Israeli Lawsuit Halts UN Relief Group’s Efforts to Feed Gaza Famine Victims
It’s as though someone tackled a lifeguard trying to reach a swimmer already sinking beneath the waves
Three hundred thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza find themselves on the brink of starvation, and unless massive aid arrives in the coming months, over one million Gazans will suffer “an extreme lack of food,” resulting in acute malnutrition, starvation and death, according to international food security experts.
But an Israeli lawsuit filed in Delaware has succeeded in suspending life-saving aid from American donors.
The looming casualties from famine could actually dwarf the 30,000 killed by Israeli bombing and shelling so far.
The cause of the imminent famine: The Israeli government’s decision, in response to the October 7 Hamas attack, to impose what the Israeli Defense Minister called a “complete siege” of Gaza, “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” In the months since then, little food has entered the Gaza strip, and the region has, in the words of the United Nations’ children’s agency, become a “graveyard for children.”
Like many Americans appalled by the civilian deaths and suffering, I have contributed to a U.S.-based organization which supports the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA). UNRWA is the largest organization attempting to provide humanitarian assistance – food, water and medical supplies – to the 90% of Gazans who are now refugees.
But a lawsuit brought by ten survivors of the October 7 attack claims that the American support group, UNRWA USA National Committee, is providing “material support for terrorism” because it gives money to the UN agency. And in an excess of caution, UNRWA USA has decided to pause sending aid to UNRWA – presumably to protect me and other contributors from claims that, by trying to help starving Gazan families, we are ourselves supporting terrorism.
It is a bitter irony that Israelis would actively seek to hobble assistance to Gaza. The Israeli government has sought to evade responsibility for the imminent famine by asserting that relief organizations are failing to do enough. That’s like an assailant who is holding someone under water asking, “Where are the lifeguards?”
The Israeli plaintiffs in the Delaware lawsuit seek to have UNRWA USA’s tax-exempt charitable status revoked, alleging the group is part of “an international terrorist plot” that knowingly “financed and aided” the October 7 attack. In reality there is no evidence UNRWA knowingly aided terrorism.
The claims seem to be based on the same alleged facts that Israel itself used when it demanded the U.S. and foreign governments defund UNRWA, principally that a dozen UNRWA employees were Hamas members who alleged participated in the attack, that UNRWA works with Hamas and Hamas groups in Gaza, and that Hamas has been formally designed as a foreign terrorist organization. None of the individuals were UNRWA decision-makers or leaders.
The Israeli claims ignore the reality that while Hamas is a military organization committed to violent attacks on Israel, since 2006 Hamas has also been the government of Gaza. Yes, the U.S. has designated Hamas a terrorist organization. But that doesn’t mean everyone associated with or employed by the Hamas government is a terrorist.
The letter carriers of Gaza aren’t terrorists just because they work for the Hamas government. Government-paid school teachers in Gaza aren’t terrorists. The doctors and nurses, administrators and other workers of the Gaza Health Ministry aren’t terrorists.
And the thousands of humanitarian relief workers of UNRWA and other relief organizations in Gaza aren’t terrorists even if some are concurrently associated with Hamas.
Were it to be proven that a dozen or thirty low-level UNRWA employees actually participated in terrorist attacks on October 7, that still wouldn’t mean that UNRWA – which has 30,000 employees in Gaza – is responsible for their actions or is itself a terrorist organization. As Ryan Grim asks in The Intercept, “If a janitor at a university was found to be a terrorist, would we defund the university? You’d fire them, charge them if they committed a crime, and review what went wrong in your process. That’s exactly how UNRWA responded.”
Israel allows only miniscule quantities of food to enter Gaza, amidst continuing Israeli bombing and threats to humanitarian relief workers. A headline from a few days ago tells us, “Another Gaza Aid Convoy Ends in Violence, With at Least 20 Killed.” As measured against the needs of over two million people, the convoys in any event provide only trivial quantities of food.
The chief economist of the World Food Program Arif Husain warned, as reported in a New York Times article on “Imminent” Famine, that “time is running out” for many Gazans.
“‘This is why children are dying,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get in there they won’t be dying in 20 or 30s, they will be dying in hundreds and thousands.’
“Alex de Waal, an expert on humanitarian crises who has written a book about mass starvation, said the situation in Gaza was ‘unprecedented.’
“‘None of us who’ve worked in this field have ever seen anything like this,’ he said. ‘It is absolutely shocking.’”
All of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are now malnourished, rendering them vulnerable to epidemics and disease. Thirty percent have almost no food, and face extreme levels of starvation and death. But the hunger crisis “is an entirely man-made disaster,” says UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, and it “can be halted.”
Will it be? President Biden bemoans the impending famine, but he declines to use the power of American financial and military aid to Israel to force Israeli’s government to change course.
When the State of Israel, supported by the Israeli plaintiffs, actively hinders efforts to limit the catastrophe, it becomes impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Gaza famine is not just an unfortunate side effect of war, but a deliberate policy to use hunger as a weapon – just as the Israeli government proclaimed at the outset of its war on Gaza. Shame on Israel and shame on our government.
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Thanks for this post. World Central Kitchen and the International Rescue Committee are also ways to feed the people of Gaza. I Doctors Without Borders is assisting.