Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens

Buoyant blog of septuagenarian Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and annual Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 22,924 readers in June.

Showing posts with label genocide in Gaza. Show all posts

Monday, 14 July 2025

How Impunity Works in Gaza (Judy Haiven's blog post)

It used to be I could never understand how such an obvious whacko like Hitler orchestrated the Nazi death camps. Now I understand . . . most of us are too busy with their own petty lives to give a shit.

How Impunity Works...

JUL 14

READ IN APP

Home
About
Topics

July 14, 2025 judyhaiven

Edit

It must feel good to have one of the best trained and best equipped armies in the world, and have them run everything in Gaza and the West Bank themselves—without pesky overseers on their case.

No need for supervisors, no need for discipline, no need for accountability. Just do whatever you want to the Palestinians. It must be wonderful to know that whatever you do to them, the chances of ever being disciplined are next to nil — they don’t count. A good example was January 2024when an Israeli tank (remember, there are no Palestinian tanks, no armed drones, nor two-tonne bombs) sitting 20 metres from Hind Rajab’s family car in Gaza City riddled the car and occupants with at least 335 rounds of bullets. Every investigation has shown that the IDF soldiers in the tank saw the family car, noted the children in the car and deliberately killed them plus their relatives – 7 people — in Gaza City, in January 2024. Hind’s personal wait for death lasted three hours as she stayed on the phone with the Palestinian Red Cross ambulance dispatcher saying, “I’m so scared, please come. Come take me. Please, will you come?” The tank waited patiently for the ambulance to arrive; when it did, the IDF shot the two paramedics to death as well. No discipline was meted out to the IDF killers, or their officers.

*Hind Rajab (above). Investigation reveals Rajab’s car was hit with 335 bullets and finds it ‘not plausible’ that Israeli tank couldn’t see children inside car (credit: Middle East Eye)*

A little cheering for the IDF from the Knesset is always welcome. In February, 2025, the Deputy Speaker of Israel’s parliament (Knesset) called for executing all Palestinian men in Gaza, saying they are all “scum and subhumans.” He also called for the annihilation of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

Nissim Vaturi, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for separating the women and children in Gaza and executing the men.

“Who is innocent in Gaza? …We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate,” said Vaturi.

That’s a tad better than some Israelis who refuse to give a break even to women or children. For example in May 2025, a former extreme right-wing Knesset member, Moishe Feiglin noted,

“Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there. There is no other victory.”

On 1 April, The IDF ambushed and murdered 15 aid workers including 8 medics, 6 civil defense workers and a UN employee on their way to Tal al-Sultan in Rafah to give emergency medical assistance to scores of injured Palestinians following the IDF shelling of the area. One person managed to escape temporarily. A medic – who was killed–had taken a video of the Israel ambush. Israel’s top military people lied outright – the proof was on the video taken on the medic’ cell phone. Israel buried the 15 men in shallow sandy graves. The aid workers had been ordered to kneel, hands zip tied together, then executed at point blank range. Buried along with them were the ambulances and two fire trucks the IDF set on fire. The IDF is nothing but resourceful – they tried to hide all the evidence of their attack — because setting fire didn’t quite work.

“Why did you shoot” a man asleep

The situation is so bad that sometimes Israeli soldiers berate their own comrades. Recently, the IDF entered a home in the West Bank. One soldier went into a bedroom and shot to death a sleeping man. His fellow soldiers berated him “Why did you shoot? Are you crazy?” Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that this “crazy” soldier will be disciplined in any way. Most Israel soldiers know this, proving that they are not crazy.

But really what’s the point in spending all that money, and education and training for IDF soldiers when clearly anything goes in Gaza and the West Bank? The Most Moral Army in the World surely has basic tenets of humanitarianism bred into them. The Most Moral Army in the World surely has discipline drilled into them. IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. The US and Israel are also keen to train and utilize soldiers from other wars former intelligence officials, and evangelical Christians to deliver food to Gaza . The hitch is that many of the ex-soldiers employed are murderers – sharpshooters, snipers and tank gunners who killed more than 800 unarmed Palestinians in the last six weeks who had arrived for aid.

*Relatives carry the body of a 13-year-old killed in an Israeli strike on a drinking water distribution point, in Nuseirat on Sunday. (Credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)*

Yesterday alone 110 Palestinians were killed, 34 were lining up for food aid. As Mitchell Plitnick, US policy expert and author (who is Jewish) and against the genocide, wrote about the IDF murdering civilians,

“They do it every single day. We’ve allowed it to become so routine it’s not even news anymore.”

Naturally all this wouldn’t be possible without the money (more than $18 billion since 10/7), weapons (more $16 billion in military weapons the last year and a half ) and military support given by the US (and its allies such as Canada). However, all the support for Israel from western countries, and theIslamophobic and anti-Palestinian racist western media pump out on Israel’s behalf, prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy points out, Israel still has “no clue” how to deal with Gaza, aside from continuing the genocide.

Levy contends that it makes no difference if a Republican or Democratic administration were in power in the United States or if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or another politician were in power in Israel. Levy said, “The same war might have taken place, and the same crimes of war would have been committed.”

Israel’s pogroms

The fact is that Israel and the IDF ignore the evidence and accusations of genocide. Indeed they usually fight back with their “antiterrorist,” and “defeating Hamas” nonsense. One thing Israeli government and the IDF rarely do is to consider how murdering tens of thousands of Palestinians in cold blood (the number surpasses a 110,000 dead when you consider the thousands buried in the ruins of their homes destroyed by Israeli bombs, missiles and drones) affects Israeli Jews. For instance just this Friday, Israeli settlers beat a 20-year-old Palestinian (a visiting relative who was a US citizen) to death and killed a 23-year-old Palestinian by shooting him in the back. He bled to death on the road. According to witness, these murders happened on a Palestinian family farm near Ramallah, in the West Bank. Dozens of Jewish settlers prevented an ambulance from attending for three hours, then assaulted the medics. The Palestinians demanded an inquest by the US state department that could hold the settlers responsible.

*Palestinians look on as a fire burns on a hilltop seized by Israeli settlers near Sinjil (Occupied West Bank)on 4 July (credit: AFP)*

But just as in the case of the murder of Palestinian TV journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, there will be little to no investigation, and zero accountability. These are pogroms, plain and simple. What the Jews in Israel, in its government and its military have learned is there is no accountability and little cost to whatever they do to the Palestinians. The genocide in Gaza now could easily spread to the Occupied West Bank and five million more Palestinians will suffer as the Gazans are.

Image at the top: The bodies of two children lie on the hospital floor of a Project Hope-run medical clinic in Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, after an Israeli strike on Thursday 10 July [credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo]

Sunday, 29 June 2025

Israel Starving Women and Children of Gaza (Judy Haiven's blog)

War Crime: Israel Deliberately Starves Women and Children in Gaza

JUN 25

READ IN APP

Home
About
Topics

June 25, 2025 judyhaiven

Edit

How to deliver food to Gaza: Let’s count the ways.

Last year the US floated (literally) the idea of food drops from the air over Gaza. By March 2024, there had been 11 food drops, each dropping 35,700 ready-to-eat meals and 31,800 bottles of water. The problem was that people could not reach the food parcels, many were injured as people rushed to catch the stashes. At the time, there were more than 2.5 million in Gaza in need of food since Israel has refused to allow most aid from food to medicine to other essentials. But the US believed that dropping 35,000 meals – enough to give one lunch to 1.4% of the Palestinians –would somehow do the trick.

*Food aid to be dropped in ocean, March 2024*

Then there was the pier, remember that? The US built a $230 million pier from Gaza into the Mediterranean that the US had to dismantle after barely two months in service. The pier was to allow for aid to come by ship into Gaza— but critics noted that instead of using the pier to offload aid, Israel had to be pressured to open land borders for aid trucks to enter. Quite simply, trucks carried far more aid and were able to distribute it more widely than a sea drop off. At the time, in July 2024, 96% of Palestinians were food insecure and one in five faced starvation.

In the first 10 days of June 2025, of the UN’s 139 planned aid deliveries across Gaza coordinated with Israeli authorities, 72 were denied, nine impeded, 18 withdrawn, and 40 facilitated. Overall, of the 139 arranged food deliveries, Israel allowed only 28% through. And the people are starving.

2025 Pulitzer prize winning author Palestinian Mosab Abu Toha wrote recently in The New Yorker about what his relatives in Gaza tell him about food in video-calls He spoke to his uncle in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, where Toha and his wife Maram grew up. On his mobile phone screen, Toha saw his uncle, aunt and four adult children sitting to eat, plus empty plates piled nearby. The meal consisted of one scoop of plain, white rice for each of the six — “That’s the only type of food we’ve had for weeks,” said the uncle. “We let ourselves imagine there is salad and some chicken and pickles as we chew the rice.”

Toa contacted an aunt in Gaza City who lived in a tent on the street. There was the sound of digging in the background to his video call.

In Gaza- Palestinians burn asphalt to cook food

“Your Uncle Jaleel is hammering at the asphalt,” she explained. I was shocked when she explained why: they were burning it to cook food. “We ran out of wood and paper,” Aunt Iman said. “The asphalt contains petroleum.” Her skin looked dark from exposure to heat and soot.

I asked her if they had received any food recently. “Nothing at all,” she told me.

“Not even from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?”

“Nothing,” she said.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is an Israel-US-backed food charity that Israel has used to elbow out all aid, including food aid for the millions of starving Palestinians, from UN agencies and Palestinian-friendly NGOs. Aid given by professional charitable organizations during Israel’s 18-year siege of Gaza helped Palestinians survive – the delivery of aid never killed anyone before now.

However, GHF’s distribution has destroyed thousands of Palestinians’ lives—and GHF has only been distributing food aid for four weeks. During that time, IDF snipers have shot dead more than 400 Palestinians and seriously wounded another 1858 at the five food distribution sites the IDF set up in Gaza, where tens of thousands had gathered to get seek food aid. Israeli snipers regularly shoot and kill the starving Gazans who are waiting for food.

Gaza food aid is a “death trap”

Early in June, Reem Zeidan, a 42 year old mother of eight, walked overnight with two of her children from their tent in Khan Younis to Rafah – 9 km –to get to a GHF food distribution site by dawn. The family stopped at a rest stop to nap. Zeidan’s son Ahmad,12, witnessed this:

“Suddenly, the snipers started shooting. The artillery began shelling. The tanks were firing too,” Ahmad said. He heard drones and quadcopters hovering overhead. “There was nothing left untouched, not even the sea. They were bombing there too.”

An Israeli sniper or drone killed Zeidan. She was one of 30 Palestinians killed for trying to get food– in Zeidan’s case a mere bag of flour — on 3 June.

Palestinians carry an injured man after he was shot at an aid distribution center run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation a U.S.-backed organization approved by Israel in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, 29 May, 2025. (credit: AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Yesterday 46 people were shot and killed when Israeli forces opened fire as Palestinians approached the aid truck at two food stations.

As UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted on X,

“Day after day, casualties and scores of injured are reported at distribution points manned by Israel and private security companies.” Not only did this “humiliating system” force thousands of hungry and desperate people to walk very long distances, “excluding the most vulnerable and those living too far… [the] system does not intend to address hunger.”

Israeli tanks taking position next to an humanitarian aid packages distribution center delivered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed organization approved by Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, 29 May, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

How much food has the GHF actually distributed? One source claims GHF delivered nearly nine million meals — or enough to feed 2.3 million Gazans only two and a half meals.

To break the siege of Gaza, earlier in June, 12 people including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, travelled aboard the boat the Madleen from Sicily to Gaza. They did this to bring food and supplies to Gaza—but more to draw the world’s attention to the starving Palestinians. In international waters, the IDF boarded the vessel and commandeered it to an Israeli port. While Thunberg, a world-famous environmentalist, was sent back to Sweden, three members of the crew remain illegally jailed in Israeli prisons, and could be held for another month. Support groups have demanded the French and Dutch governments call for their citizens’ release.

Recently 4,000 activists from 80 countries massed in Cairo to begin the Global March to Gaza. The plan was to march or take a convoy the 319 km to Gaza’s Rafah crossing to demand an end to Israel’s siege, but Egypt has harassed and arrested marchers— because Egypt doesn’t want to upset Israel.

The genocide against Palestinians is live-streamed 24/7 — it is no “conflict” or “war” as the Zionists and the western media like to say. Starvation – and the deaths from starvation – are there for all to see.

Image at the top: People who have taken refuge in school run by the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza are struggling to survive as they lack access to basic humanitarian needs. Note the girl carrying her doll. Latest data simulations from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) point to the average Gazan eating just 1,400 calories per day – “or 67 per cent of what a human body needs to survive” (2,300 calories) as of May. (photo credit: © UNRWA)