Israel's "humanitarian" food aid policy is the new Hunger Games

Like so much else happening in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel's food aid policy for Palestinians is nothing short of disastrous.

Whoever thought that setting up a poorly-named Israel-USA outfit called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to deliver food aid was a good idea is either severely deluded or even more callous and cynical than I can imagine. Limiting aid distribution to just four distribution sites, rather than taking the aid to the people like the UK and other agencies used to do, is clearly a recipe for disaster. Forcing starving Palestinians to travel long distances through a war-torn country and to gather in huge desperate crowds, for a meagre pan-full of flour is, almost by definition, not humanitarian.

Then the Israel Defence Forces use these crowds as an excuse to shoot more Palestinians. The death toll of starving aid-seekers alone is now over 1,000 and, despite global condemnation, more are killed every day. It continued even on "women-only day". Seasoned war journalists say that they have never seen this level of brutality and indiscriminate force against a civilian population. What is the rationale? Target practice? Of course, the IDF can conveniently blame anything untoward on Hamas, as they routinely do for everything.

So, what do they do but come up with a new strategy: air-drops. This has never been considered a good policy by anyone, ever. Famine-wracked Palestinians see the packages falling and set up a panicked run to find them, leading to the same kind of chaos but this time without any organizing principle at all. Israel has said it will pause bombing during the day, so that it can more effectively bomb Palestinians during the night.

Aid agencies are calling it insufficient, expensive, ineffective and dangerous. They are also calling it a "smokescreen" and a "distraction". Certainly, it's a dog-eat-dog free-for-all. One can't help but think of the Hunger Games.

Palestinians are now in a full-on nationwide famine. This is now undeniable. The UN is calling it the "worst-case scenario", and "unlike anything we have seen in this century". Large numbers are dying every day. Pictures of listless emaciated children fill our screens, as shocking now as the Ethiopian famine ever was. And Israel thinks it is okay to play Hunger Games? Israel, ably abetted by Trump's America, cannot be trusted to do anything vaguely humanitarian, and seems to have learned nothing from the tragic history of the Jewish people. It's a crying shame.