Catastrophic hunger - 40% of Gaza's population at risk of famine

[Createaplant]

Being reported by the Guardian:

40% of Gaza’s population is at risk of famine, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said on Saturday.

“Every day is a struggle for survival, finding food and water,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/dec/30/israel-gaza-war-live-hamas-palestinians-khan-younis-deaths-un-aid-us#:~:text=40%25%20of%20Gaza's%20population%20is,is%20grappling%20with%20catastrophic%20hunger.

Too sad and completely unnecessary. If only adequate aid, food and water was allowed in.

Also, Richard Kemp the British military officer is listed on Wikipedia as: The head of the UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers (UK-AWIS), the UK branch of AWIS, an Israeli organisation managed by the Israel Defense Forces and headed by General Yoram Yair.[3]

This video is from channel 4 news last Monday 17th.

Below are some stills.

Children are at particular risk from malnourishment, dehydration and disease.

Food for thought perhaps:

Some examples of what some Israeli’s themselves have been writing about the danger of starvation in Gaza (in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz):

Inside Israel's Disturbing Denial of Starvation in Gaza
Israeli authorities and pro-Israel keyboard warriors, who systematically deny the evidence of expert research, aid agencies and Gazans themselves about catastrophic hunger in Gaza, have a clear, shameless motivation.

Among the ugliest spectacles of the ugliest phase of Israeli and Palestinian history is the attempt to deny the horrors committed by "our" side. Israeli authorities and pro-Israel keyboard warriors are cultivating denialism daily, and shamelessly.
Dahlia Scheindlin
March 2024

We Israelis Are All Complicit in the Starvation of Civilians in Gaza
Creating mass starvation is morally prohibited, undermining the State of Israel's moral right to exist. Every just war has its limits, and the claim that the goal justifies the means is both malicious and erroneous.
Yul Tamir
April 2024

If Gaza's Children Starve, Israel Will Lose Its Moral Legitimacy Forever
'Children have begun dying of evident starvation': If Israel continues the war in Gaza, while impeding the essential massive delivery of food aid, it will be seen as the primary author of one of the greatest humanitarian crises in modern memory.
David Rothkopt
March 2024

The Destruction, Starvation and Death in Gaza Are Israel's Defeat

The Jewish state was defeated because its politicians and public officials are causing two million three hundred thousand human beings to go hungry and thirsty.

Israel was defeated and is still being defeated, not because of the fact that at the start of the ninth month of this accursed war, Hamas has not been toppled. The emblem of defeat will forever appear alongside the menorah and flag, because the leaders, commanders and soldiers of Israel killed and wounded thousands of Palestinian civilians, sowing unprecedented ruin and desolation in the Gaza Strip. Because its air force knowingly bombed buildings full of children, women and the elderly. Because in Israel people believe there is no other way. Because entire families were wiped out.
Amira Hass
June 2024

The JP article was probably only intended to be read by people with Israel- probably to continue to support idea that the IDF remain the most moral army and the war is not breaking international law.

The ICC had sufficient evidence gathered for starvation by lawyers independent from it to put out warrant for Netanyahu.

@DuskyBlueDepartingLight
One of the authors of the research quoted by your source serves as a principal consultant for the Israel Air Force, in the area of logistics and procurement policies. I would not consider him objective The other guy’s last significant publication in his own field seems to have been in 2005.

These two academics have form on stepping outside their lane or area of expertise eg a consulting company on how to find an expert witness for a court case, how to deal with a measles outbreak- useful guys- they seem to be able to offer an opinion on anything and be confident they have it right.

The study referred to is widely quoted in pro Israeli circles but I can’t find a peer reviewed publication that corresponds. If there is no peer reviewed publication, it’s not really the done thing in academic circles to be flogging your interpretation of data using the name of the university- it brings the institution into disrepute.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd119dz515wo

Latest on the floating pier and aid distribution

‘They miscalculated’: Gaza’s floating aid pier failing to deliver in rough seas

The future of US military project costing $230m in question after weather and poor security prevent aid distribution

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/23/they-miscalculated-gazas-floating-aid-pier-failing-to-deliver-in-rough-seas

🤦🏻‍♀️ it’s all I can say

So even if the pier managed to get aid in, which it doesn't, it can't be distributed because aid agencies won't do that because of the risk of the IDF bombing their staff.

What an absolutely outrageous situation.

Although for certain perspectives the calculations worked out not too badly. It was functional at a strategically useful time, took some of the pressure off accusations about the lack of aid, and can now very conveniently be unable to be used effectively with "Not our fault" reasons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv22ymmp46ro

Israel murdered Gaza's water & environment chief engineer along with 4 municipality officials while they were working to restore the water supply to the famine-stricken northern Gaza.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/06/21/israel-gaza-city-municipality-garage/

@DuskyBlueDepartingLight
So I’ve just been reading up on Richard Kemp to see why he would deny that children are dying of malnutrition in Gaza.
So he doesn’t hold with women serving in forces, he thinks 16 is a good age to join the army, he served in Derry during the troubles- he was against the Bloody Sunday enquiry, he’s been called out for calling Catholic “taigs”, and the Jewish news were successfully sued after he wrote an article saying Baroness Warri was an apologist for Islamic state. That’s just his politics- there is nothing in his biography to indicate that he is any way trained to interpret famine related data .
One of the difficulties with declaring a famine is that it requires a certain data set
and secondly it tends to be declared too late to intervene. . A warning system has been developed by the leading humanitarian agencies- it’s called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). According to an editorial in the Lancet, one if the top 5 medical journals in the world, “Application of the scale in Gaza concluded that Gaza was above IPC Acute Food Insecurity Phase V (Catastrophe) thresholds.”
Todays NY times explains that using this system, a famine is identified in an area on the basis of three conditions:

1. At least 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food.
2. At least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition.
3. At least two adults or four children for every 10,000 people die each day from starvation or disease linked to malnutrition.

It’s not possible to do household surveys or arm circumference in a conflict zone.Who is going to map the area in a grid, and then train up health workers to systematically survey household and measure the babies arepa with paper bands? The Lancet article references Nobel prize winner Amarta Sen”Existing economic systems allow some people to be entitled to food, while others are allowed to starve.This is often the case in conflict zones, where those with means might be able to barter until food aid arrives or they are able to leave the conflict zone. As a result, the most vulnerable, such as pregnant and lactating women and their babies, suffer the greatest burden in terms of morbidity and mortality.”

Who, this guy?

He is the head of the UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers (UK-AWIS), the UK branch of AWIS, an Israeli organisation managed by the Israel Defense Forces and headed by General Yoram Yair.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kemp

That’s really helpful, so to summarise.

Based on the information provided by those above about Richard Kemp then, it looks as though

he does not have the expertise to make a qualified comment about famine in Gaza

and

his perspective is most likely, biased towards being supportive of Israeli soldiers, given his position as head of the UK AWIS, and biased towards viewing Islam negatively, given the comment he made about one of our own politicians.

the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) says the available evidence does not indicate a famine is currently occurring in the north of the Palestinian territory.
The previous assessment in March had projected that one was imminent in the area.
The amount of food and other aid allowed into the north has increased since then, and nutrition, water, sanitation and health services have been stepped up, the report says.
But it warns that food availability in the south and central Gaza has been significantly reduced due to the closure of the Rafah border crossing and the displacement of more than one million people from the city of Rafah since early May, when Israel launched a ground operation there.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv22g81djdyo

“UN experts declare famine has spread throughout Gaza strip”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/un-experts-declare-famine-has-spread-throughout-gaza-strip

So depressing to think children are dying from starvation and people mere miles away have plenty of food. The world is a truly messed up place

IDF targeting the police that trying to protect convoys , vigilantes ,terrorists trying to control anarchic armed thugs, cigarettes replacing money.
Floating piers floating off to sea, parachutes dropping parcels on top of people’s heads and killing them.
UNWRA should have been left to get on with its job

@Efacsen i know we’ve spoken about the pier a lot but can’t remember which thread it was

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/10/us-gaza-aid-pier-dismantled

I'm looking forward to the real story behind that pier coming out.

It was awfully convenient... And ineffective...

It is heart breaking and needless. I still cannot believe that this is human induced famine rather than through climate/drought.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/GAZA-HUNGER

How children starve

Insanity to think when this began I was heavily pregnant, now my baby is almost 9 months old and babies in Gaza have been and gone…quite literally an accident or fortune of birth.