Israel’s Explosive Protection Racket
Helena Cobban / Just World Educational

(October 12, 2024) — The latest stats from UN-OCHA on Israel’s deliberate blocking of the passage of food and other vitally needed humanitarian goods into Gaza are shocking. As the above graphic from OCHA’s latest report (PDF) shows, the number of trucks of aid Israel is allowing into Gaza per day has declined steadily from April until this week.

The daily average in September was just one-third the number in April– and barely over 10% of the daily average of trucks that Israel allowed into Gaza in September 2023.

This is, as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for on October 8 or 9 of last year, the killing by starvation of Gaza’s remaining (and already much weakened) population.

It needs to be stressed that what is happening in Gaza is not primarily a “humanitarian” crisis– such as is happening in many communities here in the United States under the impact of hurricanes. It is an intensely political crisis, one that is the intended result of the decisions of Israel’s political and military leaders. And if we continue to treat the Gaza crisis as only a “humanitarian” one, while shying away from dealing with its political roots and the vitally needed political paths to ending it, then it will continue.

Quite possibly, by the end of winter, Israel will have succeeded in killing more than half of Gaza’s people through its maintenance of its genocide-by-starving policies.

Look at those numbers above.
You may look, too, at the “outrage” that Pres. Biden expressed back in early April at the draconian limits Israel was placing on the entry of much-needed supplies into Gaza (and its targeted killing on April 1 of three international aid workers, working with World Central Kitchen.) At that point, Biden vowed he would “press” Israel to allow more aid into Gaza. And April’s numbers did go up a bit compared with those of the preceding months. But only to a figure roughly one-third of what went in prior to 10/7/2023. And look at what has happened to those numbers since April.

… All of which raises yet again the thorny question of what is the power relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv.

I addressed that question in this essay that I posted yesterday on Globalities. In the essay, I sketch out the two-phase protection racket that I see Netanyahu as having pursued against Washington over the past year– one in which Phase 2 has brought us to a much greater regional and possibly global crisis than resulted from Phase 1.

However, as we know, the intense political crisis in and over Gaza continues. Speedy global action is needed to:

• End the Genocide;
• Win the lasting Ceasefire;
• Roll Back the Military Occupation in which Israel has held Gaza for 57 years now; and
• Allow the Palestinian People finally to exercise their Right of Self Determination.

The right of self-determination, by the way, obviously includes the Palestinians’ right to choose their own leaders. And thus far, all the opinion polling conducted in Palestine over recent years shows that their preference is for a political leadership that includes the Islamic Resistance Movement– Hamas.

Which of course makes our book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters extremely timely. Another reason is that the only negotiations for a ceasefire that have ever been conducted (and that last November won a solid 7-day ceasefire during which many Israeli hostages were freed) were negotiations with Hamas.

As you know, I am currently on tour with the book in the Bay Area. You can see the calendar of my upcoming events here or here.

And on our Just World Ed blog you can see three interesting recent posts:

• This one is an account of an early-October episode of our Palcast blog, in which our guest was seasoned Palestinian-American youth organizer Ayah Arafat, with links to the episode as it appears on Apple and Spotify.
• This one is an account of the first two of our Understanding Hamas book launch events, in NYC and Washington DC. (It includes links to videos of both events.)
• This one is an account of the most recent episode of our Palcast blog, in which my amazing colleagues Yousef Aljamal, Tony Groves, and I took the opportunity to discuss the situation one year after 10/7/23 among ourselves. Of course, the main focus was on Yousef’s very somber reflections. That blog post has links to the episode on Apple and Spotify. Be sure to listen.

I have to run. Today it’s Saratoga and Santa Cruz.