The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?
The UN's own data (https://app.un2720.org/tracking) shows 86,531 pallets were intercepted, while only 26,772 pallets arrived at their intended destination.
We don't know many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
Either side of the conflict could say this and be 100% justified in their accusation. That's what people "see with their own eyes" if you needed some perspective.
Top comment: "The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup."
> the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians
Hell of a straw man. People care that the aid is getting to militants. Israel said it was getting to Hamas. That's the justification for limiting aid. If it's not getting to people who are shooting at Israeli troops, then it's not a security risk to provide more aid.
The strawman is that Hamas is intercepting all the aid. Sure people occasionally say that, but you're attacking an oversimplification of the real underlying points, which are that
- Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang. Israel doesn't want an aid program where the bulk of the aid goes to their literal war enemies.
- Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians (except when it's sold at extortionate prices). Hence the shift to GHF which, while it has its own problems, does actually deliver most aid to ordinary civilians for free.
There’s no “proof” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The pallets that never made it to people in need didn’t magically disappear. There is also a history of Hamas stealing aid that goes back MUCH longer than the post-October-7 conflict:
I have no idea. I've heard a lot of "just because a minister says it it isn't true, do you believe everything Trump or congresspeople say?" in response to what ministers say. That, and the usual "the media (particularly mainstream, like NYT) is lying/anti-semitic/etc." So I imagine the reply would be the same.
> How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
If that was true, wouldn’t the best course of action be to let as much aid as possible into Gaza to flood the market rather than restricting the flow (therefore increasing prices) like Israel has been doing?
Then Israel severely limiting the amount of food is helping Hamas by artificially, and cruelly, limiting supply. People want to feed their families and will go to great lengths: sell their valuables, harm others, or wait in line at a Gaza Health Ministry site with the knowledge the IDF might fire into the crowd.
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
>it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
You mean the one that Israel was caught on camera using to help carry out a raid (the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre) that killed 276 civilians and injured over 600? And then promptly disintegrated after spending only 20 days distributing 1/5 of the aid actually needed?
How magnanimous of them. Why don't we send them another billion off our paychecks to fund their free healthcare to thank them?
The sheer blatant disregard for human life that Hamas exhibits is staggering. They could end the suffering today by returning the hostages. The fact that they do not, tells you all you need to know about the society that UNRWA education enabled.
Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, that it why they took the hostages. Israel decided that their citizens were not worth the price and Zionists used the opportunity to expedite the genocide.
There is currently a deal on the table to get thousands of those prisoners released in exchange for the ~30 hostages and Hamas has refused. Hamas' by far largest goal is pressuring Israel, not saving civilians.
> Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel
No it didn't. The hostages are leverage only for Hamas, not the Palestinians. Unilaterally cede the hostages and Israel would be put into a really tough spot.
Great. So why did Gazans elect Hamas to power in 2006? Their charter includes things like eliminating Israel, people of all other religions, subjugating women, etc. It doesn’t seem like they wanted to decide who is to live or die. And by “they” I don’t just mean Hamas but the population that put them into power and still supports them today. Hamas is the one who attacked Israel with rockets for more than a decade. Their actions caused numerous intermittent blockades that affected residents of the area. It seems like they are content deciding who gets to live or die both in Israel and in the Gaza Strip. But somehow the comments here don’t seem to acknowledge this.
Remember, there have been several two state solution offers in the past. None were accepted by the Islamic Arabs who now call themselves “Palestinian”. Because they aren’t content with coexisting. They want to eliminate Israel and take over the entire region of historical Palestine. That’s what “from the river to the sea” means.
Netanyahu supported Hamas, classic divide and conquer strategy. "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders. Israel does not.
This entire situation has been engineered from the start by Zionists to take over and ethnically cleanse the area. This plan goes back to Ben Gurion.
That's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying.
> Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders.
First it's only certain Westerns who like to frame it as a new charter, while Hamas never used such language and never recanted their original charter.
More to the point, Hamas' 2017 document accepts the concept of a state along 1967 borders, presumably as a stepping stone, "without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity", i.e. while still demanding "the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea".
> Israel does not.
There's nothing sacred about the 1967 armistice line in particular, but the 2ss offers Israel made in 2000 and 2008 would have been pretty close.
Great question because Hamas was funded by Benjamin Netanyahu in the 90s because he feared the peaceful PLO would become too powerful and result in a two state solution.
Knowing this does this change your position or have you decided on a viewpoint that you will push regardless.
If what I just said was true (and it is) Benjamin Netanyahu put them in power. Doesn't that change everything for you?
Debating that two state solutions were offered and other Arab states not supporting a two state solution because they wanted everything restored to before the world wars victors carved up the world and took away their piece is worth debating. But that's not why Hamas exists.
Benjamin Netanyahu disparate needed an enemy a group violent and extreme. Benjamin Netanyahu setup a strawman.
Hitler's Nazi party in the begining use to send men in to attack an area create chaos then use that justification to take over that area to protect them. Scared people obey.
Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. The archaeological records and excavations is clear on that. The leftist and white guilt that ignores that and subverting the definition of Zionism is disgusting.
Literally doesn't matter. Dead people don't get a vote on where who can live. The people alive today live where they do and will fight to keep from getting displaced. The sooner folks can understand that the sooner we might see peace.
It's you people that's using the terms "colonizers." Of course it matters. Changing definitions willy nilly in the face of evidence is how authoritarianism starts. Very hypocritical of your kind.
They are not. They were banished centuries BC by their own God per their own scripture. The Palestinian people are the indigenous ones fighting against waves of Eastern Euro trash immigrants fleeing Europe during the 20th century.
All of you guys out there in the Middle East are out of the same melting pot. And you're all as crazy as a butterfly on absinthe. I don't know whether you're all Canaanites at the base, or you're all Jews at the base, or out of the Land of Nod, or whatever the hell you were at the get-go, "semites" or whatnot. But you've been fighting it out for something like eight thousand years! And you've never had five minutes of quiet and peace! You're forever killing each other, and sticking knives in each other, and burning babies - and the world has had to suffer with this.
Great things have come out of the Middle East - great things like the *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam* - but *stupidity* seems to be your chief export! Stupidity, and violence, are your cash crops. All you.
They stole this land within a century using the first cases of modern terrorism against the British and then eventually the Arabs. They're old enough to be forced to not only give it back but work hard labor to rebuild it for its original inhabitants.
This particular piece of land was stolen, using terrorism and forced displacement among other colonial techniques, as recently as 1948, and some of the beneficiaries and victims are still alive.
You need to hear “it”, again because “it” is the foundation of civilized coexistence.
That's why you are subhuman and not fit for modern society. You are literally posting Nazi opinions about favoring the complete eradication over other races as preferable to a risk to your race.
Remember that the editor of Der Sturmer was hanged at the Hague!!!
> For example it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
"allowed"
The pier was never going to work. Israel should just allow aid in via the normal ways. Notice that Israel controls all the borders of Gaza and they're the ones preventing food from coming in. Not to mention destroying all the farmland in Gaza too.
I'm glad to see you use "most of this war", acknowledging that Israel has at times totally blockaded all food and medicine from Gaza (and not for logistic or military reasons, but as a pure pressure tactic as stated by Israeli officials).
And it's true, Israel is not required to accept aid from other countries for Gaza. They could instead provide the full required resources for civilians in the occupied areas themselves.
No it cant because israel controls the borders and isnt letting any arms in. It can be used to pay terrorists but Israel just has to live with that. If they are confident aid is being used to pay terrorists the correct move is not cutting off aid its defending the aid
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong, starvation as a tactic of war is horribly wrong, we all know what's happening, please have some respect for peoples' intelligence.
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong. Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The CNN article gives the low calorie consumption amount as 1400. 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
The US, in post war Germany, doing it 'the right way' according to history, targeted (so many received lower) 1500 calories a day. Or 1000 a day when airdropped.
According to the CNN article, Israel's action during an ongoing conflict is about par with how the US did it for years in post war Germany. And remember Germany is much larger than Gaza, so people had much larger distances to cover. Those that couldn't be reached received airlifts that only targeted 1000 calories per day.
War sucks. It sucks that the government of Gaza chose to start a war. What we are seeing is the impacts of that. And it is awful. But it's also in line with the conditions in post WW2 Germany, arguable one of the best historical treatments of an aggressor by victors over it.
Germany isn't referred to as a starvation, but as a successful reconstruction. It is the 'norm' to which people speak when they speak of how to treat an aggressor population when they lose to victors. It is the literal 'norm' that people are calling for in Gaza. I only looked into it because people here were pointing to it as how Israel should be acting in Gaza on last weeks Gaza story. And I was surprised to find that Israel is acting within that established norm that people here were calling for just last week (until I looked up what the norm/numbers were and brought those facts into the discussion).
I'm not sure why this is important to the discussion. The important question is: are people in Gaza starving or not? If they are, I couldn't care less what we did during WW2.
Secondarily, just because there was a guideline during WW2 that was deemed "the right way", it's the result that counts. Were people starving in Germany post WW2? If so that was wrong then too.
The Red Cross sets a floor of 1500 calories within the USA, lower than the floor Israel sets for Gaza. Does the Red Cross starve American's/use food as a weapon?
The UN itself has cut food distribution/caloric intake in Kenya (in need in huge part because of war refugees from Sudan) in half, is the UN using food as a weapon? The UN is saying it wants to provide aid at a much higher level to the people of Gaza than it provides to the people in Kenya.
> Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The problem for your argument is that Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza.
> 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
Israel let in 0 calories for months on end. They have blocked the UN from providing food aid, and have attempted to completely destroy the main UN agency providing food in Gaza. When Israel does let food in, it is only in response to international pressure. If the Israeli government thought it could get away with killing every last Palestinian in Gaza, it would.
> Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza
To be fair, Israeli leaders can be quoted saying just about anything, same as in pretty much any democracy. What matters is which leaders are saying what, what authority they have, and what's happening on the ground.
The Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister are not just random, low-level people with no authority who are shooting the breeze.
Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy. Did Israel block all aid shipments for months earlier this year by accident?
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly."[0]
CNN: "Israel says it will block Gaza humanitarian aid until Hamas agrees to new conditions"[1]. This official announcement came directly from Netanyahu's office. After this announcement, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza for nearly 3 months. What's particularly remarkable is that this came after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange. Netanyahu exchanged the first few batches of hostages, and then refused to continue as previously agreed. He demanded that the entire deal - which both sides had already agreed to - be renegotiated, and blocked humanitarian aid as a means of applying pressure.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalael Smotrich: "No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages."[2]
I could go on, but you get the point. You can't possibly claim that this isn't Israeli government policy or that we have no way of knowing what the top Israeli leaders think about the matter.
All the more reason they shouldn't support doing it to others, and yet many do.
And population growth looks the same everywhere in the world: the poorer the country, with less access to health care, less job security, independence and opportunities for women, the higher the birth rate.
The source of the food scarcity being discussed started on Oct 7th though when the government of Gaza chose to kill over 1000 people, maim/injure/torture/rape thousands more, and kidnap many (including the approx. 6 year old girl they posted videos on the internet of themselves kidnapping from her house, they were so proud they posted video of kidnapping a little girl from her home). That all happened starting Oct 7th.
The Allied occupying powers tried as hard as they could to get food into Germany. Israel is intentionally blocking food from getting onto Gaza. There's a massive difference.
> War sucks.
That's an awfully glib way of justifying deliberately starving a civilian population. Saying "war sucks" doesn't make it okay to commit war crimes.
Our clinical and other observations convinced us that 2,000 calories a day was a bare minimum and sufficed merely to keep the population at a subsistence level.
Where "bare minimum" refers to a community with high numbers of women and children doing little exercise or labor. They observed malnutrition in people consuming 1800 calories daily and recommended substantially more than 2000 calories for people doing hard labor.
If you had read literally the first line of the article, you would see that it discusses the 1948-1949 years of the blockade. The wikipedia article you're citing covers the 10 years after 1945, which includes those years. Even if the years didn't overlap, human nutritional needs obviously didn't double in 6 years.
Of course, if you had read the wikipedia article you would have seen these lines:
The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force initially set the ration scale for Germans at 11,000 kJ (2,600 kcal) per day... Once the occupation of Germany commenced, it proved impossible to deliver the intended levels of food...As a result, once supplies which had been stockpiled by the German government during the war ran out, the ration scales were reduced to 4,200–5,200 kJ (1,000–1,250 kcal) per day.
So they didn't set the number to 1000 out of a principled stances about nutritional needs, it was what they could manage actually deliver given the enormous logistical and infrastructure limitations of the blockade.
The LA city (not Red Cross) document is much the same. Again, you've failed to read literally the next line in a document because the Red Cross is cited with the proper figure immediately after the "1500 calorie" figure:
The Red Cross suggests 2,000 to 2,500 calories per person, per day.
I don't quite understand why you keep pointing to post WW2 as a justification.
For 1 we should be looking at results and the situation on the ground, not the guidelines for what's "the proper way to do things". Were people in Germany starving or not, are people in Gaza starving or not? If the answer to either is yes, then it is / was a problem.
Secondly, what we consider ok changes over time. Go back far enough and killing prisoners, taking civilians as slaves etc were all considered ok. We frown on those now.
The Gaza thread on HN last week was talking about how Israel needed to fit to norms. That Israel needed to be like the US in Germany. Which is what got me looking into numbers. I think it's relevant as the Allies in Germany are where the current norms come from.
not that much to the minimal amount of 1400 the CNN article found occurring. Horrible I agree, but not that far off from the Red Cross floor for aid distribution with the USA.
The UN provides much less calories (currently 552 to refugees from Sudan's war) yet says it can provide more than Israel in aid Gaza. Is the UN anti Sudanese/Kenyans because it claims to have food for 2 million on hand yet won't feed the starving 800,000 in Kenya? If it has food for Gaza's 2 million that is isn't giving out, how can it justify not giving at least part of that to the smaller 800,000 war refugees in Kenya? The UN itself says it's a crime not to give out food in those higher quantities if there are stocks of it. The UN has stocks. The UN does not give those stocks out to those in need, only giving 552 calories.
Maybe you should take a look at the IPC report, which details exactly how they know that Gaza is in the middle of a deliberately created, man-made famine.
Kenya has the ability to grow food. Gaza doesn't. Israel has destroyed 100% of the farmland and shoots anyone who walks around freely outside of a tiny fraction of the Gaza Strip.
The USA only target 1000 calories per day for airlifted populations in post war Germany. The CNN article lists 1400 as the low calories intake. So Gaza is still 400 calories a day above 'doing it the right way' post war German reconstruction numbers for hard to reach areas.
According to the article 1400 calories are the number people are actually consuming, not unavailable to them. It is in the CNN article all this discussion is about.
the one that was fired for misconduct, begged to get his job back and threatened that he will become their nightmare in case they don't rehire him ? sounds very reliable.
That's what the GHF claims, yes. To be clear, they haven't shown any documentation showing that he was fired, while Aguilar did show letters and messages sent by GHF hailing him as a great colleague and saying they were sad to see him go.
The only material evidence GHF has shown are small chunks of SMS conversations that are perfectly compatible with the "Aguilar was trying to convince GHF leadership to change policies" hypothesis, and WhatsApp broadcast of Aguilar telling his staff they were doing a great job.
Meanwhile, Aguilar has multiple photos and videos showing the conditions aid was distributed in which you can see right now on Youtube, testimony of seeing the GHF security contractors firing into crowds (to which the GHF replied by saying its contractors only fired above crowds, still a Geneva Convention violation), statistics that showed that people got shot during every single GHF distribution, matching testimony from Palestinian doctors and journalists and IDF whistleblowers, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming unless your curiosity cuts off as soon as you read the GHF damage control statements.
ain't it comfortable that there are 2 sets of videos.
given that there is "statistics" (comfortable provided by hamas) of people getting shot during every single distribution, do you find it strange that there is not even 1 video of people actually getting shot en masse ? surely someone would have thought that it will be amazing video evidence that will be easy to make, as it happens daily, and a way to make israel look real bad, yet - nothing. the only video that comes close to it is when bullets very precisely hitting absolutely nothing few meters away from people.
with regards to " IDF whistleblowers", in case you missed the memo, the famous haaretz article with whistleblowers was mistranslated from hebrew. in hebew was used expression with meaning of "shooting at air/ground to prevent advancement". it was translated to english as "shooting at people". haaretz got it's 13 pieces for this
Yeah, guess what, that's still a breach of Geneva Conventions.
(Also basic common sense. The golden rule of gun safety is "Never point the gun at anything unless you intend to kill it", there isn't a "but shooting just over their heads is perfectly okay".)
so, you concur that there is no actual evidence of IDF actually shooting at all those people despite it supposedly happening daily for few months at same location with hundreds of "dead and wounded" ?
First, Israel has consistently denied journalists access to those distribution sites, so the only video evidence we should expect to find are from civilians. Civilians who are in the middle of a stampede and getting shot at do not, as a general rule, stop to bring their smartphone out and film whoever is shooting at them (usually footage of shootings is filmed by people in buildings, obviously doesn't apply here).
That's a really tight crowd, and bullets are clearly landing very close to them. Even if we assume nobody was hit by a stray bullet (which I find very improbable), that's still an egregious breach of the Geneva Conventions. Also, it seems similar to a pattern Aguilar described: IDF soldiers shooting at sand mounds, not realizing/caring that their bullets had enough penetration to go out the other side and kill people.
As for non video evidence, we have: photos of wounded people being taken away from GHF sites, testimonies of Gazan doctors who treated people of all ages wounded/killed by 7.62mm M80 bullets, testimonies of international doctors saying the same thing, a video published by Aguilar where we hear a SRS contractor bragging about hitting someone during a distribution, whistleblower testimonies, Gaza Health Ministries statistics (which the IDF treats as reliable, according to IDF leaks), UN statistics, and a mountain of testimonies from Gazan residents.
But if the only "actual" evidence you accept is video evidence in an area where the IDF is forbidding journalists, then the best I can give you is the link above.
Also, I'm stopping this discussion here, because the bullshit asymmetry principle is at play here: it took you 10 seconds to write your "there's no evidence because I say so" comment, and it took me one hour to sift through the media reports to write this rebuttal.
(Though for what it's worth, I do wish the evidence was better collected, and not scattered across MSM reports. In particular, I wish Aguilar had published a full dump of all the photos and videos he took.)
EDIT: This site aggregates social media reports related to the Gaza war. Some of them include footage of dead people near GHF sites, though none I could find that included the moment the person got shot.
