Using the false promise of food to kill people.
Mousetraps as a war crime.
On January 30th, Israel implemented a total ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), beginning to remove their presence from East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
For this, Israel is facing a new trial in The Hague at the International Court of Justice, as it is unlawful for a United Nations member state to interfere with the United Nations’ organizations and operations.
Starting on March 2nd, following Israel’s unilateral revocation of the ceasefire before the full return of hostages, the Israeli government instituted a total blockade on humanitarian aid into Gaza, another war crime.
But eventually, in May, as the Palestinians of Gaza faced a state of complete famine, Israel and the United States announced a plan, for the Israeli military and American private military contractors to “distribute” aid through the deceptively named “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.
The head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Thomas Fletcher, immediately blasted this plan to involve literal mercenaries as a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement” and “a cynical sideshow, a deliberate distraction,” from actual neutral and independent aid efforts.
And as it turns out, Under-Secretary-General Fletcher was completely right. The promises of aid that the GHF provides are a trap, bait to intentionally draw out and kill innocent Palestinians desperate for food. And both members of the GHF and Israel’s military have admitted it openly.
On May 27th, the very first day that the GHF began operating in Rafah, that wanton slaughter immediately began. Israeli tanks opened fire upon Palestinians seeking food, and in the first 48 hours ten Palestinian civilians were killed, and sixty-two more wounded.
In the first week of June, The Guardian would carry the story of Reem Zeidan, shot in the head by Israel-aligned forces while seeking food for her children, who would then spend three hours hiding beside her lifeless body as more bullets hailed upon them.
Her twelve-year old son recounts shouting her name and shaking her body, trying to wake her up. Her husband and now widow, Mohammad, put things very plainly:
“These are not aid distribution points. These are traps set for the people…when the shooting begins, you stay down. Someone next to you might get shot or killed, and you can’t even look at them or help them. And when they’re done with their ‘fun’ they open the gates at 6am, and chaos erupts.”
“The soldiers film people fighting over the aid, and once it’s finished, they throw teargas to disperse the crowd. I saw displaced people who couldn’t get any aid picking pasta from the sand.”
The Palestinians are forced to march through barbed wire by the Israelis and their American collaborators, being tortured and killed at random for sadistic amusement. As of the Saturday before the publication of this column, at least 743 Palestinians have been killed and 4,891 injured at GHF distribution sites.
Amnesty International has now stated what the evidence has already shown for months: “Israeli authorities have turned aid-seeking into a booby trap for desperate starved Palestinians.” But you don’t need to take their word for it. Just listen to the admissions of the IDF and the GHF themselves!
On June 27th, Haaretz journalists Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg published a bombshell exposé in Israeli news media, claiming that Israeli soldiers were indeed ordered by their superiors to deliberately shoot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid.
Current IDF operating procedure is to shoot at people who attempt to line up before the early morning opening, and to shoot at those still present once distribution closes merely an hour later. One anonymous Israeli soldier claimed “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”
Further, there is inconsistency day-to-day in when the facilities open and close, ensuring that Palestinians don’t even know when Israelis will turn it into a live-fire war crime zone.
Whistleblowers inside the American group of mercenary collaborators have also confirmed that they’re similarly guilty to the Israeli military itself. Heavily armed mercenaries working under the auspices of Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions have been exposed on video engaging in wanton violence towards aid-seeking Palestinians.
The two mercenaries who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press claimed that none of the men recruited by UG Solutions were even tested to see if they could safely handle a firearm. They provided numerous videos to the AP, exposing incidents such as a mercenary claiming he summoned Israeli tanks for a “show of force” to those seeking aid.
I’ve always found the concept of a mousetrap a disturbing way to treat a living being. Putting out a piece of cheese to trick someone that’s hungry, only to snap their neck and kill them? It’s more than a little sociopathic.
So surely, if this is cruel to animals, it is even more vile to do to an actual human person? I weep for these Palestinians, who have been subject to Israel’s genocide for years now, who literally want nothing other than to live peacefully in their homeland. And Israel lies with the false promise of food, to bait them into being murdered.
As Jews, we should understand better than anybody how despicable this is. During the Holocaust, the Nazis told Jews that the gas chambers we marched into were merely “showers”; in truly grotesque display, some gas chambers even had fake shower heads to deceive the victims until it was too late to escape.
So for the Israeli government to engage in similar deception? To use the promise of basic humanitarian aid to lure innocent people into slaughter? It is a Chillul HaShem, a disgrace to the name of God. It is such a deep perversion of Jewish identity that it fills me with horror and shame.
Every day, the Palestinian Genocide continues unabated. Countries like Canada continue to supply weapons to Israel for the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people. All of us know damn well that the official death counts are severe underestimates.
How many more Palestinians will be butchered by the Israeli war machine before the world decides to intervene? Is there any line that we will not allow Israel to cross in their genocidal rampage?
I don’t know. And I’m afraid to find out.