For many months, we were warned by international aid agencies and governments around the world that citizens in war-ravaged Gaza are not receiving sufficient food supplies and other critical aid and that famine is imminent.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world authority on determining the extent of hunger crises, some 677,000 people in Gaza are already experiencing Phase 5 hunger, the highest level and the equivalent of famine, and the remaining population is at substantial risk.
Israel has been blamed for not doing enough on its own or allowing others to provide necessary food supplies to Gazans, further jeopardizing the lives of Palestinian civilians trapped in the war zone. Israel has strenuously denied those charges. But the accusations continue and are amplified by breathless reports of malnutrition and starvation within Gaza along with repeated finger-pointing at Israel.
In recent weeks, COGAT, the Israeli army unit responsible for coordinating civilian matters with the Palestinians, reported that most of the land crossings into Gaza are open, hundreds of food trucks with aid and commercial goods enter the enclave daily, and those deliveries are supplemented by food supplies airdropped by the Jordanian and Egyptian governments and use of the floating pier opened by the U.S. Central Command to receive aid shipments from Cyprus — at least until the pier was severely damaged by inclement weather.
COGAT faults a poor distribution system in Gaza, insufficient manpower from international aid agencies to manage distribution efforts and the cynical work of Hamas to frustrate humanitarian efforts and the theft of food supplies by Hamas for its own use.
According to a recent report from several top Israeli academics and public health officials who studied the quality and quantity of food that has entered Gaza in recent months, the aid meets or exceeds international nutritional standards.
That’s according to Dorit Nitzan, a professor at the School of Public Health at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba who has served as the World Health Organization’s coordinator of health and emergencies and who was one of those overseeing the study. She said food delivered to Gaza since January of this year exceeded international nutritional standards and should have provided sufficient nutrition for the entire Gaza population.
No one has come forward to dispute the accuracy of the nutrition supply report. Instead, critics point to alleged pre-report failures by Israel and cite continuing reports of a food crisis in Gaza. But if the report on the sufficiency of the aid supply is accurate, COGAT’s assertion that the problem is on the distribution side must also be true. And that is where the international aid community and those who continue their famine libel against Israel should be directing their attention.
Governments and international agencies that are genuinely concerned about the prospect of famine in Gaza need to do more than complain and blame Israel. They need to get involved directly — with the provision of personnel and funding — to help strengthen and support an effective aid distribution system in Gaza.
By doing so, they may help save lives as they move from being self-righteous critics to becoming part of the solution.
The truth above is clear, and it only leaves out that Hamas, the terrorist Palestinian gov.t has stolen 60% of the food and then resells it to their own people at inflated prices.