The first test of delivering food aid to Gaza via the sea is a success:
We did it! Teams of @WCKitchen and @openarms_fund working hard to offload all 200 tons…12 trucks! This was a test! To learn…we could bring thousands of tons a week..with what we learn we will get better…working with the local communities of Palestinians “Operation Safeena” is… pic.twitter.com/tX5FdGlhGB
— José Andrés 🇺🇸🇪🇸🇺🇦 (@chefjoseandres) March 15, 2024
I've been shocked by the hardliners who are actively contemptuous of these efforts. It's one thing to say that the only real solution is a ceasefire, but it's quite another to oppose humanitarian efforts like food drops and seaborne deliveries just because the war hasn't stopped.
In other news, a large shipment of food from Turkey was finally released from the port of Ashdod a few days ago and has now reached Gaza. Israel has also opened a new road crossing from the village of Beeri in northern Gaza, allowing more aid to get directly to Gaza City, which still has about 300,000 residents even after the evacuations early in the war.
In a few weeks the larger US seaborne efforts will start up, even as airdrops directly into Gaza continue.
This is all heartbreakingly too little and too late. But the combination of political pressure and facts on the ground have finally gotten things moving. In the end, even Bibi Netanyahu recoiled at the prospect of tens of thousands of Gazan children dying of starvation in refugee camps. This was most likely for cynical reasons of optics, but who cares? All that matters is that we're finally getting food in, one way or another.
Yes, the food aid is a good thing, but we must keep in mind
* Israel turns away at least half of the trucks coming to gates that they control. None of those shipments are allowed in.
* Israel requires that all air drops be made from over 12,000 feet, so that over half of them blow out to sea and are lost, or into Israel and are confiscated.
* Israeli public opinion runs to killing them all, and groups of demonstrators periodically shut down Israeli controlled crossings. The Israeli soldiers there do nothing, essentially cheering them on.
The best outcome for Israel would be winning this battle. However, they've lost the rest of the world, maybe even a little of their goodwill with Good Old Uncle Sucker.
... not to mention that the IDF waits until there is a good crowd of Gazans around the food and then opens fires on them.
Yes. This has been happening over and over again. Once, maybe a mistake. Constant repetition? It's government policy.
Putting out even a salt lick is illegal when you're hunting deer. Just sayin' ...
They don't open fire on them but above them. The resulting stampeding is as effective and better for pubic relations.
How do 80% or more of the victims have bullet wounds from a "stampede"?
Israel doesn't even bother to lie convincingly anymore. Like their army kicking back on October 7 and ignoring Hamas's planning and trial runs in full public view so soldiers could divert to harass and kill West Bank Palestinians (oh, sorry! "protect their settlers"). Lazy. Cocky. What-me-worry dumb.
Observers on the scene describe the Israeli tanks -- TANKS!! -- suddenly opening fire on the crowd waiting for food. Not just a couple of scared new recruits. And the tanks just kept firing.
UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (Reuters) - Nearly five million people in Sudan could suffer catastrophic hunger in parts of the war-torn country in the coming months, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths warned the Security Council on Friday in a note seen by Reuters. Griffiths said acute levels of hunger were being driven by the severe impact of the conflict on agricultural production, damage to major infrastructure and livelihoods, disruptions to trade flows, severe price increases, impediments to humanitarian access and large-scale displacement.
Right. Mr. Drum doesn’t care. Why is that?
Uhh, weirdly no, he supports aid to starving people. But 'could' be hungry isn't 'currently dying from starvation'.
Justin seems like a youngster who doesn't read well.
Look! Over there! A different problem!
"Whataboutism." A companion technique to "bothsiderism." Each a way to sidestep the issue that's actually being discussed.
What are YOU, Mr Justin, doing to help the Sudan 5M? Huh?
I am in no position to help or hurt anyone. So I don’t pick sides. Certainly not in Sudan. Many others, including some commenting here, have picked sides. Which make them worthy of ridicule. It’s good that none of us pick sides in Sudan because that would be silly. Likewise, it is pretty contemptible what many here are doing. They don’t really care. They’re just indulging their own hatred for one or more sides and pretending to have principles. Which they don’t.
Here is some logistics talk about the Army Navy effort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELF9DqfqXgU
As things begin to accelerate, I'm fearful that military accelerations will happen as well...stern words or bad press notwithstanding.
We're not going to shoot the Israelis and Hamas isn't going to shoot food trucks.
Not much problem there, then?
I wouldn't put it past islamic jihad to shoot food trucks. Recall the evacuation of Afghanistan where the Taliban was willing and did work with the americans there but ISIS still managed to get past the taliban and kill 13 americans and 100s of afghans. The very fact that saving palestinian lives will inevitably be good for the existing government (Hamas) will be bad for hamas's competitors. (And if you don;t think the Israeli's will shoot the americans if they think they can create plausible deniability then you're an idiot. They have done it before)
Bibi is certainly not thinking of starving children nor, I think, even of optics. A thousand trucks are waiting to get in, so why an aid delivery by sea the equivalent of 12 trucks? Why allow pitifully small air drops but not trucks? Why did Israel let in an UNRWA convoy and then shoot at it, forcing UNRWA to halt its deliveries to northern Gaza?
Because, I think, Israel knows it has to allow at least some aid in but also wants to continue its war on UNRWA. So it allows only ad hoc operations by charities or countries which are there temporarily, to make UNRWA irrelevant. I doubt this will fully work but the intention is there. Also, the aid will be less effective this way because only UNRWA has enough employees on the ground for distribution to the neediest, and for this Israeli govt that's a feature not a bug.
PS This is also true for the US, which suspended funding to UNRWA immediately following unproved Israeli allegations against it. Other countries and the EU which followed suit have resumed their funding of the agency, but in the US that would be politically difficult. So they'll build a port to get around it, even if that costs a gazillion times more per bag of flour than getting it in through UNRWA would.
I'd just like to point out that from the link you put on the words "actively contemptous", this is the first sentence from the post on March 2 reacting to the announcement of air dropping aid:
"As Palestinians face the risk of famine, any aid is better than no aid."
(https://twitter.com/ScottTPaul/status/1763703611769717088)
This X post is from the head of oxfam and it is full of persuasive reasoning about what is wrong with this air drop plan. Those arguments are just not fairly summarized as "because the war hasn't stopped"