By John Pickard
As we write, reports are coming that over a hundred Palestinians were killed overnight as they gathered around an aid convoy. Al Jazeera reports that at least 112 were killed and over 700 injured, either by Israeli gunfire or after being crushed by aid lorries as they desperately mobbed an aid convoy for food.
There should not be the slightest doubt that Israel is directly responsible for this latest massacre.
Not only have Israeli troops fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians, for the ‘crime’, it is reported, of coming “too close” (70m) to an IDF checkpoint, but they have deliberately engineered a humanitarian catastrophe across the whole of the Gaza Strip. The plight of the Palestinians is particularly severe in the north, in and around Gaza City.
Whereas before this one-sided war began, Gaza was receiving 500 lorries of food and essential supplies every day, Israel only allowed eleven in the first weeks of the war and even now, despite all the promises made to US and European diplomats, the IDF is allowing around a tenth of the required number. It is not the case that a humanitarian crisis is looming. It is already here.
According to the NGO, Save the Children, we are witnessing the “mass killing of children in slow motion” in Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry has said that six children died in north Gaza from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan and al-Shifa hospitals, while many others are in critical condition. It is little wonder that there is outright desperation within a population that is literally starving.
Israeli soldiers opened fire on an unarmed crowd
Deaths from malnutrition and associated diseases are expected to soar among the more than two million Palestinian refugees in the coming months. This is in addition to the more than 30,000 killed directly as a result of Israeli military bombardment. More than 70,000 have been wounded.
Western politicians like Biden are hiding behind the fig-leaf of alleged uncertainty, suggesting that there are “two competing versions” of the events in the early hours of Thursday morning. But these same hypocritical leaders of the ‘free world’ bear as much responsibility as Israel and the IDF for this slaughter. They have not even “stood by” for four months as Israel has pounded Gaza to rubble, and carried out a genocidal attack on a defenceless population. On the contrary, they have facilitated it through political, financial and military aid.
According to BBC reports, this particular massacre (there have been many others) centred around the arrival of a convoy of aid trucks, several hundred metres long, of between 18 and 30 vehices. At some point, the nearest Israeli ‘Defence’ Force checkpoint opened fire and there was a stampede of civilians away from the firing. Most of those killed appear to have been crushed by the lorries carrying the aid.
The chaos and disorder that surrounds the distribution of food aid was entirely predictable, given the deprivation of food, particularly in the north. There have been scenes, whenever aid has been allowed into Gaza, of lorries being mobbed by scores of people, carrying away sacks of flour and other items of food. These convoys have been overwhelmed because there is no civic authority or infrastructure able to organised proper relief. They have all been destroyed by Israel, as a deliberate act of war. This panic and the fighting for food is an indication of how utterly desperate the population have become, as Israel has starved them.
The BBC claims to have established “with some confidence” what happened in Gaza City, following their contacts with the IDF and a Palestinian eyewitness. In a location in the south west of the City of Gaza, the convoy of trucks, after having passed through an Israeli army checkpoint – this was around 4 o’clock in the morning – attempted to head north. But at one point, when a large crowd surged around the lorries, Israeli soldiers opened fire. It was the proximity of the crowd to the checkpoint that gave them the pretext to shoot.
The moral standards of the IDF are in the gutter
“Fearing that some of the civilians posed a threat”, the BBC report tells us, “the soldiers then opened fire on those approaching in what Lerner [an IDF Lt Colonel] described as a ‘limited response’”. As one would expect under the circumstances, when they heard machine gun fire, the crowd panicked even more and in the ensuing melee, dozens were killed under the wheels of the trucks that were trying to get as far as possible from the checkpoint.
By the standards of the IDF, killing only ‘a few’ Palestinian civilians may be “limited”, but by the moral standards of most people around the globe, it is a war crime. The IDF claims to be the most ‘moral’ army in the world, but its behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank show a moral standpoint somewhere between the sewer and the gutter.
This incident will be met with outrage by workers and youth around the world. Although the Tory government would dearly like to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations, by calling “Islamist”, “antisemitic”, “out of control” and so on – none of which are true – this new massacre of civilians, whose only crime was to be starving, will fuel greater anger and recharge the demonstrations and rallies.
We will wait in vain for Western politicians to refer this war crime to the Internationa Criminal Court, although if it had been done by Russian soldiers firing on a Ukrainian crowd, there would outpourings of indignation. Unfortunately, this massacre is unlikely to move the likes of Keir Starmer from their unwavering support for Israel, whatever its actions. But it will further increase the isolation of the “leader” from the big majority of the rank and file of the party he claims to “lead”.
