Alex de Waal calls for international action to halt the famines in Gaza and Sudan:
The Gaza figures are particularly shocking because, before October last year, acute malnutrition levels were about 1% and general mortality was just a quarter of the background rates in countries such as Somalia and South Sudan. Many children suffered micronutrient deficiencies, but few were underweight. After 7 October, acute food crisis indicators went off a cliff, with unparalleled speed.
And it’s a near certainty that when the death toll from hunger and disease is finally measured, it will number in the tens of thousands. In my book, Gaza counts as a famine.
The famines in Sudan and Gaza are both human-made. Stopping them requires political and humanitarian action. Justice and humanity demand calling out the men who are making them and the foreign powers that enable them.
The U.S. is the chief enabler of the famine in Gaza. In March, Secretary Blinken refused to acknowledge that Israel was using starvation as a weapon. The administration pretended that Israel was complying with international law when there was a mountain of evidence that they weren’t. Blinken also knew that the Israeli government had been obstructing aid six months ago because U.S. officials had told him as much, but then he lied and claimed that they weren’t. The administration’s fake “deadline” passed last week, and they imposed no consequences on Israel despite the worsening conditions in Gaza. The White House will say and do anything to make sure that the weapons continue to flow.
The famine in Gaza stands out as being the most preventable famine in modern times. As many U.N. experts, humanitarian groups, and human rights organizations have said for the last year, it is the result of Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation that began in October 2023. Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council said this last week:
We who are there who are independent, neutral, impartial, all U.N. agencies, all Red Cross agencies, all nongovernmental agencies, American, European, et cetera, we are unanimous in that Israel is deliberately starving the population and having an indiscriminate, excessive warfare that are killing thousands of women and children.
There is no doubt that this has been documented. Israel is not telling the truth.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.