The Wild Reed: Protesting Israel’s “Starvation Campaign” in Gaza

Last Wednesday I attended the weekly vigil in St. Paul that’s held in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank.

Recent vigils have focused on the Israeli government’s starvation of the Palestinian population in Gaza. And, of course, we are always there in protest of the U.S. government using our tax dollars to fund Israel’s wider genocide in Gaza.

You might recall that last October then-Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein attended our vigil when in the Twin Cities for a series of campaign events (left).

Dr. Stein was prominently featured in a Newsweek article published earlier today on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, one that now sees Israel “conducting the fastest starvation campaign in modern history.”

Following are excerpts.

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The U.S. must immediately follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s lead and recognize a Palestinian state as a “famine-made-in-Israel” sweeps Gaza, Jill Stein has said.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated in recent months, with mounting international pressure on Israel and warnings of mass starvation. Images released last week of emaciated children have shocked the world.

“Of course Palestine deserves statehood, as long declared by the United Nations,” Stein told Newsweek. “But this is not the first order of business as famine-made-in-Israel sweeps the Gaza Strip. Israel is conducting the fastest starvation campaign in modern history, according to the U.N. Rapporteur on Food. Over 2 million lives are in immediate peril, over half of them children.”

The Green Party 2024 presidential candidate said the crisis “is the intended consequence of Israel’s genocidal ban blocking food, water, electricity and fuel from reaching the 'human animals’ of Gaza, as announced by then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in October 2023 and ramped up 80 days ago.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has denied what it called “the false claim of deliberate starvation” in Gaza. On Sunday, the Israeli military began a limited pause in fighting in three parts of Gaza for 10 hours a day as part of a series of measures announced to address the humanitarian crisis. Israel said the military carried out several aid airdrops into Gaza over the weekend and would establish humanitarian corridors.

. . . Israel has restricted aid into Gaza, stating, without evidence, that Hamas was using shipments to bolster its position. It has also accused the U.N. of failing to cooperate on the distribution of aid.

The World Food Program warned in a statement that a third of Gaza’s population of around 2 million were not eating for days. It said that nearly half a million people were enduring famine-like conditions.

Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state, expressing outrage at the Palestinian death toll and starvation in Gaza. It was a bold, but largely symbolic, diplomatic move. Once formalized at the U.N. General Assembly in September, France will become the biggest Western power to call for a Palestinian state. More than 140 countries recognize Palestine as a state.

Stein, who placed the war in Gaza at the forefront of her 2024 presidential election campaign, said the U.S. must immediately follow suit.

“Having provided 80% of weapons, funding and diplomatic cover for this genocidal assault, the US fully shares responsibility with Israel,” she said. “We must stop blocking Palestinian statehood, which is supported by at least 75% of U.N. members. But for Palestinians to survive to populate this state, we must first adopt an immediate ban on military and economic aid to Israel until it complies with international law, ends its siege, allows aid to flow, and agrees to a cease fire and an end to genocide and occupation.”

“In short, the world is recoiling in horror as we witness the utter dismantling of international law, human rights and basic decency,” Stein told Newsweek. “This is a threat not just to Palestine, but also to the people of Israel, whose future in a full-blown apartheid authoritarian state is bleak, as noted by Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov. It is also a threat to people of the world including Americans, whose position as top dog in the global order is shakier by the day. We too will be vulnerable in a world ruled by the law of the jungle, rather than the law of nations currently under attack.”