Every basic necessity — food, water, medicine — is no longer a right, but an Israeli weapon. A weapon to starve, to deny water, and to withhold medicine — designed to cage Palestinians and cultivate the conditions for ‘voluntary’ ethnic cleansing, writes Jamal Kanj
The starvation and genocide in Gaza and Israel’s unconstrained colonial and imperial arrogance have reached a point beyond redemption. Benjamin Netanyahu’s endless wars now bleed into Syria, attacking the heart of Damascus with absolute impunity. Meanwhile, the United States, supposedly the world’s leading superpower, remains tragically mired in subservience to successive Israeli governments, often sacrificing core American values and international law.
Nowhere has this dynamic been clearer than in Gaza over the past 21 months. Former President Joe Biden, alongside his Israeli-first Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, have repeatedly enabled Netanyahu’s most extremist and racist tendencies. One of the most absurd manifestations of this complicity was the construction of a floating pier, allegedly to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. In reality, it was a PR stunt — a Netanyahu-devised diversionary tactic to deflect international diplomatic pressure and give Israel diplomatic cover while maintaining a genocidal starvation siege.
The Biden administration embraced the scam, and funded the pier with hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars. It was a farcical undertaking from the start: a $320 million structure that took months of planning and military coordination. By the time the pier became marginally functional — enough days for a few photo ops — it was soon swallowed by the Mediterranean waves. The pier wasn’t just an engineering failure. It was a moral disgrace.
The floating pier was a symbol of Biden’s impotence and Netanyahu’s mastery of deception. It gave Washington the appearance of trying to help without actually helping. It let Israel continue its starvation siege while numbing the world conscious. Instead of demanding Israel open land crossings, the US chose optics over substance, willingly participating in a theatrical stage-managed sideshow.
And just when you thought the pageantry couldn’t get more cynical, Israel came up with another cunning scheme: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). After four more months of starvation and bombardment, the solution was another distraction — designed by Israel, paid for, again, by the US, aimed not at ending the blockade, but at neutralizing international pressure. Unsurprisingly, Trump like Biden with the pier, bowed to the same servitude to Israel.
Following three months in operation, GHF has turned out to be another Israeli lethal treachery. Instead of serving as a lifeline, GHF’s lines have transformed into a deadly Russian-Rollet. According to the UN, almost 900 Palestinians, or 300 per month — desperate mothers, fathers, and children — have been murdered seeking aid. Starvation awaited them at home; Israeli bullets met them at distribution centres. The very military that engineered the famine is gunning down its victims at the gates of so-called salvation.
American-funded GHF handed Israel control over food aid — and now, young girls at water collection points are being targeted. Every basic necessity — food, water, medicine — is no longer a right, but an Israeli weapon. A weapon to starve, to deny water, and to withhold medicine — designed to cage Palestinians and cultivate the conditions for ‘voluntary’ ethnic cleansing.
Outdoing the oxymoronic ‘Humanitarian Foundation,’ Israel unveiled now a new Orwellian scheme: transferring 600,000 Palestinians from northern Gaza into a walled compound (Humanitarian City) in the south — where people can check in, but cannot check out. The Israeli new concentration camp is to confine over a quarter of Gaza’s population, dwarfs many of the Nazi camps of World War II.
This is not just a policy of force but a linguistic warfare. In this context, Israel has perfected the weaponization of language. It doesn’t starve Palestinians; it imposes ‘calorie restrictions.’ It does not establish ghettos; it constructs ‘safe zones.’ It does not ethnically cleanse; it gives an option for ‘voluntary’ emigration. And now, it does not commit mass displacement, it proposes a ‘humanitarian city.’
Israel can only get away with this because AIPAC wags the dogs of Washington. Meanwhile, the world powers posture. France timidly teases symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state. The EU issues mealy-mouthed warnings of potential political consequences. Britain, the ever master of equivocation, merely offers advice to Israel on how to wage its war ‘humanely,’ and ‘leash’ the settler mobs terrorizing the West Bank. These are not threats, they are empty, inert gestures calibrated to maintain a facade of engagement while protecting Israel from accountability.
As for the Arab world? Eerily hush, no less complicit and shamefully divided into three vassal camps. Egypt, to the west, is an active partner in the siege of Gaza. In the east, Jordan and the Gulf states trade openly and act as military buffers protecting Israel. And then there are the enthusiastic collaborators, showering Trump with their largess while negotiating secretly for deals to enter the so called ‘Abrahamic Peace’ — even as Gaza is immolated and the West Bank systematically dismembered by roads dedicated for more Jewish-only colonies.
This collective silence — the choreographed outrage, lacking an outright condemnation — isn’t simply indifference. It’s connivance. It is the resurrection of Nazi ideology, draped in a different flag and uniform. It is not the mechanics of extermination that are being copied, but the moral apathy that made such atrocities possible.
As a Palestinian, I am outraged. But more than that, I am appalled as an American and as a human being. It is beyond offensive for the world to offer a mere pantomime of objection, cynically rebranding a concentration camp as a ‘Humanitarian City.’ I am left to wonder how the world — how Jews in particular — would have reacted if a Nazi had absurdly referred to Auschwitz as a ‘resort.’
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CounterPunch.org, July 21. Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries.