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Qatar Tribune
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Qatar Tribune
Israel's starvation of Gaza is a cruel display of impunity of power
Ammiel Alcalay A grim and powerful act of protest has taken place in Gaza. In the midst of the Israeli-US-imposed blockade on food and humanitarian aid - a policy that has already caused many Palestinians to die - a significant public figure has himself gone on hunger strike. On Sunday, 20 July, Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza and long persecuted by the Israeli occupation for documenting conditions on the ground, announced a hunger strike. 'I am Mahmoud Basal, a Palestinian citizen, a free human being,' he declared. 'For days now, I have been living on scraps of food, like more than two million citizens. Due to the lack of basic food in the Gaza Strip, I declare a full hunger strike in protest against the catastrophic famine striking Gaza, and in solidarity with more than two million people who have been left to face death by starvation amid shameful global silence.' While Israel has long used food as a weapon – measuring out the bare minimum number of calories required to keep Gaza's population on the brink of malnutrition – we are now witnessing the radical consequences of restrictions and blockades that have been normalised over decades. This strategy was infamously outlined in a 2008 Israeli position paper, Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip - Red Lines. 'Unbearable loss' Incremental yet relentless waves of dehumanising propaganda in western media and political discourse, reinforced by repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza that leave mass death and devastation in their wake, have brought us to the horrific present reality. Now, Israeli forces target unarmed, starving people in search of food using snipers, artillery and drones - people who are then presented not as victims, but as trespassers on their own land. Relentless propaganda and repeated Israeli assaults have brought us to this horrific present reality On the same day Basal announced his hunger strike, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mosab Abu Toha – displaced from his destroyed home in Beit Lahia to Egypt and, eventually, the US - posted on X: 'Today was a day of unbearable loss. My cousin was killed, my wife's brother and another cousin were wounded, and many of my friends from the neighbourhood returned with amputated limbs. These were young men –sons, fathers –who had to set out, desperate to bring back even a little food for their families.' While Israel foments further chaos in Syria and Lebanon to divert attention and consolidate territorial control – part of a meticulously planned attempt to fully dominate the region - British surgeon Nick Maynard has reported consistent patterns of gunshot injuries at newly established aid distribution sites. Noting 'clear patterns of injury', Dr Maynard described victims –mainly teenage boys - as being deliberately targeted in different parts of the body, depending on the day. 'On one day they'll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they'll all be head or neck gunshot wounds, on another they'll be arm or leg gunshot almost as if a game is being played, that they're deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after,' he said. Campus complicity Meanwhile, in the US, the news cycle functions as a constant distraction - through contrived political scandals, economic chaos driven by the tariff mood of the day, or congressional hearings on 'antisemitism' at US universities. At these show trials, the university administrators summoned for questioning are themselves among the institutional actors who have hollowed out academia to its core. Research fields that develop the technical means to kill and control populations that resist, while manufacturing consent for those very policies, receive institutional priority due to corporate sponsorship. Yet these same administrators stand accused of not doing enough to ban, silence, arrest, or otherwise suppress any expression of free speech on campus - so long as that speech supports Palestinian liberation or criticises US or Israeli policy. All of this reinforces the false dichotomies of US institutional discourse – as if most, if not all, institutions were not aligned with the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Like a deer in headlights, Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez of the City University of New York (CUNY) feigned ignorance under Congresswoman Elise Stefanik's relentless interrogation, repeatedly claiming he 'wasn't aware of' or 'did not know about' this or that individual or event. Yet even before the hearings, and in hopes of appeasing the insatiable bloodlust of genocide denial, Rodriguez had already offered up four contingent CUNY professors – the most precarious segment of academic labour – as sacrificial lambs, ensuring their dismissal without cause due to their involvement in Palestine-related activism. How did we get here? Fading empires The famine in Yemen was neither live-streamed nor regarded as a significant component of US foreign policy. Thus, the steadfast support of Ansar Allah, Yemen's armed Houthi movement, for Gaza and Palestine can be made to seem 'irrational' – as though there were no link between past atrocities and present resistance. As global power shifts towards multipolarity, and new alliances form along emergent trade routes, the US and EU have entered a phase of panic familiar to fading empires. The years leading up to the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020 were characterised by some of the most massive public displays of political protest across the globe since the 1960s. From the Great March of Return in Gaza and the Algerian Hirak, to mass uprisings in Iraq, Lebanon's 17 October popular uprising, the Yellow Vests in France, and demonstrations in Catalonia, Chile, Hong Kong and beyond, the world seemed on fire. But those determined to maintain power were often more attuned to the global resonances between these movements than many of the participants themselves. New feudal order As with the post-9/11 moment, the policies enacted in response to the pandemic reshaped societies almost overnight: restricting basic human rituals, from funerals to visiting the sick and elderly, while enabling massive wealth transfers. People were taught to fear one another - to fear contact, proximity and community. New digital powers and the complete relativising of the principles of free speech and unrestrained movement transformed societies almost overnight. Changes in civil liberties, economies, supply chains, trade routes - and almost every aspect of life - seemed to bring the future, so to speak, back to the past. There is no justification for starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza - and claiming it can't be stopped is a lie of the highest magnitude That past is also the Cold War past that liberal democracies and a fading US empire continue to cling to, propped up by the perpetual manufacture of existential enemies. In 1944, anthropologist Gregory Bateson - then working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA - remarked: 'It is very important to sponsor spectatorship among the superiors and exhibitionism among the inferiors.' Historically denied the means to defend themselves by far more powerful states, the present anguish of unarmed Palestinians searching for food to survive yet another day - in a world that has betrayed them on every front - is a harbinger to all rational people with eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to think, as we enter a new feudal order. There is no justification whatsoever for the forced starvation and wanton killing of Palestinians in Gaza, now or ever. And the idea that mechanisms to stop it are unavailable or do not exist is a lie of the highest magnitude. The day after Basal's declaration, a young Egyptian activist at the Hague chained shut the Egyptian embassy gates, scattered flour across the pavement, and smashed eggs against the entrance in protest. In that moment of small, defiant spectacle, a whole edifice of lies appeared to fall apart. The only conclusion we can draw is that we are witnessing a deliberate effort to showcase the impunity of power, an effort designed to annihilate the very possibility of political reciprocity, justice and law. This monstrosity must be defeated, at any cost - and everything must be remembered, in fine detail, to hold those responsible to account. (Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic and scholar. He is the author of more than 25 books, most recently Controlled Demolition: a work in four books, and his co-translation of Nasser Rabah's Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece.)
Middle East Eye
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Israel's starvation of Gaza is a cruel display of the impunity of power
A grim and powerful act of protest has taken place in Gaza. In the midst of the Israeli-US-imposed blockade on food and humanitarian aid - a policy that has already caused many Palestinians to die - a significant public figure has himself gone on hunger strike. On Sunday, 20 July, Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza and long persecuted by the Israeli occupation for documenting conditions on the ground, announced a hunger strike. "I am Mahmoud Basal, a Palestinian citizen, a free human being," he declared. "For days now, I have been living on scraps of food, like more than two million citizens. Due to the lack of basic food in the Gaza Strip, I declare a full hunger strike in protest against the catastrophic famine striking Gaza, and in solidarity with more than two million people who have been left to face death by starvation amid shameful global silence." While Israel has long used food as a weapon - measuring out the bare minimum number of calories required to keep Gaza's population on the brink of malnutrition - we are now witnessing the radical consequences of restrictions and blockades that have been normalised over decades. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters This strategy was infamously outlined in a 2008 Israeli position paper, Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip - Red Lines. 'Unbearable loss' Incremental yet relentless waves of dehumanising propaganda in western media and political discourse, reinforced by repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza that leave mass death and devastation in their wake, have brought us to the horrific present reality. Now, Israeli forces target unarmed, starving people in search of food using snipers, artillery and drones - people who are then presented not as victims, but as trespassers on their own land. Relentless propaganda and repeated Israeli assaults have brought us to this horrific present reality On the same day Basal announced his hunger strike, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mosab Abu Toha - displaced from his destroyed home in Beit Lahia to Egypt and, eventually, the US - posted on X: "Today was a day of unbearable loss. My cousin was killed, my wife's brother and another cousin were wounded, and many of my friends from the neighbourhood returned with amputated limbs. These were young men - sons, fathers - who had to set out, desperate to bring back even a little food for their families." While Israel foments further chaos in Syria and Lebanon to divert attention and consolidate territorial control - part of a meticulously planned attempt to fully dominate the region - British surgeon Nick Maynard has reported consistent patterns of gunshot injuries at newly established aid distribution sites. Noting "clear patterns of injury", Dr Maynard described victims - mainly teenage boys - as being deliberately targeted in different parts of the body, depending on the day. "On one day they'll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they'll all be head or neck gunshot wounds, on another they'll be arm or leg gunshot almost as if a game is being played, that they're deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after," he said. Campus complicity Meanwhile, in the US, the news cycle functions as a constant distraction - through contrived political scandals, economic chaos driven by the tariff mood of the day, or congressional hearings on "antisemitism" at US universities. At these show trials, the university administrators summoned for questioning are themselves among the institutional actors who have hollowed out academia to its core. Why academic scholarship on Israel and Palestine threatens western elites Read More » Research fields that develop the technical means to kill and control populations that resist, while manufacturing consent for those very policies, receive institutional priority due to corporate sponsorship. Yet these same administrators stand accused of not doing enough to ban, silence, arrest, or otherwise suppress any expression of free speech on campus - so long as that speech supports Palestinian liberation or criticises US or Israeli policy. All of this reinforces the false dichotomies of US institutional discourse - as if most, if not all, institutions were not aligned with the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Like a deer in headlights, Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez of the City University of New York (CUNY) feigned ignorance under Congresswoman Elise Stefanik's relentless interrogation, repeatedly claiming he "wasn't aware of" or "did not know about" this or that individual or event. Yet even before the hearings, and in hopes of appeasing the insatiable bloodlust of genocide denial, Rodriguez had already offered up four contingent CUNY professors - the most precarious segment of academic labour - as sacrificial lambs, ensuring their dismissal without cause due to their involvement in Palestine-related activism. How did we get here? Fading empires The famine in Yemen, a result of the US-supported Saudi intervention and blockade that began in 2016, was neither live-streamed nor regarded as a significant component of US foreign policy. Thus, the steadfast support of Ansar Allah, Yemen's armed Houthi movement, for Gaza and Palestine can be made to seem "irrational" - as though there were no link between past atrocities and present resistance. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war As global power shifts towards multipolarity, and new alliances form along emergent trade routes, the US and EU have entered a phase of panic familiar to fading empires. The years leading up to the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020 were characterised by some of the most massive public displays of political protest across the globe since the 1960s. From the Great March of Return in Gaza and the Algerian Hirak, to mass uprisings in Iraq, Lebanon's 17 October popular uprising, the Yellow Vests in France, and demonstrations in Catalonia, Chile, Hong Kong and beyond, the world seemed on fire. But those determined to maintain power were often more attuned to the global resonances between these movements than many of the participants themselves. New feudal order As with the post-9/11 moment, the policies enacted in response to the pandemic reshaped societies almost overnight: restricting basic human rituals, from funerals to visiting the sick and elderly, while enabling massive wealth transfers. People were taught to fear one another - to fear contact, proximity and community. New digital powers and the complete relativising of the principles of free speech and unrestrained movement transformed societies almost overnight. Changes in civil liberties, economies, supply chains, trade routes - and almost every aspect of life - seemed to bring the future, so to speak, back to the past. There is no justification for starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza - and claiming it can't be stopped is a lie of the highest magnitude That past is also the Cold War past that liberal democracies and a fading US empire continue to cling to, propped up by the perpetual manufacture of existential enemies. In 1944, anthropologist Gregory Bateson - then working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA - remarked: "It is very important to sponsor spectatorship among the superiors and exhibitionism among the inferiors." Historically denied the means to defend themselves by far more powerful states, the present anguish of unarmed Palestinians searching for food to survive yet another day - in a world that has betrayed them on every front - is a harbinger to all rational people with eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to think, as we enter a new feudal order. There is no justification whatsoever for the forced starvation and wanton killing of Palestinians in Gaza, now or ever. And the idea that mechanisms to stop it are unavailable or do not exist is a lie of the highest magnitude. The day after Basal's declaration, a young Egyptian activist in Amsterdam chained shut the Egyptian embassy gates, scattered flour across the pavement, and smashed eggs against the entrance in protest. In that moment of small, defiant spectacle, a whole edifice of lies appeared to fall apart. The only conclusion we can draw is that we are witnessing a deliberate effort to showcase the impunity of power, an effort designed to annihilate the very possibility of political reciprocity, justice and law. This monstrosity must be defeated, at any cost - and everything must be remembered, in fine detail, to hold those responsible to account. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Qatar Tribune
13-07-2025
- Qatar Tribune
Children collecting water among 59 Gazans killed by Israel
Agencies Israeli air raids across the Gaza Strip have killed more than 59 Palestinians, at least 10 of them near a water distribution point, including six children, according to Palestinian Civil Defence. Mahmoud Basal, civil defence spokesman, told the AFP news agency there were multiple Israeli strikes on Gaza City overnight and early morning on Sunday, resulting in eight deaths, 'including women and children', with additional injuries reported. An Israeli attack on a home near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the south of Gaza City caused '10 martyrs and several injured', he said. An Israeli drone attack in central Gaza 'hit a potable water distribution point in an area for displaced people', killing eight Palestinians, including six children, with several others wounded. Additionally, three people died when Israeli jets struck a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the southern coastal area of al-Mawasi, according to Basal. On Saturday, Israeli forces killed at least 110 Palestinians across Gaza, including 34 people waiting for food at the controversial GHF distribution site in Rafah. At least 67 children have died of hunger in Gaza since October 2023, Gaza's Government Media Office said on Saturday. Furthermore, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned of a sharp rise in malnutrition cases as Israel's blockade of the coastal enclave entered its 103rd day. In a statement, the agency said one of its clinics in Gaza has seen an increase in the number of malnutrition cases since March when the Israeli siege started. 'UNRWA hasn't been allowed to bring in any humanitarian aid since,' it said. The warnings came as Israeli forces continued to target starving Palestinians. On Sunday, an Israeli warplane struck a house in the al-Sawarkah area west of the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 10 people. In the northern Gaza Strip, six Palestinians were killed and others injured when an Israeli warplane bombed a house in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City. Five others were killed and several more injured in a separate air strike that hit a house on Hamid Street in western Gaza City.
Al Jazeera
13-07-2025
- Health
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Israelis kill Palestinian children near water distribution point
Published On 13 Jul 2025 13 Jul 2025 Israeli air raids across the Gaza Strip have killed more than 30 Palestinians, at least 10 of them near a water distribution point, including six children, according to Palestinian Civil Defence. Mahmoud Basal, civil defence spokesman, told the AFP news agency there were multiple Israeli strikes on Gaza City overnight and early morning on Sunday, resulting in eight deaths, 'including women and children', with additional injuries reported. An Israeli attack on a home near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the south of Gaza City caused '10 martyrs and several injured', he said. An Israeli drone attack in central Gaza 'hit a potable water distribution point in an area for displaced people', killing eight Palestinians, including six children, with several others wounded. Additionally, three people died when Israeli jets struck a tent housing displaced Palestinians in the southern coastal area of al-Mawasi, according to Basal. On Saturday, Israeli forces killed at least 110 Palestinians across Gaza, including 34 people waiting for food at the controversial GHF distribution site in Rafah. Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 57,882 people and wounded 138,095 others, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.
The National
15-06-2025
- The National
Foreign Office travel warning against all travel to Israel
Any UK nationals in Israel should follow advice from local authorities, the FCDO said. The new advice says: 'We recognise this is a fast-moving situation that poses significant risks. The situation has the potential to deteriorate further, quickly and without warning. The current situation has disrupted air links out of the country and may disrupt road links.' It added: 'Follow instructions from the Israeli government. Restrictions may be put in place at short notice. Should you be in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and not have access to Home Front Command continue to follow local instructions including from Palestinian Civil Defence.' Consular support is limited, but the FCDO said any British national requiring urgent support should contact them on +44 176 766 7600. The FCDO advises against all travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. British nationals should continue to follow the advice of local authorities. — Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) June 15, 2025 More to follow ...
