Yes, that was the case previously, with UNRWA. The problem with them is that they were so severely infiltrated by Hamas that UNRWA members participated in Oct 7 and kept hostages at UNRWA facilities. And for literally decades they’ve been complicit and a key enabler of terrorism in Gaza.
Soldiers aren’t the ones delivering the aid, GHF is.
I ran out of generosity for people who accuse me of genocide support months ago, sorry. 
For the record, I’m pretty sure I’ve never accused anyone on the Dope of support for genocide, except maybe Gack.
No. Multiple international humanitarian organizations have asked for access to Gaza and been denied by Israel. They have chosen this path.
Above, we’ve seen evidence that the Israeli government is arming non-state actors in Gaza presumably to counterbalance Hamas.
It is completely unbelievable to think that Israel is so focused on not allowing Hamas to fund and arm itself that these extreme aid distribution methods are necessary, while at the same time pouring actual weapons into Gaza. Unless the recipient of these arms is the most disciplined militant group in history they are going to lose some of their weapons and Hamas is going to have the opportunity to take them.
To discuss this in a frame with “fighting Hamas” has become disingenuous. Israel’s actions can be 100% explained and predicted when you assume they will choose the most genocidal path at every turn.
…I need to clear things up.
In order to make the case for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Israeli leadership made a lot of almost entirely unfounded claims, in particular about UNRWA. One of those being that UNRWA has been compromised by Hamas and has infiltrated its ranks.
UNRWA have both acknowledged the accusations and asked Israel multiple times to provide them with evidence so they can investigate: Israel haven’t responded.
Secondly: every single UNRWA employee were reviewed and had to be approved by Israeli authorities. So if Hamas actually had infiltrated the ranks of UNRWA, that would represent yet another monumental failure on the part of Israel. This should be the focus. How on earth did they let this happen?
But it shouldn’t be the focus, because it didn’t happen, because there is no evidence that UNRWA is compromised.
Thirdly, there are claims in this thread that:
“Because the area surrounding the food site is not open to the public when the site isn’t distributing food. And after soldiers signal that this is a combat zone not open to civilians by firing warning shots, and people keep approaching them anyways, I have no idea how you or the article can determine that the soldiers or aid workers are not under threat in that situation.”
Gaza isn’t that big. And right now, over 80% of it is “not open to the public.” Here are the displacement orders, all dated and archived for the historical record:
One of the biggest reasons why humanitarian agencies opposed the formation of the Gaza Health Foundation is because they were setting up in areas were surrounded by militarised zones, people would have to risk their lives running the gauntlet to try and get food.
This wasn’t accidental.
It’s by design.
This isn’t how you set up aid distribution. Before the GHF there were 400 aid distribution sites in the network. Now there are only four.
And those four GHF distribution sites are only distributing food. Largely inappropriate food, stuff like dried pasta that requires water and fuel and the GHF doesn’t provide water or fuel.
In fact the GHF doesn’t provide anything else, none of the things that aid distribution sites do. There is no cooked food: something that the World Food Kitchen and others would do, because the lack of fuel and resources is something that aid agencies acknowledge happens on the ground, so they step in to fill in the gaps.
But there is no bottled water and no fuel and no nappies and no tents and no shelter and no menstrual produces. The GHF aren’t distributing aid. And sometimes they open for only four minutes. They aren’t a serious organisation.
I’ve shared an article from 972+ magazine that goes into more detail. I’ll share it again.
The pattern of daily deaths and injuries that we are seeing here are unlike anything we have ever seen before is this type of aid distribution. Again, the numbers: 33 killed on Wednesday, 49 killed on Tuesday, 17 killed on Sunday, 15 killed on Saturday, 28 killed on Friday…a pattern that has gone on for weeks now. Do you genuinely believe that this is something that is randomly happening? That Palestinians are deliberately charging daily at areas “not open to the public” and soldiers felt under threat so they opened fire?
Because if that happened a couple of days in a row that would prompt me to completely re-evaluate our methods of aid distribution. If it happened for a week I’d be tendering my resignation.
Its been happening since May.
We don’t need to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they wanted to fix this, they could have. And the fix is simple: let the hundreds of aid trucks that are being staged at the borders in. Hand back control of aid distribution back to UNRWA and the other humanitarian agencies.
Accept the terms of the ceasefire deal that Hamas have agreed to that both include releasing the last of the hostages, and more importantly: Hamas have agreed to step down. I can’t stress this enough. Hamas said months ago they would “cede control of the Gaza Strip to an interim government.” That this language was removed by both Israel and the United States and had to be replaced by Hamas during the negotiations says everything about how one party really doesn’t want the “war” to end.
The 972+ article makes a very strong case that the GHF is about depopulating much of Gaza. The pattern of displacement backs that up. I think we are in a holding pattern while Israel tries to find another country to take the Palestinians in. And we aren’t going to see anything but incremental improvements in aid distribution from now on, continued displacement into increasingly concentrated areas, and more death and destruction.
This is patently ridiculous. It is easily within Israel’s power to have simply not ordered any of the evacuations they did before performing airstrikes, and there’d be a million dead in Gaza by now.
This is true. It’s well within the power of the Israeli government to do much worse to Gazans.
But it’s also well within their power to do better. Back at the beginning of June, it was possible, though not very likely, that the problems with the GHF were teething troubles, and they would open more sites and improve their organisation. But it’s now the end of June and nothing has changed. It’s not an excuse to say “we were in a situation where there was no alternative but to shoot civilians” when you created and continue to create that situation.
If the GHF is not capable of handing aid distribution without killing people, then they need to let the international agencies back in to do it.
Not fire on starving, unarmed, desperate civilians.
I’m sorry that you can’t see what’s going on in Gaza and are in a state of denial. I get it, it is painful to admit your beloved country is committing atrocities. But it is. Gaza is being ethnically cleansed. The IDF is engaging in genocidal behavior.
This is not an isolated report. There are more and more sources coming forward with the same story. The evidence is mounting.
It reminds me very much of what parents related about disbelieving stories coming out of Europe in 1943-1945. No one wanted to believe what has happening. That didn’t make it not happen.
Also:
Because Israel has systematically dismantled more extensive networks that had been set up. They don’t want anyone who isn’t Israel to be operating there, yet they aren’t stepping up to the plate and getting the job done.
Pretty sure that’s the next step. Problem is, they won’t let anyone else in to work at the problem. But for Netanyahu, Smotrich, benGvir and their ilk that’s a feature, not a bug. They want to kill off everyone in Gaza so there is no one left to claim ownership of the land. They’ll be able to finish stealing it and “redevelop” it for their own profit.
I don’t think YOU, @Babale, support this in any way. I think you’re appalled at the very notion, which is why you’re in such denial that this is happening. I think that a lot of Israelis would be equally appalled, which is why Netanyahu’s government has worked so hard to suppress dissent and punish anyone who doesn’t adhere to his party’s line.
I get your position - my mother’s father was from Germany, and her maiden name was German. Very uncomfortable in a neighborhood that had a substantial Jewish population at the time.
If you fire “warning shots” over the heads of a crowd you WILL kill someone because what goes up comes down. That’s not a “warning” shot.
Because they are starving to death. They can either approach and hope to get food, risking death, or not approach and have certain death from lack of food. That’s a situation where they truly have nothing left to lose and you’re shocked that they act desperate?
It was a situation manufactured to make people that desperate.
Israel could have left organizations like World Kitchen intact because they actually know and have experience feeding thousands of people. Israel could have maintained hundreds of sites but instead have insisted on just four for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. That’s guaranteed to be a problem, for the same reason that Mecca has crowd crush disasters on a regular basis: too many people in too small a location.
I get it - this is not you. You are appalled at genocide and ethnic cleansing. Based on statements like
You’re a decent human being. That’s why you’re resisting the truth. It would be incredibly painful for you to admit that’s what the Israeli government and the IDF are doing in Gaza.
Your denial does not change reality.
My information is that Haaretz is a respectable newspaper, sort of like the New York Times of Israel, and not a tabloid making stuff up. I expect, now that they’re uncovering evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide, there will be a move to suppress or eliminate them from Netanyahu’s goverment. Before, Netanyahu was only worried about going to jail on corruption charges, now he could be facing crimes against humanity charges.
If it was just gallows humor no one would care.
But it involves dead bodies lying on the ground, which is no longer humorous.
This sort of reporting, from multiple sources, has been going on for weeks. You refused to lend credibility to any of them. Now the Israeli mainstream press is reporting it, and you still refuse to believe it.
Unlike people who want to condemn you for your denial, I’m not going to personally attack you. I understand, from my own family’s experience, why you are in such denial. It was much more comforting to adhere to the line that those train cars where a harsh removal process and rumors of systematic death were slander. But they weren’t.
He’s in denial. He’s a decent human being who can’t face that the government of a nation he loves and identifies with is committing atrocities. Don’t attack @Babale’s morals or ethics because I don’t think he’s a bad person, any more than my own grandfather was a bad person for having been born in Germany.
He’s going to have to face the truth in his own time, meanwhile, he will be in denial. I think we should just keep posting the evidence and let him deny it until such time he accepts the truth. Attacking him will not change his mind, it will only make him defensive
I mostly agree with Broomstick. And the reason the Israelis didn’t just bomb all the Palestinians is “plausible deniability”. Israel has laws against genocide. They can’t do it openly and obviously. So they are doing it slowly and opaquely.
But they started by killing a disproportionate number of reporters. That tells you something.
Speaking as a person from a country that has a history of fighting bloody wars then turning around and keeping the losing side from starving to death or freezing to death the subsequent winter, and even expending a crap ton of money afterward to help them rebuild…
Israel is doing it wrong.
DON’T set up a situation that will guarantee desperate people act desperate.
And when there is evidence that your soldiers did something bad have a real investigation, make the evidence public, and actually punish the guilty. Abu Ghraib was inexcusable and there was initially denial, but it actually was investigated and guilty parties went to jail. I would argue that the punishment was not really sufficient to the crimes committed but at least there was something and the US government admitted there was wrong-doing. In contrast, the IDF is always found as pure as the driven snow. The Israeli government is never wrong and indeed to criticize it in any way is to be an anti-Semitic bigot.
I’m not sure how escaping a quick death via bombs only to be systematically starved to death as soldiers shoot at you is the preferable fate. Because that’s what we’re looking at here.
Israel could let other people in with experience in both aid distribution and crowd control but they refuse again and again, despite ample evidence they are not good at distributing aid. So those of us watching from the sidelines can only conclude that the Israeli government actually has zero interest in aiding the Gazans. Indeed, quite the opposite.
They can wait till the site is open and then approach. It’s not like the only two options are “rush IDF positions” and “starve”.
This is literally preposterous.
Your argument is that, rather than just bomb Palestinians to death, Israel’s plan is to… Lure them to aid sites and shoot them?
Are you kidding me? That’s the opposite of plausible deniability.
Not an issue. The IDF is operating openly.
You can argue about that with @puzzlegal:
It’s a couple of judgements, a matter of degree.
It’s a bit insulting to insist that I’m in denial. It’s also possible that as someone intimately familiar with the region and the conflict, I have greater perspective on what is happening there than some Americans and New Zealanders who read about it online.
As someone who routinely stands just out of the way at the airline gate until my boarding group is called, i rather suspect that starving people are motivated to attempt to get as close as they can to the aid site right before it opens.
There is zero evidence they are “rushing the IDF position”. Including statements of IDF soldiers. The 4 sites don’t provide enough aid, and have irregular hours and unpredictable “safe areas” nearby. The very fact that the IDF somehow is killing people at these sites every single day is evidence that they are, charitable, badly mismanaged.
That is possible. And i started with that position. And i do value your perspective and access to Israeli news. But your responses to credible accusations of Israeli malfeasance, over and over again, have corroded your credibility. Yes, maybe every one of those claims has been false and overblown. But they started by killing a truly disproportionate number of journalists. (And you know, armies aren’t supposed to shoot at the unarmed medics and journalists, even if they are paid by the other side.) And a lot of third parties, like people from world kitchens and doctors without borders, have reported really horrible stuff, which you’ve brushed off, claiming they are all Hamas sympathizers. I think they are “innocent civilian sympathizers”.
Anyway, there’s obviously a lack of clarity as to what’s happening on the ground. But when Israeli soldiers protest their orders in mainstream Israeli newspapers, and every non-Israeli source is saying the same thing, and even the official Israeli sources say they are killing a bunch of unarmed civilians every day trying to get food. You know… What would it take to convince you that a big chunk of Israeli establishment would like to remove Palestinians from Gaza, and are working to do just that?
Terrific post, @puzzlegal.