{"id":16797,"date":"2025-08-07T17:12:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=16797"},"modified":"2025-08-07T17:12:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:12:30","slug":"palestinians-are-not-starving-in-gaza-they-are-being-starved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/07\/palestinians-are-not-starving-in-gaza-they-are-being-starved\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians are Not Starving in Gaza. They are Being Starved!\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Wilmer J. Leon, III, PhD<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Wilmer J. Leon, III, PhD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guest Column<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.\u201d – Nelson Mandela 1997.<\/p>\n

Recently I was listening to an NPR program talking about Palestine and the genocide in Gaza and the point was made that Palestinians in Gaza are starving.\u00a0People need to be very clear on this point: Palestinians in Gaza are not just starving! I repeat, that\u2019s just not true. The fact is that Palestinians in Gaza are being starved to death.\u00a0This is not a distinction without a difference.<\/p>\n

It would be appropriate to say that Palestinians are starving if they were the victims of a natural catastrophe or an act of God, such as a drought. One could say that Palestinians are starving if crops could not be grown and grass were burned so the animals could not graze, such as in Sudan. When natural disasters damage the food supply, people go hungry and starve to death. That brand of horror is called famine.\u00a0If a massive swarm of locusts descends upon an area, consuming all vegetation in their path and causing widespread damage to crops, this would be another cause of famine. As with drought, people would go hungry and starve to death.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what\u2019s happening in Gaza. In Gaza, there is food relief available. There is medical aid available.\u00a0\u00a0Both are rotting in trucks on the border because Israel will not allow them into the country. People are not starving. They are being starved.\u00a0Israel\u2019s final solution to its \u201cPalestinian problem\u201d is to weaponize food and medical aid to starve the Palestinians into submission and ethnically cleanse them from their homeland.<\/p>\n

Leaders in the Israeli government such as Prime Minister Benjamine Netanyahu, Ben Gavir, Bezalel Smotrich, and their American guardians such as President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US Congress are complicit in these heinous crimes. They have chosen to deny water, food and aid to Palestinians as Israel continues its inhumane assault on children, women, medical professionals, press correspondents covering the genocide and international aid workers.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Haaretz<\/a>, Israeli soldiers in Gaza have been ordered to deliberately fire upon desperate Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month. Doctors say aid distribution sites have become \u2018a slaughterhouse\u2019 as Palestinians have been lured to their deaths under the pretense of receiving aid. Over 550 Palestinians were killed trying to get aid in the month of June alone.<\/p>\n

After years of using precise\u00a0calculations<\/a>\u00a0to limit Palestinians daily caloric intake, denying access to potable water, polluting accessible water with sewage and within the last week\u00a0preventing<\/a>\u00a0Palestinian fisherman access to the Mediterranean Sea, the Zionist Israeli government claims it will allow a limited amount of food aid into limited areas.<\/p>\n

As convoys of trucks sit at the border with Egypt awaiting Israeli government clearance to deliver lifesaving aid, Netanyahu decides to recklessly \u201cair drop\u201d small amounts of supplies into limited spaces in the suffering region. This is analogous to trying to extinguish the recent California wildfires with an eyedropper and calling it \u201caction\u201d.<\/p>\n

The rationalization of \u201cjustification\u201d for this ethnic cleansing is codified in Basic Law: Israel\u2014The Nation-State of the Jewish People (the Nation-State Law). According to Honaida Ghanim in Israel’s Nation-State Law:\u00a0Hierarchized Citizenship and Jewish Supremacy, \u201cThe exclusivity of rights in the \u201cLand\/State of Israel\u201d is the central organizing principle of the Nation-State Law. Jews are deemed the sole people deserving national and collective rights.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the law applies not only to the Jewish citizens of Israel but also to Jews from all parts of the world\u2014regardless of the extent of their relationship, affiliation, or even desire to become part of this entity.\u201d\u00a0This is at the expense of all other non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants (Palestinians) in the area.\u00a0This is also why I quoted the late President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.\u00a0The parallels of apartheid between South Africa and The Occupied Territories are undeniable.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0is now reporting, \u201cIt was not immediately clear how much more aid would enter Gaza, but U.N. officials said recently that Israel appeared willing to loosen some policies at a critical juncture when the territory is nearing a humanitarian tipping point.\u201d By allowing \u201crelief\u201d into the region, Israel is not trying to solve the hunger problem, it is trying to address a political problem.\u00a0The optics of starvation have become politically inconvenient for Netanyahu and his henchmen.<\/p>\n

While Palestinians are being starved to death, American politicians are engaged in hypocrisy and equivocation. US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted against Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and supported the bill to send more military aid to Israel. According to\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/a>, another Democrat, \u201cCongresswoman Grace Meng said in a statement that \u201cas a mother\u201d, her heart breaks to see children in Gaza starve, but\u2026it\u2019s important to recognize that Israel has facilitated the entry of over 1.8 million tons and over 96,000 trucks into Gaza, while Hamas continues to hold hostages, extort the aid system, and refuse ceasefire deals to stay in power and prolong the war\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

What Ocasio-Cortez and Meng, as well as other Democrats like Hakeem Jefferies and Gregory Meeks fail to recognize is that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip have been under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967. This is according to international humanitarian law (IHL), including the Fourth Geneva Convention.\u00a0International law recognizes the right of occupied peoples to resist foreign occupation and to pursue self-determination.\u00a0Even though, some US Democrats are calling for aid to urgently be provided to Palestinians in Gaza, very few of them can find the backbone to condemn Israel for its deadly blockade and war crimes.<\/p>\n

As we examine the difference between starving and being starved, it\u2019s about causation, decisions, and solutions.\u00a0If starvation is caused by \u201cActs of God\u201d, other nations can assist in ameliorating the circumstance, they won\u2019t solve the problem, but their support will minimize the number of people who are starving. In Occupied Palestine, people being starved to death is the result of a decision to weaponize food, withholding food and causing people to die.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t negotiate with drought, you can\u2019t change or control the weather, you can\u2019t negotiate with locusts. You can change a conscience decision; you can stop starvation by allowing people to be fed. Failing to do so is collective punishment. This is a war crime.\u00a0This is ethnic cleansing! This is genocide!<\/p>\n

Wilmer Leon is a national broadcast radio talk-show host. Author of Politics Another Perspective, he is also host of the podcast Connecting the Dots w\/ Wilmer Leon and columnist for the Trice Edney News Wire. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email:\u00a0<\/em>wjl3us@yahoo.com.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0www.twitter.com\/drwleon and Leon\u2019s Prescription at Facebook.com \u00a9 2025 InfoWave Communications, LLC<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Wilmer J. Leon, III, PhD Guest Column \u201cThe UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.\u201d – Nelson Mandela 1997. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[305],"class_list":["post-16797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16799,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16797\/revisions\/16799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16797"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=16797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}