from Catania, Sicily, on June 1 aboard the ship “Madleen” with a cargo of humanitarian aid for Gaza. Climate activist Greta Thunberg, European Member of Parliament Rima Hassan and Palestinian-American lawyer Huwaida Arraf are among those aboard. In May, an earlier FFC vessel attempting to bring aid to Gaza was fired on by the Israeli military while sailing in international waters. 

Aid could be delivered

Other imperialist countries in NATO, including Britain, France, Germany and Canada, have the tools to send needed aid and to force the issue. Instead, their governments have made useless pro-forma denunciations of Israeli tactics and allowed the starvation to continue. This lack of action makes them complicit.

These major imperialist powers could challenge this deliberate starvation by flying their own planes in massive cargo deliveries of supplies throughout Gaza. But they choose not to. Would the Zionist state shoot down numerous French or British planes carrying loads of supplies? 

Israel has fired drones in international waters to block people-to-people aid such as the ship of the international Freedom Flotilla.

But the navy ships of major powers do not face the same threat. Clearly these former colonial powers have delivered aid by air and by sea in the past and have the supplies and the planes and ships to bring in needed food. Based on mass public pressure they respond by wringing their hands. But they are not willing to challenge this genocide. 

If any of the major powers were concerned about an “international incident” if their planes or ships were hit, if there were casualties, they could easily send hundreds of drones carrying supplies into Gaza. Drones don’t only carry deadly weapons. They can carry food, medicines, generators, fuel, tents, blankets.

Israel supplies its military occupation with emergency drone deliveries. 

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) claims to have been pre-positioning equipment for humanitarian intervention and developing the use of drones since 2017 to improve preparedness and response to humanitarian emergencies. (www.wfp.org/wfp-drones) 

The WFP asserts that it has decades of experience in aviation, logistics, telecommunications and supply delivery operations in areas with significant “access constraints.” WFP explains on their web site that the use of RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems or drones) could help reduce the risks associated with staff security in conflict environments and remote locations. 

Why isn’t this equipment and the many tons of supplies of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) being used? 

The U.N. World Food Programme delivers food assistance and even distributes cash to support local economies to three million people in front line areas during the war in Ukraine. Why can’t or won’t it deliver supplies to two million people in Gaza?

The World Food Programme has also delivered thousands of tons of food during wars in the Horn of Africa. 

Although they delivered extensive aid in the past, the WFP now claims it needs to wait for Israeli access and permission. It seems to also need U.S. permission.

This reveals the ugly truth that all of the imperialist countries aligned with U.S. imperialism seek the destruction of resistance in Gaza and in West Asia.

They might express concern for the death of defenseless children, but they are part of the effort to defeat the continuing resistance that challenges all of imperialist rule in West Asia.