Gaza starvation: Like that meme, we're all trying to find out who did this
For my money, the best sketch comedy show out isn't 'Saturday Night Live,' but former 'SNL' writer Tim Robinson's 'I Think You Should Leave.' Robinson specializes in constructing surrealist, cringe-inducing social nightmares, then extracting side-splitting comedy with an extremely committed performance with a flawless, unforgettable one-liner.
One of the show's most memorable sketches, 'Hot Dog Car,' starts with a mysterious hot dog-shaped car crashing into a clothing store. The whodunit is solved within seconds as Robinson emerges with a series of excessive and absurd denials that the car is not his — all while wearing a hot dog costume.
'Now, we're all trying to find the guy who did this,' he claims, rejecting his obvious culpability while clumsily portraying himself as someone zealous to find the real culprit. Epitomizing the Shakespearean embarrassment of a man who 'doth protest too much,' nobody at the store is convinced.
Anyway, fun's over. Back to the genocide.
Roughly 2.1 million people remain in Gaza, and according to the UN World Food Programme, a third of those have gone multiple days in a row without food. Doctors Without Borders says 100,000 women and children are suffering severe acute malnutrition.
Gazans do not have food for the same reason they do not have medicine; for the same reason they do not have homes or hospitals or schools or mosques or churches. It's the same reason they do not have electricity or fuel (which means they do not have water), the same reason they don't have journalists on the ground able to tell you what happened to these things they used to have.
While I appreciate those who have acknowledged that no children should have their ribcages poking through their skin — an ideological spectrum that stretches from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump — this reality was obvious to many millions of Americans who took to the streets and student halls in protest months and years ago. As Jewish Currents writer David Klion notes, a larger consensus around the atrocities of the war would have been far more useful then than now.
The Biden administration dismissed lawmakers who called for an immediate ceasefire as 'repugnant' and 'disgraceful.' Those who protested the governments responsible for restricting the safe passage of food — including the Palestinians watching their people go hungry and the Jews who bore witness — were collectively characterized as antisemites. As the bombs fell and the food dwindled, then-President Joe Biden insisted Israel 'wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection.'
Some who begrudgingly admit that Gazans are starving lay the blame primarily at the feet of Hamas militants who provoked Israel's ongoing siege when they killed about 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 hostages. If only Hamas would simply release the hostages, then everyone else (including the hostages) would have food, the argument goes.
Even assuming most spoken and implied false premises about the nature of this conflict were correct — such as the charge that Hamas won't agree to ceasefire proposals or that Israel does not itself have thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of them held without charges — it operates under the fundamental logic of collective punishment, a notion that civilians should suffer for the choices made by their government.
Consider the implications anywhere else. If you happen to read this on star-telegram.com or in our print edition, chances are high that your governor pardoned a white supremacist murderer and agreed to build literal concentration camps. Vile acts of discrimination and tacit support for terrorism at best. Systemic stripping of human rights at worst. All escalations towards lethal violence we all decry. I personally would not like to be punished in any regard for the decisions of any elected official, even one as charming as Greg Abbott. Palestinians deserve that, too.
There is no lone culprit or solitary super villain. But since November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court, a judicial body representing 125 countries on charges of, among others, 'starvation as a method of warfare.' None of those accusations stopped a bipartisan group of senators, some of whom mourned the fatally malnourished on social media, from meeting with Bibi and, naturally, posing for the 'gram.
Our valiant detectives are assuredly, to quote Hot Dog Guy, 'trying to find the guy who did this.' I wish them well on their chase.
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San Francisco Chronicle
9 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Hunger-striking women demand Israel return the body of Palestinian activist killed in settler clash
UMM AL-KHAIR, West Bank (AP) — Nearly two dozen Bedouin women, enrobed in black, sat on the floor of a modest hut that baked under the desert sun of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The room was quiet, the women still. The women are on a hunger strike to call for Israeli authorities to release the body of a beloved community leader killed during a clash with a Jewish settler last week. They say they will continue until the man's remains are returned for burial in his hometown of Umm al-Khair. Witnesses said Awdah Al Hathaleen was shot and killed by a radical Israeli settler during a confrontation caught on video. Israeli authorities said they would only return the body if the family agrees to certain conditions that would 'prevent public disorder.' The villagers say those include limiting attendance for a funeral that would normally draw hundreds and burying him at night in a nearby city. 'We want him to be buried here in Umm al-Khair and have a respectable funeral without any conditions. What did we do to deserve this treatment? We did nothing," said his mother, Khadra Hathaleen, 65, who is among the dozens of women, aged 15-70, from the village who are on strike. The hunger strike, in its sixth day Tuesday, marks a rare public protest by a group of Bedouin women accustomed to mourning in private. Their move reflects their anger over Awdah's death as well as what they perceive as Israel's attempt to dictate unreasonable conditions that violate their customs, beliefs, and right to the land beneath them. But beyond that, they say they have been forced to speak up after repeated settler attacks and Israeli raids have targeted their husbands, sons and fathers. Adding to their outrage, the settler suspected in the shooting, Yinon Levi, was quickly released by an Israeli court from his house arrest. Their story won an Oscar, but their suffering continues The plight of Palestinians in this area of the West Bank, known as Masafer Yatta, was featured in 'No Other Land,' an Oscar-winning documentary about settler violence and life under Israeli military rule. Al Hathaleen, a political activist and an English teacher, was a contributor to the film and close friend of its Palestinian co-directors. It documents life in a region where Jewish residents are building new settlements and expanding old ones on hilltops ringing Palestinian villages — all while Israeli military bulldozers arrive frequently to demolish Palestinian homes they say amount to illegal construction. Palestinians say its nearly impossible to secure Israeli permits to build on their lands. Four Palestinians have been killed by settlers this year, according to UN data. Witnesses said that the confrontation that led to Al Hathaleen's death began after settler excavators began digging on village land. Some Palestinians threw stones after one excavator injured a young man from the village, witnesses said. The Israeli military said that during the confrontation Palestinians hurled rocks at an Israeli civilian, who opened fire toward the 'terrorists.' Levi, a well known settler who is under international sanctions for violence toward Palestinians, was briefly arrested last week. He was quickly freed from house arrest, with a judge ruling there was no proof that Levi fired the fatal bullets. Video shot by a Palestinian witness showed Levi firing a gun twice and tussling with a group of unarmed Palestinians. In the footage, Levi accused the group of throwing rocks at him. It did not show where his shots landed. But residents said that he fired the bullet that hit Al Hathaleen in the chest, and that no one else in the encounter was armed. Israeli military and police did not respond to requests for comment on who else could have fired the fatal shot. Levi could not be reached for comment; multiple calls to his phone went unanswered. Since the killing, Israeli forces returned to the village and arrested 18 men. Villagers said at least one remains in jail — the hunger strikers are also demanding his release. A feeling of complete vulnerability On Monday, a week after Al Hathaleen was killed, Levi was back within eyesight of the village, the sound of his excavators pummeling the ground audible from the hut where the hunger-striking women sat. To Sara Hathaleen, it was a reminder of the village's vulnerability. 'They come at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning,' said the 39-year-old, who is Al Hathaleen's sister-in-law. 'It's like a horror, because we hear their cars and we know that they are coming for us. We don't know who will be next, or who they will take next.' Most of Umm al-Khair's residents are related — some closely, some distantly — and nearly all share the surname Hathaleen. Al Hathaleen and his wife use an alternate spelling. Sara Hathaleen said her own husband, Aziz, was detained by Israel after the killing and released Tuesday. 'We want to have a voice and to take part,' she said. 'The men are hurt by settlers or taken by the army, put in prison, and are not available.' Three of the women on strike — Al Hathaleen's mother, sister and widow — have needed medical attention, according to Sara Hathaleen. Israeli military and police did not respond to requests for comment on the strike. Demanding to be heard Myassar Hathaleen, 32, sat in the fasting hut with the other women. Since she stopped eating, her breast milk has dried up and she wakes at night to her infant crying to be breastfed. Her brother, Hamid, was arrested the day Al Hathaleen was killed and he has not yet been released. 'We're striking because the world needs to wake up,' said Myassar. 'We don't want to make any problems. We just want to live in justice, and in silence." Hanady Al Hathaleen, 24, said that she will settle for nothing less than a proper burial for her husband in his hometown. 'Awdah was killed here because he was resistant, in his own way,' she said. 'He was killed here and he must be buried here. The land of Umm al-Khair drinks from his blood.'
New York Post
39 minutes ago
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Full-Time Occupation: Netanyahu approves Gaza takeover
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved a plan to fully occupy the Gaza strip in hopes of ending the war with Hamas by force. Plus an illegal migrant who escaped custody thanks to help from anti-ICE activists is back in handcuffs and the manhunt for a Montana mass killer continues. Plus some big news about us - the New York Post.
Washington Post
41 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Israeli plan to occupy Gaza sparks uncertainty, fear among hostage families
TEL AVIV — Israel's plans to launch a full-scale occupation of the Gaza Strip, details of which officials are set to discuss this week, is raising questions among security officials about the future and strategy of the military campaign. It's also sparking anxiety among many relatives of hostages — they fear that expanded military operations will put their loved ones' lives at risk. The plan to occupy all of Gaza, which was reported by The Washington Post and other outlets Monday, means that military operations will also take place 'in areas where hostages are being held,' said a person familiar with the prime minister's decisions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. A decision to occupy the enclave would require approval from Israel's security cabinet, which includes Netanyahu's ultranationalist coalition partners Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Since the start of the war nearly two years ago, Ben Gvir and Smotrich have argued that a full conquest of the Palestinian enclave — and the establishment of Jewish settlements in the areas that now hold some 2 million Gazans — is the only way to achieve Israel's war goal of eliminating Palestinian militant organization Hamas. Last month, Orit Strook, who is a member of Ben Gvir and Smotrich's political bloc, said in a radio interview that 'a great effort should be made to ensure that the hostages there are not harmed, but it is wrong to avoid defeating Hamas in those areas.' But such a meeting was not scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a person familiar with decisions in Netanyahu's office, who said that only a smaller-scale 'security consultations' were expected to take place later Tuesday with top defense officials. That meeting will include Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and IDF Operations Director Itzik Cohen, according to a report on Army Radio. Many members of Israel's military and security establishment, including former top officials, have long disagreed with Netanyahu and his pro-settler coalition partners, arguing that a ceasefire deal that would release all the remaining hostages and formally end the war should be the top priority. They have also argued, in previous interviews with The Post and Israeli media as well as public statements, that 22 months of war has weakened Hamas militarily to the extent that it would no longer be able to pose the security threat on Israel that it did before Oct. 7, 2023. That's when it attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 and taking 251 hostages, and triggering Israel's devastating war in Gaza. Yair Golan, an opposition politician and former deputy chief of the staff of the IDF, posted on X a call to Zamir, to 'stand firm against the political echelon that is dragging us into an eternal war in the Gaza Strip.' Katz, the defense minister and a Netanyahu loyalist, vowed on Tuesday to 'professionally implement' the government's military plans for Gaza. 'The defeat of Hamas in Gaza, while creating the conditions for the return of the hostages, are the main objectives of the war in Gaza, and we must take all necessary actions to achieve them,' he said during a visit to the enclave. 'Once the political leadership makes the necessary decisions, the military echelon, as it has done in every front of this war, will professionally implement the policy determined.' Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 60,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says that the majority of those killed are women and children. Inside Gaza, the uncertainty over what lies ahead weighs heavy on the population. Over two years, Gazans have been exhausted by near-constant Israeli bombardment, gunfire and forced displacement, and are now in the midst of a rapidly growing starvation crisis. The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that eight people had died of malnutrition, including a child, bringing the total number of people who have died from starvation during the war to 188, including 94 children. 'The images of people starving in Gaza are heart-rending and intolerable. That we have reached this stage is an affront to our collective humanity,' U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said Monday. 'Israel continues to restrict severely humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza, and the aid that is permitted to enter is nowhere near what is needed.' COGAT, the branch of the Israeli Defense Ministry that coordinates civil affairs in the occupied territories, said Tuesday that it would again begin allowing private sector merchants to bring goods into Gaza. Netanyahu has not publicly referred to the reports about his decision to completely occupy Gaza, which came hours after his government voted to dismiss the country's attorney general, the chief prosecutor in his ongoing corruption case. Some 50 hostages are still held by Hamas and other militant groups Gaza, at least 20 of whom are presumed to be alive. 'We are gravely concerned by reports of an expansion of fighting in Gaza, which puts the hostages' lives in even greater danger,' the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which represents most of the hostage family community, said in a statement. 'We are now nearing one year since six hostages were tragically killed while IDF forces were reported nearby,' the group said, referring to the killing last year of six hostages held in a narrow tunnel underneath Rafah in southern Gaza, which horrified Israelis and brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets. An IDF investigation found that Israel's ground activities last year in the area of Rafah, in southern Gaza, 'although gradual and cautious, had a circumstantial influence' on the Hamas militants who killed the hostages. Cheeseman reported from Caldicot, Wales.
