Ed Davey, the postmaster’s friend, David Lammy, the entire Green party and SNP, indeed most of the political and media class are convinced that Israel is pursuing a policy of deliberate starvation as a tool of genocide in Gaza. Of course there is hunger but if you take a few steps back and try to apply a critical thought process can anyone explain away four matters to me. I am waiting for someone to deliver facts as a counter view.
1. The photos of starving babies and children are heart wrenching but they are invariably accompanied by mothers who are at worst just a bit thin but in many cases plump. I look back at photos from Ethiopia in 1984 and the parents of starving kids were also painfully thin, they were themselves starving, close to death. The mothers in Gaza are not. Something does not quite add up here. It is at least worth questioning in a conflict where numerous faked images have been created.
2. The Israel and US backed GHF is currently delivering 2.3 million meals per day for free in Gaza. That is just over one per person. Nobody should be starving to death unless they are being threatened not to take the GHF meals, something Hamas is doing. Can someone at the Guardian explain carefully why a population of 2.2 million is starving when 2.3 million big meals a day are being distributed. That was not happening in Ethiopia.
3. The UN has access to 950 more trucks of food within Gaza. It is at the front of the line in accusing Israel of starving Gaza. The GHF says it will distribute that food, Israel wants it distributed. But the UN insists that it will not allow it to be distributed unless it is via its own staff who historically have worked with Hamas which charged folks for the food or that it cannot distribute it in safety. Okay just hand it over to the GHF to deliver. Why is this scandal Israel’s fault? Surely as humanitarians we just want that food distributed to the people of Gaza for free?
4. Then to the genocide. Al Jazeera has today published stats that show that almost 1 in 4 women of childbearing age in Gaza is pregnant. This is compared to 1 in 15 in Western Europe. And it is not a sudden spike from nowhere. The same source, hardly an Israel friendly one, says that each month in Gaza since October 7 2023, 5,000 babies have been born. With a very young population few are dying of old age in Gaza. So even if we accept Hamas claims that 60,000 folks have been killed by the IDF, then the population of Gaza is almost certain to have increased since October 7 2023. Yet the useful idiots in the West call what is going on “genocide”.
In real genocides the population falls and falls sharply. Think of the holocaust, of the slaughter of Eastern European Germans after WW2 or of what happened in Cambodia or Rwanda. The birth rate in Auschwitz was not enough to grow its population by 3% a year! So to term Gaza an Israeli genocide or, even worst, holocaust, really demeans and trivializes real genocides for it simply fails to reflect what is actually happening.
I raise 4 matters. On a day when 50 French Jewish kids were chucked off a plane in Spain with the 21 year old woman in charge beaten and handcuffed just because they sang songs in Hebrew, the spreading of blood libels really does matter. As such can Lammy, Ed Davey, Zarah Sultana et al look at the numbers I have given, the questions I ask, and explain with hard facts why they are not spitting out blood libels?