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Monday, January 15, 2024

What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Have To Say on Gaza?

January 15, 2024
He insisted in 1967 that it was morally imperative for the US to stop its role in the Vietnam war. He would be calling for Biden to demand a ceasefire now.

As we celebrate the life and legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King today, we cross the 100-day mark in the devastating war in Gaza. If Dr. King were alive today, I feel certain he would have joined marches this weekend and used his voice and his pulpit to press the United States government to do everything in its power to persuade or pressure the government of Israel — which it has backed politically, diplomatically, militarily and financially — to agree to a ceasefire in its war in Gaza.
That war, waged in response to the deadly cross-border attack by Hamas and other militants on October 7 into Southern Israel has resulted in at least 23,000 Palestinian deaths and massive destruction, to date, as well as a punishing blockade preventing adequate food, water, medicine and other critical care to the two million people penned into the Gaza strip. As they seek shelter from artillery or bombs, more than 90 percent of the population is now at near term risk of starvation.
All of this horror is transpiring before our eyes — in much the way that the nightly network TV news brought reports from Vietnam in the 1960s. On April 4, 1967, Rev. King spoke out against the deadly impacts of America’s role in the Vietnamese civil war at the Riverside Church in his historic “Beyond Vietnam” speech, declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice.” Rev. King insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war — or at least its role in the war.
Inspired by his example, in early November more than 1,000 Black Christian leaders joined me to call upon President Biden to support a ceasefire in Gaza. Several of us met with White House outreach staff before publishing our call in a full page ad in the New York Times, urging them to use America’s leverage to actively work for a bilateral ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas and its allies, an increase of humanitarian aid and a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Among the signers were Rev. King’s daughter, Bernice A. King, Bishop Leah Daughtry and Rev. Dr. Freddy Haynes.
We called for “the safe and immediate return of all hostages still held in Gaza, the restoration of water, electricity, and urgent humanitarian relief to Palestinians commensurate with the scale of need created by this war.” We expressed concern that unless there is an immediate ceasefire by both Hamas and Israel, the conflict in Gaza will escalate into a regional war resulting in the continued death and injury of countless Palestinian and Israeli civilians, particularly children. Our fears are now being realized, as the U.S. government has launched missiles or dropped bombs on Syria, Iraqi militias, and — most recently — unleashed a barrage against the Yemeni forces who are disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, in an effort to put pressure on states to end Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. And war with forces in Lebanon appears highly probable.
Our call on the Biden Administration to “see the deaths and hear the cries of both our Palestinian and Israeli siblings whom all deserve to live safe from harm,” appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Beyond a temporary seven-day ceasefire in November, President Biden and the U.S. representatives in the UN have largely been unwavering in their support of Israel. While saying that he wants the war to end “as soon as possible.” Biden has not presented a timeline for ending the war. In a recent UN vote calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, the US was one of only 10 nations to vote against the resolution.
When we published our NYT appeal, “only” 10,000 residents of Gaza had been killed. We were told that President Biden is quietly applying pressure. Yet two months later, that toll stands at over 23,000 people killed. By the time Biden’s “quiet strategy” bears fruit, there may well be nothing left of Gaza and we may have a regional war.
Against this backdrop, I and other Black American church leaders welcomed the moral leadership of the government of South Africa in bringing to the International Court of Justice an allegation of intent by Israel to commit genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. Their request for rapid assessment of Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention was heard in the Hague and viewed with interest around the world this past week.
This leadership by South Africa is especially poignant to Black clergy, many of whom actively campaigned in the 1980s to force the Reagan White House to end its support for the racist, apartheid government in South Africa. That work paid off, finally, in 1987, when Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto of a bill requiring comprehensive sanctions by the US government against the racist apartheid government that denied people of color their basic rights.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, who was a leader in that struggle in South Africa, explained the decision to bring the World Court case by saying, “As a people who once tasted the bitter fruits of dispossession, discrimination, racism and state-sponsored violence, we are clear that we will stand on the right side of history.”
As Rev. King reminded us in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As people of moral conscience and as citizens of the United States, Black Christian leaders and so many other moral voices will continue to do all that is within our power to end U.S. support for the indiscriminate war and to press urgently for the return of the hostages and humanitarian assistance to the children, adults and elderly of Gaza.
 
Israeli-Made Famine: Denial of Food Aid could Kill 22,000 Palestinians this Month, Half of them Children
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that Israeli airstrikes and ground operations continued over the weekend in Gaza and says, “Between the afternoons of 12 and 14 January, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 260 Palestinians were reportedly killed, and another 577 people were reportedly injured.”
OCHA adds that these killings brought deaths to 23,968 and injuries to 60,000 since October 7.
There is also a key bullet point on their infographic that floored me. OCHA says that the Israeli campaign has left 378,000 people at catastrophic phase 5 levels of starvation.
US AID explains that Phase 5 levels of starvation indicate that “acute malnutrition levels exceed 30 percent, and more than 2 per 1,000 people are dying each day.”
Given that 378,000 people are being categorized by the UN as at phase 5, this definition suggests that 756 Palestinians in Gaza are dying of hunger each day, which comes to a projected 22,680 deaths from starvation over the next month.
Since half of the people in Gaza are minors, that would be roughly 11,000 children murdered by denial of food. These projections are inexact and contingent, but would hold true if the amount of food aid allowed into the Gaza Strip by the Israelis does not increase dramatically in the next weeks.
This policy is deliberate. As the South African complaint against Israel for genocide noted, “On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” The complaint also quoted Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz, who posted on X on 12 October 2023, “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”
Even the Palestinian children who don’t die of hunger will be permanently damaged by prolonged acute malnutrition, defined as an inadequate energy or protein intake. An article by Valeria Dipasquale et al. in Nutrients points out that “Acute malnutrition has been recognized as causing reduction in the numbers of neurons, synapses, dendritic arborizations, and myelinations, all of which resulting in decreased brain size. The cerebral cortex is thinned and brain growth slowed. Delays in global function, motor function, and memory have been associated with malnutrition. The effects on the developing brain may be irreversible after the age of 3–4 years.”
Yes, the fascist government of PM Binyamin Netanyahu is making war on the brains of Palestinian children, who risk cognitive impairment. The longer this starvation-siege continues, the more likely it is that the effects on small children will be irreversible.
It should also be remembered that some 94 percent of water available on a regular basis in Gaza is not potable, and so many children and adults are contracting gastrointestinal diseases and suffering from diarrhea. Infants and toddlers can easily die of dehydration in these circumstances.
Dipasquale et al. write, “Organ systems are variably impaired in acute malnutrition. Cellular immunity is affected because of atrophy of the thymus, lymph nodes, and tonsils . . . Consequently, the susceptibility to invasive infections (urinary, gastrointestinal infections, septicemia, etc.) is increased ”
It is precisely in the crowded conditions of southern Gaza, into which the Israeli government has forcibly displaced over a million people, that respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases proliferate. By starving the population, Netanyahu is virtually guaranteeing disease outbreaks. We are likely to see a massive spike in infant mortality from disease and weakened immune systems, quite apart from children dying of hunger.
 
100 Days Into War on Gaza, UN Leaders Renew Call to Prevent Famine
"People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food," said the World Food Program executive director.
After Israel's war on the Gaza Strip hit the 100-day mark this past weekend, United Nations humanitarian leaders on Monday emphasized the risk of famine and disease in a joint demand for dramatically increasing the flow of aid in the besieged enclave.
The U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Program (WFP), and the World Health Organization (WHO) are calling for "the opening of new entry routes; more trucks being allowed through border checks each day; fewer restrictions on the movement of humanitarian workers; and guarantees of safety for people accessing and distributing aid."
Since October 7—when over 1,100 people were killed and around 240 others were taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack on Israel—U.S.-backed Israeli forces have killed more than 24,000 Palestinians in Gaza, displaced roughly 90% of the strip's 2.3 million residents, and devastated civilian infrastructure in what many world leaders and experts have decried as genocide, leading to a hearing at the International Court of Justice.
"People in Gaza are suffering from a lack of food, water, medicines, and adequate healthcare," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday. "Famine will make an already terrible situation catastrophic because sick people are more likely to succumb to starvation and starving people are more vulnerable to disease."
"We need unimpeded, safe access to deliver aid and a humanitarian cease-fire to prevent further death and suffering," he stressed, echoing weekend marches worldwide advocating for an end to the violence.
The most recent Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification (IPC) report—based on conditions from November 24 to December 7—found that 93% of Gaza's population, or over 2 million people, faced high levels of acute food insecurity.
Now, humanitarians believe the entire remaining population of Gaza needs "some assistance of some kind," Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N.'s new resident coordinator, said Saturday. "And we are right now facing an uphill struggle to just address the needs of those who we reach. We need to reach far farther, far deeper... for other places like the north."
UNICEF projects that thousands of young children in Gaza could endure a significant rise in "the most life-threatening form of malnutrition" in the next few weeks without a serious increase in food access.
"Children at high risk of dying from malnutrition and disease desperately need medical treatment, clean water, and sanitation services, but the conditions on the ground do not allow us to safely reach children and families in need," said Catherine Russell, UNICEF's executive director.
"Some of the material we desperately need to repair and increase water supply remain restricted from entering Gaza," she continued. "The lives of children and their families are hanging in the balance. Every minute counts."
Just two southern border crossings have allowed aid through, and only after "a multi-layered vetting process," the U.N. leaders explained. "Once inside, efforts to set up service points for people in need are hampered by bombardments and constantly shifting battle fronts, which endanger the lives of ordinary Gazans and the U.N. and other humanitarian personnel striving to help them."
Cindy McCain, WFP's executive director, warned Monday that "people in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food."
"Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk," she declared. "We can keep famine at bay but only if we can deliver sufficient supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are."
U.N. leaders are calling for not only lifting barriers to humanitarian aid but also resuming commercial traffic into Gaza.
"The flow of aid has been a trickle in comparison to a sea of humanitarian needs," noted Phillip Lazzarini, commissioner-general for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
"Humanitarian aid will not be enough to reverse the worsening hunger among the population," he added. "Commercial supplies are a must to allow the markets and private sector to re-open and provide an alternative to food accessibility."
McGoldrick pointed out that "before this started, what you had was around 500 trucks per day coming in as commercial transport. And the U.N. served those who were unfortunate, not able to buy those things commercially."
Now, "we, the humanitarians, need to have about 200 trucks in a day," he said. "The people who were being served by the commercial sector are now squeezing what's in the humanitarian sector and everybody's in need."
 
Israel’s War on Palestine and the Global Upsurge Against It
Hundreds of millions of people across the world have been deeply moved by the atrocity of the Israeli war on Palestine. Millions have attended marches and protests, many of them participating in such demonstrations for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with memes and posts about this or that terrible action. Some people focus on the Israeli attack on Palestinian children, others on the illegal targeting of Gaza’s health infrastructure, and yet others point to the annihilation of at least four hundred families (more than ten people in each family killed). The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing. Holidays in December went by, but the intensity of the protests and the posts remained steady. No attempt by social media companies to turn the algorithm against the Palestinians succeeded, no attempt to ban the protests—even the display of the Palestinian flag—worked. Accusations of antisemitism fell flat and demands for the condemnation of Hamas were dismissed. This is a new mood, a new kind of attitude toward the Palestinian struggle.
Never before in the 75 previous years has there been such sustained attention to the cause of the Palestinians and of Israeli brutality. Israel has launched eight bombing campaigns on  Gaza since 2006. . And Israel has built up an entire illegal structure against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (an apartheid wall, settlements, checkpoints). When Palestinians have tried to resist—whether through civic action or armed struggle—they have faced immense violence from the Israeli military. Ever since social media has been available, images from Palestine have circulated, including of the use of white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza, and including the arrest and murder of Palestinian children across the Occupied Palestine Territory. But none of the previous acts of violence evoked the kind of response from around the world as this violence that began in October 2023.
Genocide
The Israeli armed violence against Gaza since October has been in a qualitatively different form than any previous violence. The bombardment of Gaza was vicious, with Israeli aircraft hitting residential areas with no concern for civilian life. The number of dead increased day by day at a rate not seen before. Then, when Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, they effected an illegal mass eviction of the Palestinian civilians from their homes and pushed them further and further south toward the border with Egypt. The Israelis violated their own promises of “safe zones,” hitting areas more densely packed than before because of the internal displacement. It was this scale of violence that provoked an early use of the term “genocide” to describe what was happening in Gaza. By early January, more than 1 percent of the entire Palestinian population in Gaza had been killed, while over 95 percent had been displaced. The kind of violence used here was not seen in any contemporary war, neither in Iraq (where the U.S. disregarded most laws of war) nor in Ukraine (where the death toll of civilians is far smaller despite the war now lasting two years).
The momentum of mass protest pushed the government of South Africa to file a dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for the crime of genocide. Both countries are parties to the 1948 Convention Against Genocide, and the ICJ is the venue for dispute settlements. The 84-page filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel, and also, crucially, the words of Israeli high officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list the Israeli officials in their own words, many of them calling for a “Second Nakba” or a “Gaza Nakba,” a use of the term “Nakba” or Catastrophe that refers to the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the State of Israel. These words are chilling, and they have been widely circulated since October. Racist language about “monsters,” “animals,” and the “jungle” shape the speeches and statements by these Israeli government officials. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9, 2023, that his forces are “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” This, along with the character of the Israeli military strikes, is sufficient as a benchmark for the accusation of genocide. At the hearing at the ICJ, Israel was unable to respond credibly to the South African complaint.
It is a combination of the images from Gaza and the words of these Israeli high officials—backed fully by the United States government and many of the governments of European states—that provoked the sustained anger and desolation that has driven these mass protests.
Legitimacy
Over the course of the past two years—from the start of the war in Ukraine until now—there has been a rapid decline in the legitimacy of the West, notably the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States. These wars are not the cause of this drop in legitimacy, but they have accelerated the decline in the legitimacy of the NATO countries, particularly in the Global South.
Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, over technology and science, and over raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their “tax strike” and withdrew a large share of social wealth into tax havens and into unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including by making investments in the Global South. That role was slowly taken up by China, which has been recycling global profits into infrastructural projects across the world. Rather than contest China’s Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, through its own commercial and economic project, the Global North has sought to militarize its response with massive spending (three-quarters of global military spending is by the NATO states). The Global North has used Ukraine and Taiwan as levers to provoke Russia and China into military conflicts so as to ‘weaken’ them rather than contest growing Russian energy power and Chinese industrial and technological power through trade and development.
It is clear to the majority of people in the world that it is the Global North that has failed to address the crises in the world, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute a language of euphemism for reality, using terms such as “democracy promotion,” “sustainable development,” “humanitarian pause,” and—from UK Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock—the ridiculous formulation of a “sustainable ceasefire.” Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a “sustainable ceasefire” while arming Israel or to speak of “democracy promotion” while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.
The Israelis say that they will continue this genocidal war for as long as it takes. As each day goes by of this war, the legitimacy of Israel deteriorates. But behind that violence itself is the much deeper end of the legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

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