Folks, I need to inform you that there is very concerning data regarding the food situation in Gaza.
Firstly, let me just that that as someone who supports Israel I anticipate many on my side will be skeptical of this and I totally understand why. Throughout the war you have been fed false information from the UN and various "Humanitarian" institutions and media who have essentially zero concern for truth or anything resembling reality. As I have publicly documented extensively, these institutions repeatedly fabricated data, then lied about their own data they fabricated, made up nonsense on the spot, all completely shamelessly knowing they wouldn't be questioned, and of course were repeatedly proven wrong (including by myself from my own past analyses and counter-predictions). My view of these institutions has not changed. "Humanitarian" institutions have been and still are the ultimate kings of pseudoscience.
That all being said, the fable of the boy who cried wolf has an important moral which is not that wolves don't exist and will never attack anyone. Rather, it is precisely because wolves do exist and will eventually attack that makes it so important to not cry wolf. And ideally, even when the UN cries wolf and a wolf actually happens to finally be there, we should still be ready for that.
Prices of staple food items for calories and/or protein (tracked over time in the same region, minimizing noise) have reached extremely high values, many of which are unprecedented throughout the war. This data was compiled by
@YannayASpitzer, from the Department of Economics at
@HebrewU.
This is concerning as relative changes food prices have been a reasonable indicator for access to food in Gaza throughout the war, even while free aid, distribution, concomitant looting of aid, potential hoarding of aid (insert additional concerns here) were all concomitantly happening. While this data can be complex and hard to standardize, they overall did what you would expect them to do - when access was low, they went up, when access was high, they went down. Now they're up at levels we haven't seen before (standardized for market location as above).
Also, this isn't just my assessment. It also isn't just Yannay's assessment. This sentiment was also expressed by the GHF themselves. They said "the situation in Gaza is dire". This isn't coming from the UN or some other "Humanitarian" pseudoscience factory. This is coming from the GHF, who are on the ground and see what is happening firsthand every day without the anti-Israel lenses on.
Something needs to change. The suggestions I have at the moment (getting at things that will work but also politically viable/realistic):
1) Scale up humanitarian operations:
- Increase the food quantity to be distributed, petition for increased funding if necessary.
- Increase distribution site number to increase access and minimize crowding at any single site.
- Increase the operational time open of distribution centers, for the same reasons.
2) Reduce casualties of civilians en-route to aid centers: Without litigating each case (which is not the purpose of this post), the civilian casualties near/en-route to humanitarian centers ultimately limits aid access and needs to be improved.
- Higher thresholds for engagement, including for warning shots
- Consider policing protocols for crowd control (while the IDF is not the police, if they are going to be doing a policing job, they should be implementing police protocols at least to some degree)
3) Force idle aid to be distributed:
Yes, do this by force if necessary. It doesn't matter if aid is idle in a truck, a warehouse, or even being hoarded. If it's not going anywhere, it might as well not exist.
- Implement protocols such that aid idle beyond a given time will be seized for distribution to any other humanitarian organization that will distribute it. Not just idle trucks, but aid idle in UN warehouses as well. And to whatever degree claims of warehouse hoarding by Hamas or other nefarious actors are true, raid and seize that aid for distribution too. Aid doesn't sit. It goes to the people who need it. Period.
Other suggestions are welcome, so long as they are politically realistic (this mean accounting for what certain authorities will and will not allow, even if you don't like that) and genuinely motivated by improving the situation rather than scoring political points or feeding some moral sense of righteous indignation.