There’s no problem with babies starving to death in Gaza, just with their pictures
The Israeli public has totally dehumanised the Palestinians in Gaza. And since they are not considered human, it is morally permissible to starve them to death
By Rogel Alpher • Translated by Sol Salbe
The nutritional status of the Gaza population is a public relations problem. From Channel 14’s perspective, it’s a shame that we can’t starve the Gazans and just hide the images from the world, so that the international media won’t publish photos that would lead to a halt in fighting. In such a case, all Gazans would die of hunger and the need for humanitarian aid would become irrelevant. That’s an elegant solution that would also save the establishment and operation of the Immigration Administration . The latter would take many years to empty the strip of its people. The Israeli public has totally dehumanised the Gazans. And since they are not considered human, it is morally permissible to starve them to death.
This is how political correspondent Moti Kastel described the consequences of not letting nine trucks loaded with baby food into the Gaza Strip: “And then we will encounter a phenomenon that we don’t want to see, at least not from the perspective of the international community, of pictures of babies starving to death and so on.” The tone of his speech matched his oh-so banal statement of the obvious. The problematic phenomenon is “pictures of starving babies”, in contrast to the massively different real babies actually starving to death. There is no problem with starving babies. There is a problem with their pictures, which will cause the fighting to stop.
Likud spokesperson Guy Levy explained: “All you need is a picture of one small place where you have 5000 hungry children with their skin clinging to their bones, and there is no more war tomorrow. They don’t even have to die.” Again, there is no problem with “5000 hungry children with their skin clinging to their bones.” There is not even a problem with them dying — on the contrary, let them die. But a picture of them alive is sufficient to halt the fighting. Political correspondent Tamir Morag noted from a scientific point of view: “You need to keep the population in the Gaza Strip above the threshold of malnutrition, so that you don’t have sights of starving Gazans, which will cause international pressure that will bring about an end to the war.” The “sights” must be prevented, and therefore the doctor ordered to “keep them above the malnutrition threshold.” It’s a shame that we cannot set up some Potemkin “model humanitarian zone” to deceive the representatives of the International Red Cross and to camouflage the entire operation of starving the Gazans to death. And let’s be more accurate: even in that safe zone, for example, not a single Gazan will be allowed to cross the “malnutrition threshold.” What would be the point? It’s a waste of resources. After all, at some point they will die as collateral damage from the bombing.
Still, lawyer Iska Bina couldn’t be convinced by the arguments put during the program. According to her, Hamas would continue to disseminate pictures of hungry children even if Israel let in aid. Her conclusion: continue to starve them! And so the discourse continued about the difficulty of starving millions to death today. Undoubtedly, the lives of those who starve populations to death used to be easier. If only the Israeli public could enjoy “a picture of one small place where you have 5000 hungry children with their skin clinging to their bones,” without constantly worrying about what this annoying “world” will say.
