Since falsehood now has the upper hand over the truth, here comes the West in “humanitarian” garb, first the US and then the EU holding up the rear. There have been five months of massacres, of free fire against civilians, with 31,000 dead women and children and more than 71,000 wounded and maimed.
Over 2.3 million human beings have been forced to flee south and north on a small strip of land, in an unequal “war” authorized as revenge for the October 7 Hamas massacre. An entire people are reduced to starvation as they bury family members in mass graves.
Then, here comes Joe Biden – while for Trump the Palestinians are a non-entity altogether – struggling with the Democratic primaries, discovering firsthand the great electoral weight of the dissent against his pro-Israel policies among the Arab-American electorate, among young people in the anti-Zionist movement and among students on college campuses. In consequence, he’s claiming he is dedicated to “humanitarian relief.” What he is really dedicated to is trying to save his own candidacy in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.
This belated and propagandistic initiative (to say the least) is giving off signals that are both ambiguous and shameful. In the first place, it is a sign of failure, as U.S. Senior Official Jeremy Konyndyk admits – quoted on Sunday by Michele Giorgio in il manifesto – because of Biden’s demonstrated inability to restrain Netanyahu; and, at the same time, it makes clear the consequences of Biden’s vetoes in the UN Security Council against any proposals for a ceasefire that would stop the ongoing indiscriminate slaughter. For this, one must not forget, the Israeli government is now on trial at the Hague, accused of genocide.
And we must also not forget another fact, denounced by the Washington Post: never have so many weapons been sent from the U.S. to Israel as in these five months. Furthermore, according to White House sources, it will take a month or two to set up the “humanitarian port,” or rather “pier” – a map of it has been shown on Bruno Vespa’s Porta a Porta – so, in the meantime, the carte blanche for massacre remains in effect, at least until the arrival of the cameras shooting commercials for Western virtue.
And for those who thought this initiative is doing an end-run around Netanyahu’s snub, the “favor” conceded by Tel Aviv is on the condition that the Israeli army will check all the aid to ensure no “dangerous” items will enter – such as flour, milk, incubators, medicine, water purifiers, etc. It’s the same as in Rafah: the war “needs to be fought to the end.”
Why is Netanyahu suddenly putting on a palatable façade? Because Biden’s initiative serves his purposes. It completely excludes the United Nations, set up for precisely such operations, by excluding and penalizing the UNRWA even more – to which the United States and many EU countries, including Italy and not only, have cut off funding after Israel’s self-serving accusations of its alleged infiltration by Hamas, despite the fact that for 75 years, the UNRWA-United Nations has been, and still is, the only instrument of support for the Palestinian population, the people who call refugee camps home. And there is also a delegitimization of the decisions of the Hague Court of Justice, which, in view of the ongoing “humanitarian nightmare of incalculable regional consequences,” has ordered the State of Israel (on January 26) to “desist from, and take all measures within its power, including the rescinding of relevant orders, of restrictions and/or of prohibition to prevent access to humanitarian assistance, including access to adequate fuel, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation.”
Israel has done none of that – quite the opposite. If Biden really wants to come to the aid of the Palestinians, he needs to push for a ceasefire to allow the entry by land – the only credible and necessary corridor – of the container fleet currently stranded in the desert under Israel’s orders. Instead, he’s promising a “port” in a month or two. Will the “maritime corridor” the EU is proposing also land there? And nobody’s saying who will deliver the headline number of “two million meals,” how and to whom.
Waging war by starvation is a crime against humanity, as Mattarella reminded us. We do not need Artificial Intelligence to figure this one out, nor to go back to Dante’s Inferno to understand that in the face of hunger, every human association is subjected to a deadly blackmail that tears apart whatever solidarity still remains.
Each day, we ourselves experience the need for food as an unconscious habit because we are able to fulfill it; in Gaza, it amounts to a physical harbinger of death, of surrender, of helplessness. There is no humanity left there anymore – except for the remnants of it that are dying before the eyes of the children who still survive and will not forget.
And there is no religion left either. Monday marked the start of the month of Ramadan in the Islamic world, but in Gaza there is no need for an imam to remind believers to keep the daily fast. There is no longer any offering to make, only wrath.
