CALIBAN

I cannot bring myself to commment on this, so I will let others discuss it. As an introduction, I place the following:

...urgent testimonials from doctors, journalists and aid workers in Gaza (as well as from Crisis Group’s own contacts) suggests that hunger has reached a tipping point. The WFP reports that one in three Palestinians in Gaza now go for days on end without food. Médecins Sans Frontières says it treated three times more patients for severe malnutrition in the first two weeks of July than in all of May. Agence France Presse, the BBC, Reuters and the Associated Press have issued a joint protest, declaring that their own reporters and families in Gaza are starving. By 23 July, Gaza hospitals were reporting ten to fifteen deaths from starvation every 24 hours – far more than the monthly average over 21 months of war.

Once this tipping point is passed, famines tend to follow a catastrophically self-reinforcing pattern, which is already visible in Gaza. A slow creep of death yields to swift mass mortality as organs fail, immune systems collapse and victims lose the will to go on. Once famine begins, deaths tend to rise exponentially, meaning that waiting for confirmation that the technical line has been crossed to take remedial action could condemn thousands of people – especially young children – to death. For children, surviving such a scenario may entail permanent disability, including cognitive impairment. Some may already be facing exactly this prospect.

Charles 'Chas' Freeman Jr. is a retired American diplomat and writer. He served in the United States Foreign Service, the State and Defense Departments in many different capacities over the course of thirty years. Trita Parsi is an Iranian-born Swedish writer and activist, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council.


By the way, I have one final request: Please DONATE to Gaza's Roots' Initiative.

Labels: Genocide