Anthony McIntyre ☠ While this month's move by the genocidal regime of Israel can be described as vindictive and punitive, it is hardly a new departure..
Blocking aid agencies getting much needed supplies to the besieged civilian population of Gaza has for some time been a strategic weapon in the hands of the genocidaires. So when it is learned from Nir Hasson that . . .
. . . it is difficult for us to say we have in fact learned anything novel.
Israel’s decision to prevent 37 international aid organizations from continuing their work in the Gaza Strip is the latest step in a policy that has been both cruel and amateurish in its treatment of Gaza’s civilian population . . .
. . . it is difficult for us to say we have in fact learned anything novel.
Hasson can hardly be faulted for that, and rightly continues to state:
Like other dark regimes around the world, the Israeli government has spun a web of lies and conspiracies around international organizations in an effort to blur responsibility for its own grave failure.
The Israeli modus operandum is to refuse to exercise its obligations under international law, seek to assign such obligations to the United Nations and its humanitarian agencies, then smear the very organisations when they carry out the function Israel has insisted they must. When any aid does get through Israel seeks to take the credit. Israel’s Gauleiters of Government Activities in the Occupied Territories then sing their own praises.
At the end of December Israel, clearly aware of progress being made on the humanitarian front. targeted 37 agencies which it would prohibit from carrying out humanitarian aid work in Gaza. Amongst the organisations effected are ActionAid, International Rescue Committee, Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council. The progress that Israel sought to reverse was revealed in a statement by a UN official Stéphane Dujarric
The January round is the first since October 2023, in which partners had sufficient stock to meet 100 per cent of the minimum caloric standard.
The UN also stressed the need for the aid to continue unimpeded. Dujarric again expressing deep concern at the draconian Israeli initiative reversing the limited improvement in the lives of the population it has been subjecting to genocide since 2023. 'This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians.'
Israel of course in its assault on the UN and international law is not acting alone but in consort with its ally the United States. The context has been identified by the The Financial Times, a media outlet not known for hoisting the read flag and urging its readers to storm the palace. Analysing Trump's proposed Peace Board for Gaza, the paper commented:
The body was originally conceived as part of the US president’s push to create a new governance framework for the shattered Palestinian enclave in the wake of Israel’s devastating two-year offensive against Hamas. But the text of its charter, which does not mention Gaza but stresses the need for a “more nimble and effective international peace-building body”, suggests its scope would be far broader, and that the body — which will be chaired by Trump himself — could be used as a rival to the UN.
In Gramscian terms, Israel and the US are engaged in a war of position whereby the ground is being laid for a war of manoeuvre against any international institution or law that stands in the way of their unbridled imperialist aggression. If both states succeed in their joint endeavour to refashion the world in their own image, the end game most feared by Marx will have arrived - barbarism.
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