The tragic accidental deaths of seven food aid workers in an IDF airstrike has ignited yet more interest in one of the main charges around the Jewish state’s humane and justified war against Hamas: that Israel’s attacks are causing famine in Gaza.
The claim is outlined neatly by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affair and security rep, in his mid-March bluster that “starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”
But the data suggests that this, like so many other claims against Israel, is simply incorrect.
For starters, nearly 300,000 tons of food and beverages have been delivered to Gaza since the start of the war.
That alone, under parameters established by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office, should be enough to secure approximately half of Gazans’ food needs on its own (assuming they get fully distributed).
Plus, the vast majority of Gaza’s greenhouse acreage was still available as of mid-February (per the latest UN survey) — and the Strip was exporting fruit and vegetables until Hamas broke the ceasefire with its Oct. 7 mass terror attack on Israel.
And all the fighting and bombing has focused on urban areas, where Hamas’ 600 miles of tunnels and bases are concentrated.
Note, too, that President Biden’s plan to build a pier off Gaza to provide some 2 million meals per day was first suggested by none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the first weeks of the war.
Why, oh why would a nation bent on “using famine as a weapon of war” behave in such a self-defeating manner?
Or could it be that the problem here does not lie with Israel, which is making historic efforts to ensure the minimum of civilian harm from the war?
Could the blame lie rather with the group that put the civilians in harm’s way to begin with — Hamas?
We know for a fact that Hamas steals monetary aid and other crucial supplies meant for Palestinians and appropriates them to its own members.
We know Hamas lies — badly! — about the number and composition of civilian deaths in the war.
All evidence, in other words, points at them as the real culprits here.
But reality’s never stopped the delusional antisemites at the UN, within the Biden administration or anywhere else before.
And it won’t now.