The Israeli greeting to the tortured residents of the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan took an especially cruel turn this year: after violating the ceasefire agreement it had signed with Hamas, as the blessed month began the Israeli army hermetically closed all crossings into the Strip, denying the entrance of all goods and first and foremost – food.
This heinous crime, constituting a dramatic exacerbation in the intentional starvation project of over two million people, has been named by Israel itself as well as all the media covering it – “denying entry of humanitarian aid”. This framing is critical in the attempts to justify the Israeli narrative in two ways:
First, “aid” is a voluntary act, as opposed to a basic duty dictated both by human morality and by international law, since Israel is the de-facto ruler on the ground. Just as we do not call state schools “educational aid” to the citizens, making food available to people who are suffering extreme malnutrition conditions for over a year now because of the siege Israel has imposed on them – is not “humanitarian aid”. It is the basic duty of the state, and its violation is a severe war crime.
Second, presenting the closure of the crossings as “stopping humanitarian aid” gives the impression as if Israel is the one providing food and other items to the starving Gazans, while in fact food and other goods are collected by aid agencies and other international organizations, and Israel supervises their entry – or lack thereof – into the Gaza Strip. This is the vicious right that Israel has been preserving for years, deciding how much and what kind of food the Gazans are allowed to consume, what is the daily caloric intake that Gazans should be allowed, long before the recent war. The chilling document “Food Intake in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines” which details the policy of restricting food into the Strip from 2007 to 2010, which was exposed only following a lengthy legal battle by Gisha organization, includes detailed tables of food consumption in the Gaza Strip according to the types of food, their weight and nutritional values. The document concludes the work done by the Defense ministry in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Health, in order to “identify the point of intervention to prevent malnutrition in the Gaza Strip”.
This false presentation, as if Israel itself finances the food and medication entering the Strip in wartime, has managed to fuel strong resistance to the entering of goods among various Israeli groups. “One must realize that Gaza is the enemy, and the enemy must not be aided in times of war”, said an Israeli resident near the Gazan border reacting to the opening of the Erez Crossing to food and medication in May 2024. “The enemy must not be aided in times of war” said also the demonstrators, in person to prevent the entrance of food and basic gear trucks into Gaza.
For years a notion has become entrenched, according to which honoring the most basic rights of Palestinians, or making the smallest concession of their oppression, are “gestures of goodwill”, always a favor granted or denied by the master – totally dependent on his will or whim – never for granted. The language we use has a tremendous role in shaping the reality in which we live. After 17 months of destruction and intentional starvation already costing the lives of babies and children, things must be called by their name: this is not “humanitarian aid” that Israel can give or deny, and its denial is not “stopping aid”, but exacerbating starvation policy for the sake of military purposes, one of the most heinous war crimes in existence.
Orly Noy is a journalist and an editor, a political activist, a translator of Farsi poetry and prose, and the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board.
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