Haaretz: ‘Thou Shalt Not Starve Thy Neighbor’

April 3—So warns March 31 Haaretz, one of Israel’s major newspapers and outspoken critic of the tyrant Bibi Netanyahu's regime , in its lead editorial.

“The Israeli government, from its head to its most junior member, refuses to admit that many of those who live in Gaza are civilian noncombatants and that about half of the Strip’s inhabitants are children. The public media debate in Israel also ignores this element of the situation in Gaza,” the editors write. Indifference reigns.

“The amount of food that is currently entering Gaza is insufficient for human survival…. According to the United Nations, the entire population of the Gaza Strip, some 2.3 million people, is suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, and about one in four is on the brink of famine…. The emerging data and the images that are beamed to the entire world of starving Gazan children, some of them massing at community kitchens for some hot soup for their family, are driving massive criticism of Israel from the international community.”

The government is promoting the creation of a multinational force to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, only to weaken Hamas’s control and to relieve American pressure on this front, Haaretz charges.

“One goal, however, was forgotten: The humanitarian aid is meant, first and foremost, to sustain Gaza’s civilian population in a humane manner. Currently, Israel is the occupying power in Gaza; according to international law, it must take care of the needs of the population under its control, including women, children, the elderly and the sick. This must not be forgotten.”

In its effort to awaken a conscience, Haaretz has published in recent days such opinion columns as Dahlia Scheindlin’s exposé, “Inside Israel’s Disturbing Denial of Starvation in Gaza,” contrasting pictures of emaciated Gazan children and actual data on the unfolding catastrophe to the lies of the “denialists”; or the lengthy marshaling of the brutal facts by major media commentator and author, and former U.S. government official David Rothkopf, which warns that “If Gaza’s Children Starve, Israel Will Lose Its Moral Legitimacy Forever.”