By CARLOS SAPIR
As this article was being edited, news broke of Israel’s bombing of Iran on June 12. These acts of aggression further underscore the Israeli state’s brutal motives and methods that are the focus of this article.
Spring has turned to summer, and Gaza is still starving. For years now, Israel has blocked the entry of vital aid that it is legally obligated to provide as its soldiers perch upon the ruins of what was once among the most thriving cities of the Mediterranean, its agriculture and economy now entirely defunct. The U.S., meanwhile, has been a willing accomplice, not only maintaining its decisive military and logistical support for Israel’s military, but even engaging in ludicrous pantomimes of aid provision that began under Biden and are sadistically continuing under Trump.
While the genocidal intent of Israel’s far-right government has been obvious from the start—stated plainly by Bezalel Smotrich and other ministers when merely implied by Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, and proven through its military actions in Gaza and the West Bank alike—we are nevertheless witnessing a turning point in Israel’s attacks against Palestinians.
Previously, there was a narrative that Israel could present to the public, demonizing Hamas and insisting that only removing Hamas from power could lead to peace in the region. This pretense has now crumbled. Hamas states that it is willing to step down from power, and already has been prevented by Israeli occupation from playing any real role in governing Gaza. With Hamas agreeing to hand over governance of Gaza to a technocratic government, previously the basis of the U.S. plan to end the war, Israel has run out of excuses that it can present the world as to why it continues killing and dispossessing Palestinians by the dozens to hundreds each passing day.
Although Israel’s excuses for continuing the genocide only grow more and more Kafkaesque, it is prolonging the war so that it can continue killing Palestinians with impunity. This policy is consistent with the increase of attacks and land grabs in the West Bank as well.
This murderous goal has even been publicly identified by members of Israeli’s military intelligence. Alongside an open letter signed by 41 Israeli military personnel, which denounced Israeli military orders as being “clearly illegal,” one officer noted that the Israeli military has been “willing to do everything to achieve a goal that wasn’t really a real goal … and if there is a goal, it’s to try to get rid of Gaza’s population by any means.”
How Israel avoids providing aid
There are no “safe zones” in Gaza. Israel’s genocide has targeted every piece of civilian infrastructure in the territory. Every inch of the strip is a “kill zone” and every occupant a target.
In February 2024, Israeli forces carried out the infamous and brutal “Flour Massacre.” Soldiers fired on Palestinians of all ages and genders waiting for a scheduled aid-distribution. At least 104 Palestinians, kept starving and impoverished by direct military occupation, were murdered and more than 700 injured. Now, Israel’s genocidal strategy to combine mass starvation with mass slaughter is organized formally through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Israel has systematically destroyed and banned all international aid efforts not completely subservient to itself and the United States. In their place, a shadowy “aid” initiative called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has taken control of aid distribution in the strip. The GHF participates in one of the most obvious “covert” Israeli intelligence operations of all times. The U.S.-backed GHF, which employs private security contractors, has turned all aid-distribution points into deathtraps. In a massive expansion of the “Flour Massacre,” Israeli forces have shot at civilian aid seekers and killed hundreds in the short period since the GHF began operations.
Simultaneously destroying the old aid infrastructure system, vastly decreasing the number of distribution points, and requiring submitting to Israeli surveillance (alongside international intelligence-linked mercenaries) to receive aid has created intense chaos at aid-distribution sights. In addition to allowing Palestinians to be murdered, the GHF often uses the chaos created by Israel’s psychological warfare operations to shut down aid for the day. Since the GHF began, its facilities have either been completely closed or opened for a small fraction of what was originally announced.
The GHF is simply and strictly a part of Israel’s genocidal campaign. The purpose is to utilize aid distribution to herd Palestinians into ever smaller concentration camps, leaving them exposed to be murdered or pushed into the Sinai, Libya, or any of the other proposals for ethnic cleansing that have been considered. Essentially, Palestinians can choose between starvation, execution—or possible forced exile into refugee camps abroad.
Another element of Israel’s genocidal policies is through supporting and arming gangsters who have been stealing from the aid convoys. The leading elements of these criminal groups are escaped prisoners convicted for collaboration with Israel, Salafism, and drug dealing.
According to Haaretz, roughly 100 men operate with the approval of the Israeli military near the Gaza border. They style themselves as a “National Force” that is providing security, but an armed group operating with the approval and support of the Israeli military in the context of this genocidal war provides the very opposite of security for the inhabitants of Gaza. The sabotage and interruption of aid efforts can only lead to one result: the deepening of the crisis facing Palestinians and the acceleration of the genocide.
International solidarity
Israel is not invincible, however. It is economically and militarily dependent on imperialist patronage, particularly from the U.S., which also provides the framework for the military and diplomatic cooperation between Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. While the U.S. has long been loathe to impose restraints on Israel, its support is not absolute. It weighs its support for Israel against what this costs it in terms of diplomacy in the Arab world and beyond.
And Washington is also mindful of the positions of its own populace: For decades, pro-Israel propaganda in the U.S. press has kept popular U.S. support for Israel high. However, the degree of Israel’s atrocities in the past few years, coupled with the increased visibility of foreign press and social media, have pierced this veil. Labor solidarity efforts with Palestine have steadily grown and provide a basis for a mass movement that can organize not just the thousands of the already-existing vanguard of the Palestinian solidarity movement but the millions of people who can recognize that what Israel is doing is wrong and that U.S. support for this genocide must stop.
International solidarity efforts play an important role in building awareness and moving people into action. On June 8, the aid vessel Madleen, carrying internationally-recognized activists including Greta Thunberg, was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, and its crew arrested. The sacrifices and risks incurred by the Madleen‘s crew, the sixth such convoy effort since Israel began its siege of Gaza in 2006, and the second this year alone, both unmask the senseless cruelty of Israel’s siege of Gaza and provide a basis for action—to mobilize in the crew’s home countries to demand their release, safe return, and consequences for Israel. A parallel effort to march from Egypt to the Gaza border, drawing thousands of activists and trade-union leaders from over 80 countries, is also underway. International volunteers who began their “Global March to Gaza” in Cairo will be met by another convoy of 2000 solidarity activists that left Tunis, Tunisia, last Monday.
It is vital to continue using all opportunities that present themselves to move people into solidarity with Palestine and to call for an end the genocide. In the U.S., these efforts can further combine with existing, rising mobilizations for immigrants and civil liberties that are blooming in their own right: as each of these movements recognizes how the state prepares to wield the same repressive apparatus against them, and the role that U.S. imperialism plays in advancing capitalist tyranny and cruelty everywhere.
Let Gaza Live! Freedom for the Madleen crew! Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners!
Photo: Mahmoud Issa / Reuters