(LifeSiteNews) — Israel has killed hundreds of aid workers in its ongoing attacks on relief efforts, with its armed forces supporting the blockade of humanitarian aid convoys at the Egyptian border.
Following months of targeting doctors, first responders, and humanitarian relief efforts, a report from the Gaza Health Ministry claimed Israel had shot dead 100 aid workers the week leading up to March 21.
It is not alone in documenting the intentional killing of those trying to provide – and waiting for – urgently needed food and medical aid.
Euro-Med Monitor, a human rights group based in Geneva, Switzerland, reported on an earlier massacre on March 14, claiming that Israel had killed 60 Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid.
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Israel’s army has again massacred Palestinian civilians who had gathered in Gaza to obtain humanitarian aid, targeting them with gunfire from helicopters, tanks, and drones near the Kuwait roundabout on the outskirts of Gaza City. This incident has resulted in over 60 deaths and 160 injuries, some of which are critical.
In two separate attacks on the day, an airstrike on an aid distribution center left nine dead, with at least 21 more gunned down whilst waiting for aid trucks at a roundabout in northern Gaza.
Starving people shot dead
This week brings reports that a total of 400 Palestinian civilians have been killed whilst trying to receive food aid in Gaza.
The worst atrocity so far took place on February 29, when over 100 Palestinians were reported dead in what United Nations experts condemned as the “flour massacre.” One hundred and thirteen civilians were killed as the Israeli army fired heavily into the crowd. Israeli sources blamed the Palestinians for the fatalities.
Video from the scene recorded the sound of gunfire, reported by one witness as “indiscriminate.”
“The shooting was indiscriminate, people shot in the head, in the foot, in the stomach,” said 31-year old Ahmad. “One man was martyred, then run over by the tank.”
“We are dying to get flour for our children,” said Kamel Abu Nahel of the attack, in remarks again recorded by Middle East Eye.
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International charity Oxfam responded to the massacre, saying it was “appalled” to hear of “Israel deliberately targeting civilians after starving them,” warning “the risk of genocide is real.”
The UN reported that Israel will refuse entry to its aid convoys on March 24, leaving two million Palestinians – of which half are children – to face starvation.
The language war: Mainstream media misleading Americans
Journalism watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting argued how the killings were routinely framed in media reports as “aid-related deaths” – rather than “part of Israel’s engineered famine.”
FAIR stressed the contrast between the reportage of mainstream and independent media, saying the “linguistic gymnastics” of outlets such as the New York Times is failing the American public: “Media have failed to inform the U.S. public on the horrific conditions experienced by starving civilians in Gaza.”
The narrative which results is one which flatters Israeli framing, such as the designation of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of the Palestinians as “human animals.” FAIR’s report said the mainstream media “blamed Palestinians for their own deaths, covering for the Israeli military as it carried out a massacre. They further dehumanized Palestinians by characterizing starving people as an unruly mob who trampled one another.”
Why does the distortion of language in the service of Israel matter? Patrick Lawrence, the American journalist who first exposed the Russiagate fraud, said in his November 2016 piece “Israel and the Perversion of Language”: “It corrupts our public discourse, our public space, and altogether our ability to think clearly.”
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‘We can’t fight this war without the U.S.’
FAIR’s report stresses the strategic significance of the corruption of public discourse to an alleged genocide backed by U.S. armaments:
This corruption is as vital as U.S. bombs to the Israeli genocide against Palestine: Without these verbal distortions that justify, distract, deny and consume corporate information spaces, the genocide could not be carried out.
FAIR’s assessment in military terms was affirmed last October by retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Breck. His remarks were repeated in a recent video report by journalist Glenn Greenwald, plainly stating that Israel’s assault cannot continue without U.S. support.
“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision guided bombs, the airplanes – it’s all from the U.S.,” he said. “The minute they turn off the tap you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability … Everyone understands we can’t fight this war without the United States.”
The escalating crisis, described on March 14 as an “imminent famine,” is compounded with the horrific slaughter of civilians and aid workers.
Despite this, President Biden refuses to suspend the military aid to Israel which it significantly increased following October 7.
Deaths foretold by USAID
The slaughter of aid workers was first noted in a special report by the US Government-backed Aid Worker Security Database. On October 24, weeks after the attacks of Operation Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, the USAID-operated Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) warned of a “major surge in aid worker fatalities in Israel and Gaza,” with most being killed by airstrikes.
The initial blockade of Gaza, the disruption of power and water services, and the inability to evacuate civilians has created the conditions for a devastating humanitarian crisis.
It is a crisis which has continued to escalate. Within the next two months, Israel killed a record number of medical, aid and humanitarian workers, with 161 recorded dead in 2023.
On March 21, The New Humanitarian published “Behind the Numbers: Gaza’s unprecedented aid worker death toll.”
Saying that “the pattern of attacks is either intentional” or shows “reckless incompetence,” it notes that data is still being collected on the killing of aid workers last year.
The report says that aid groups continue to be targeted despite warning the Israeli military of their presence, suggesting that Israel is using this data to plan strikes on them.
Israeli forces have targeted healthcare facilities, aid convoys, and ambulances with apparent impunity. Aid groups say they have shared the GPS coordinates of their facilities and convoys with Israeli authorities to avoid unintentional bombing – a strategy known as deconfliction – but aid facilities continue to be hit.
Genocide and the rules-based order
This is not a war in any conventional sense, with a high tech military armed by the United States attacking civilians and aid workers with airstrikes and armored infantry. As The New Humanitarian report continues:
‘There is complete disregard for the norms of modern warfare,’ said Bob Kitchen, vice president for emergencies and humanitarian action at the International Rescue Committee.
The report confirms the use of “indiscriminate” heavy fire on the civilian population, a war crime in itself, quoting one Red Crescent worker as saying “there is no safe place in Gaza.”
Citing data supplied by the U.S. government-backed AWSD, it notes that four out of five aid workers “died as a result of aerial bombardment or shelling – almost all of them since October 2023.”
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UN Security Council warned of war without rules
In a briefing on February 22, the head of Doctors Without Borders addressed the UN Security Council. Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said “this pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence,” before going on to condemn Israel’s assault as a “war without rules.”
He spoke of how “we have watched our patients and colleagues be killed and maimed,” before describing Israel’s war as “collective punishment” – a war crime against the civilian population.
“This situation is the culmination of a war Israel is waging on the entire population of the Gaza strip – a war of collective punishment, a war without rules, a war at all costs,” Lockyear added.
His statement has been disregarded by Israel, along with the ruling of the International Court of Justice. The ICJ ruled that Israel must take steps to “prevent genocide” in January 2024.
The destruction wrought by this alleged genocide extends far beyond Gaza, and is rendering international law null and void, argued Lockyear.
The laws and the principles we collectively depend on to enable humanitarian assistance are now eroded to the point of becoming meaningless.
Israeli civilians block the border
As global support for Israel plummets, polls show the Israeli public firmly behind the mass starvation and massacre of the Palestinians in pursuit of “absolute victory.” Some take to the border themselves – to prevent any aid from entering Gaza.
A recent video report by The Grayzone sees armed militant Zionists saying that the Palestinians should “starve to death,” as they prevent food aid from crossing the border with the collusion of the Israeli military.
Though Israel is “losing the hasbara battle” according to the Jewish Insider, Israel continues to crack down on anyone critical of the alleged genocide. “Hasbara” is the term given to Zionist propaganda efforts, echoed abroad, and which are reinforced by an increasingly repressive environment within Israel itself.
Israeli Knesset member Omar Cassif has survived a recent attempt to impeach him in the Israeli parliament, and says he will continue to speak out, unless he is “assassinated.”
“People have been fired from their workplaces and suspended from their university studies solely for expressing grief and sympathy for the innocent civilians in Gaza,” he told NPR on March 15.
On the attempts to end his political career, he said, “I had life before the Knesset, and I guess that I live life after the Knesset if I’m not assassinated before.”
He left listeners in no doubt as to who he felt was responsible for the catastrophe in Gaza:
The main factor that allows or enable this terrible carnage and bloodshed to continue is the administration of United States.
The media and the machinery of war it supports is enabling a mounting – and manufactured – humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The intentional starvation of millions is being conducted without hindrance by the closest ally of the U.S. When will it turn off the tap?