TomGard's Journal

Half a million people are in the most serious phase of malnutrition, especially in the north of the territory, where some families make bread with animal feed, due to the lack of flour.
[In the best case, they have one meal per day.] In the worst, they are one of the half a million people the United Nations considers to be in the most critical of the five phases of food crises: at high risk of dying from starvation. More than 80% of the people in the world who are in this phase — considered “catastrophic” — are currently struggling in Gaza.
Nutrition checks at shelters and health centers in the north reveal that 15.6% of babies under two years of age are severely malnourished. Before the war, practically none of them were. Three percent are suffering from the most severe type of malnutrition: they will perish if they do not receive urgent help. (El Pais International)

Samantha Power, director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has said that only 85 trucks of humanitarian assistance were allowed to enter Gaza over the last week, compared to a daily average of 500 before Israel’s assault plunged the Gaza Strip into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

“More than 500 trucks should be entering Gaza daily. In the past week only ~85/day managed to get through,” Power said in a social media post.

“Everything behind me here at this WFP [World Food Programme] warehouse in Jordan should be in Gaza to address what WFP calls ‘catastrophic levels of hunger.’” (Al Jazeera)

The WFP describes its last two attempts to deliver aid to Gaza, and the ensuing chaos that led the organization to suspend deliveries. “On Sunday [February 18], as WFP started the route towards Gaza City, the convoy was surrounded by crowds of hungry people close to the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. First fending off multiple attempts by people trying to climb aboard our trucks, then facing gunfire once we entered Gaza City, our team was able to distribute a small quantity of the food along the way. On Monday, the second convoy’s journey north faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order. Several trucks were looted between Khan Younis and Deir al Balah [in the center and south] and a truck driver was beaten. The remaining flour was spontaneously distributed off the trucks in Gaza city, amidst high tension and explosive anger.”

In the statement, the WFP speaks of “unprecedented levels of desperation.” Aid has barely arrived to the north, and the police of the Hamas government, which maintains control in Rafah, refuses to escort trucks transporting aid because Israel bombs the agents, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, explained in a meeting with journalists at the organization’s headquarters in Jerusalem.
In its latest poll, published last Tuesday, the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) asked: “Do you support or oppose the idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time, with food and medicines being transferred by international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA?” Sixty-eight percent of the Jewish population replied that they opposed aid delivery, including 31% of respondents who define themselves as left-wing.
Konyndyk, who headed the humanitarian division of USAID … points out another two important factors. Firstly, the data are not showing the excess mortality typical of a famine, but the fate of a large majority of people who do not go to hospitals is unknown, especially in the north. Secondly, in a famine, most people do not die from hunger, but from diseases, and today in Gaza, only five of the 35 hospitals are working and 70% of the children suffer from diarrhea. “If there was a cholera outbreak right now, it would spread like wildfire,” he explains. (noch El Pais)

Josep Borrell im Interview mit El Pais (Ukraine, Gaza, EU)

Approaching his 77th birthday, Borrell avoids the stiff language of European orthodoxy and with all these risks in the four corners of the world he offers a discourse that, paradoxically, views the greatest danger from within: “What scares me most is the fear of Europeans.”

“It is a diffuse fear. An all-pervading horizon of distrust, a vague feeling of dread. With a war next door and another nearby. With shocks in Africa and the suspicion that migrants may arrive in an uncontrolled manner. With a defense that we outsourced to the U.S., a military umbrella that Trump may close, with cheap energy that will no longer come from Russia, with the certainty that we are losing markets in Asia,” he says.

“We are an aging continent in a young world, hence this mixture of fear and uncertainty. Against that, there are always those who offer a clear, simple, and false answer: the extremists, those hyper-muscled leaderships that tell us: ‘We are strong, they’ll see.’” Borrell stresses: “The European elections will be fundamental.”
(Es folgt lang und breit die bekannte Rhetorik der Kriegsmobilisierung. Sie schließt mit:)
How do you win a war against a nuclear power that spends 30% of its budget on defense? Russia is at war with all its consequences. Europe is not at war, but it doesn’t quite understand what this war means for it either. Putin has mobilized all his resources, he has military support from Iran and North Korea, with the economic support of China. Hence my appeal to the member states to make their support consistent with the kind of war we are facing, a mixture of those of the 20th century and the most modern technologies. We need to do more, and quickly: in the next few months the war may be decided. To resist is to win.”

Zum Gaza:
Frage: What will Europe do in the event of a catastrophe?
Antwort: “We are already in the midst of a catastrophe. The United Nations has had to suspend humanitarian aid: Israel is using famine as a weapon of war and that is contrary to international law. We said it in Ukraine and it is also true now. Gaza has been razed to the ground: the use of force has been disproportionate.”
Spain and Ireland have called for the suspension of the EU association agreement with Israel if it is proven that human rights are being violated: “It is an extraordinary step forward and hits a raw nerve.” But Europe is unable to drag the U.S. into its demand for a ceasefire, perhaps because there is no common position in the EU either: “At the United Nations the vote was divided, 18 in favor against nine abstentions.”
“The catastrophe in Gaza is not the result of an earthquake or a flood: it is the consequence of devastating military action. Hamas is an idea, and an idea is only fought with another idea: [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s plans for Gaza are unacceptable. The seeds of hatred are being sown for generations. It is an open secret that the Israelis funded Hamas and played at dividing the Palestinians. Or that the U.S. position is taking its toll on Biden among the young Democratic electorate. And that Von der Leyen’s trip, with such a completely pro-Israeli position, without representing anyone but herself in a matter of international politics, has carried a high geopolitical cost for Europe.”