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What does consuming 245 calories a day look like?

JUL 23

JULY 23, 2024 JUDYHAIVEN

Women and children of Gaza are now living on about that number of calories each day.

Garci Stars, a social media “influencer” on Youtube ate 300 calories a day for three consecutive days. She wanted to know what it would feel like to eat one scant meal each day. Stars recorded how she felt after eating one tin of tuna in water, 1 slice of toast and 1 hardboiled egg—that was the extent of her one meal a day. She proudly said she lost 2.2 kg in 3 days. But Stars had access to vitamins and minerals, and as much fresh water as she wanted. Gazans have neither.

In Gaza, there are almost no stores open: whatever there is to buy at one of the few markets is priced sky high and people can’t afford to buy the little there is. People of Gaza have almost no tins of tuna, or slices of bread. As for eggs, they are a rare luxury. One 400-gram tin of fava beans contains 240-350 calories. One mother reported to Oxfam “…looking at my children and myself, we have lost so much weight since we do not eat any proper food. We are trying to eat whatever we find, edible plants or herbs daily just to survive.”

Eating only 500 calories a day can lead to death

According to this site, eating even 500 calories a day leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, cold hands and feet, constipation, vomiting, fatigue, muscle loss, diarrhea, menstrual irregularities, and hair loss. On a more serious level, malnutrition leads to heart arrhythmia, stroke, and brain hemorrhage. For pregnant women, it is likely their babies will be born with birth defects. A consistent diet of 500 calories per day can induce dizziness, confusion, coma and lead to death.

Below: tuna, an egg and one slice of bread = 500 calories. But most women and children in Gaza live on 250 calories a day

Israel deliberately caused starvation for Palestinians in Gaza. First: Israel’s six incursions (wars on Gaza) over the last 16 years have ruined and disrupted huge swaths of agriculture. Weapons, banned munitions, shells, tanks, and bombs have destroyed soil, farm facilities, water supplies, sewers, sanitation and seriously impaired electricity generation. Livestock have beenkilled, or poisoned. Though Gaza is on the Mediterranean, Israelis have severely hampered Palestinians’ ability to fish. Palestinians used to fish up to 20 nautical miles; Israel shaved it down to six nautical miles in 2012, then down to three in 2013. Israeli gunships have attacked Gazan fishers making it too dangerous for Gazans to catch enough for their subsistence.

Since 2006: Israeli policy “put the Palestinians on a diet”

Even before Oct. 7, 2023 Gaza had to rely on food aid from NGOs and nations who were major donors. Israel has purposely restricted food intake for Palestinians. According to Human Rights Watch:

“Israeli military authorities…limited the ‘daily humanitarian portion’ of food they calculated that Gaza’s residents need[ed], apparently following a policy to ‘put them on a diet,’ as one senior Israeli official said in 2006.Israel…banned or restricted imports of items that pose no conceivable threat to Israeli security, including, among many others: tea, jam, lentils, and other goods it deemed ‘luxury items’; cooking gas; and radiotherapy equipment and medicines used in cancer treatments. It unjustifiably delayed for months or years imports of spare parts needed to repair Gaza’s damaged and decrepit electricity grid.”

Palestinians are humiliated. What the world sees is a people starved of food, eating grass and roots, unable to even feed themselves and their families and some think it is their own fault.

Since Oct 7, millions of Gazans have been deprived of clean water and food (as well as life-saving medicine, hospital supplies, and fuel) as marauding gangs of Jewish settlers have rolled boulders across Israeli highways, and used any means to prevent the few aid trucks from trickling into Gaza. The IDF has also held up trucks for hours and days at Gaza border crossings. In addition Israeli troops have shot and killed many Palestinians– including women and children who have patiently waited at depots or by the roadsides to receive rations of water and food.

Make no mistake – Israel’s starving Gazans is a war crime and a crime against humanity. On Apr. 1 2024, after the World Central Kitchen’s aid workers left their Gaza warehouses, Israel launched drone strikes that killed every food volunteer. That was deliberate.

*People inspect a World Central Kitchen vehicle destroyed by a strike on Apr. 1 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. (credit: Abdel Kareem Hana / AP)*

There are countless other accounts of Israeli sharpshooters, missiles or drones killing Gazans trying to get food. We all know the statistic: prior to Oct 7, more than 500 food and aid trucks entered Gaza daily. From Oct. 7 to April 1, 2024 only 12,197 trucks total were allowed into Gaza– that is an average of 68 trucks per day or just over 13% of the number of trucks allowed in prior to Oct. 7.

Starvation is rampant; deaths from starvation and illnesses due to disease, lack of clean water, and living in subhuman conditions (either out on the streets, or in the ruins of the thousands of bombed out buildings) are common.

Perhaps we should ask a Canadian doctor what can be done?!

Don’t bother to ask members of ‘Canadian Jewish Physicians’

But don’t bother to ask any of the 555 Toronto area Jewish doctors affiliated with University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine. They are members of a private FB group Canadian Jewish Physicians. The very name – Canadian Jewish Physicians is unspeakably arrogant and draws attention to the fact that they feel they are distinct and better from the myriad of humanitarian doctors in Canada who want to stop the war, and save Palestinians’ lives.

Instead, the Canadian Jewish Physicians claim “the Zionist impulse to defend themselves, their people, their state, their highest ideals and Western civilization” means they must condemn discrimination against Jews who support Israel. Their idea of protecting “western civilization” is patently colonial and racist. One of the “Canadian Jewish Physicians,” Dr Philip Berger, notes (with no evidence at all) that the demands of pro-Palestinian activists are “a call for the murder of Jews.” So Berger “understands the need right now to empower Jews.” He says this “is a fight to death for Jews and a fight that Jews alone have to wage.” What? This is absurd; there is not one scintilla from Berger as a spokesman and author of the open letter or any one else in the Jewish doctors’ group that admits to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.

“Counting the dead in Gaza; difficult but essential”… The Lancet

The “proudly” Jewish doctors may know the harm that 250 calorie a day diet will do, yet they must agree with Israel’s starving the Gazans to death as they surely don’t condemn it. That is because the Jewish doctors believe it is the Jews who are under threat of death – not the Palestinians. Yet the top British medical journal, The Lancet, has recently published an article “Counting the dead in Gaza; difficult but essential” which suggests Israel’s nine-month war has killed more than 180,000 Palestinians in the most terrible and brutal ways.

You would do better to ask a group of more than 3,700 Canadian doctors, nurses, and health care workers about how 245 calories a day affects a population. Those medical people signed the petition circulated online by Health Workers Alliance for Palestine (HAP). They want a ceasefire now and they call for the end of Israeli genocide.

So threatening is the HAP group that the “Jewish Physicians” group openly and spitefully plotted to punish the petition-signers by, among other things, lobbying to deny med school graduates of their chosen medical residencies.

A Palestinian boy looks over as he stands on the rubble of buildings destroyed in previous Israel bombardment, on the edge of a pool of stagnant water in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 19, 2024. (Credit: BASHAR TALEB / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

What’s next in Gaza: a Polio outbreak

Oh– another thing: today’s news is that polio has been reported in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Polio is a disease that has been virtually wiped out throughout the world. Filth, lack of sanitation, no access to handwashing, contact with infected feces, lack of clean water and eating and drinking contaminated food or water are the causes. Israeli soldiers are now getting vaccinated because polio was detected in sewage in Gaza. It is doubtful the Palestinians will get access to immunization anytime soon.

Image at the top: Nesrine mixes flour with water to make bread as her grandchildren watch [credit: Said Khatib/AFP]