4 March 2024
Air Strikes Kill, Air Food Drops Kill More
Since October 7, 2023, constant air strikes on Gaza have not stopped. When an air strike hits a home, a school, a hospital, a mosque, hundreds of people are killed and injured.
When Jordan, Egypt, France, US, UAE drop food from airplanes, this also kills people instead of feeding them.
How?
Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza City and the north have no access to any food or basic needs. When food aid provided by the UNRWA arrives at one spot on the edge of Gaza City, a few thousand of the hundreds of thousands of people are waiting. As soon as the trucks of aid arrive, people jump on the trucks grabbing the aid, each one taking whatever he can, people start fighting each other, injuring each other, killing each other over a sack of bread flour or any kind of food. No system of distribution of aid in Gaza and the north, no authority, no UNRWA, no entity is able or allowed to manage food distribution. Israel has prevented any such system from being put into place.
The same thing happens with food air drops. They create chaos, anarchy, and disputes, with many people injured and killed. Big families, individuals with guns, people use knives, cutting each other over food. What to expect from hungry people?
Small families, weak people are left behind, they can’t compete, they suffer hunger quietly.
Food air drops kill in another way. They spare the Israelis from their obligation to allow access to food and basic needs for the starving civilians.
Food air drops kill because the quantities dropped are not feeding even hundreds of people.
Food air drops kill because people’s needs are far more than just food; medicine, water, education, safety, freedom and much more, and these are basic human rights.
Food air drops are only a way for some hypocritical regimes to show off. They know very well that this is not the solution, and that they must oblige Israel to allow free access to all human rights for civilians, not only in Gaza and the north, but in all of Palestine.