John S. Hancock lives in Concord.

‘Gaza is on the brink of famine,” according to Alex de Waal, world-renowned expert on the weaponization and use of starvation during wartime and the executive director of the World Peace Foundation. This man-made catastrophe is being imposed as a collective death sentence by the governments of Israel and the United States, partners in committing the crime of genocide against Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians.

Alex de Waal states that the famine in Gaza can’t be stopped; he compares it to a runaway train. Children who are among the most vulnerable people have already been dying of starvation but many more will perish from famine. He says “Palestinian children in Gaza will die, in the thousands.”

There is no instance since the Second World War, de Waal notes, “in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and destitution with such speed.” De Waal believes that, “There’s no case in which the international obligation to stop” this intentional campaign of mass starvation “has been so clear.”

While people in northern Gaza are, as Al Jazeera reports, eating grass, animal feed that’s dangerous to consume and drinking polluted water Israel holds up relief supplies coming through Egypt. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced on Feb. 11 that food supplies that can feed 1.1 million people for a month are being held up in the Port of Ashdod, Israel.

UNRWA’s head Philippe Lazzarini said it was informed by their contractor providing handling services at the port “that it could no longer continue working with UNRWA following instructions from the authorities.” Israel’s desire to destroy UNRWA goes back decades because this United Nations agency holds the Israelis accountable when they commit atrocities.

In November of 1956 the director-general of UNRWA reported both Israel’s summary execution of 275 men around Khan Yunis and the Israelis murdering 111 men in Rafah a week later. UNRWA and its 13,000 employees in Gaza must be permitted to do their jobs in dispensing critically needed food and other essential supplies to keep countless Palestinians in Gaza alive.

The advocacy by UNRWA for Palestinian human rights, a people who since 1967 have had virtually no rights while living in the occupied territories under a military dictatorship-police state, including “the right of return” to communities in Israel makes them a prime political target of the most extreme government in Israel’s history. The systemic dehumanizing of Palestinians in Israel’s apartheid society, the violent and racist vitriol of Israel’s government towards them becomes deadly as the Israeli military massacres combatants and noncombatants without distinction.

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The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that 30,000 Palestinians, seventy percent of whom were women and children, have been killed in Gaza by the Israelis. Another 7,000 people are buried beneath the rubble and presumed dead while over 70,000 Palestinians have been wounded many with severe injuries requiring ongoing treatment if they’re to survive.

The allegations made by the Israelis against first 12, then six UNRWA employees accusing them of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas military raid against Israel was payback and designed to divert attention away from the Jan. 26, 2024, preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice which found it “plausible” that Israel is committing acts which violate the Genocide Convention. UNRWA reported its own findings to the ICJ which is the United Nations highest court.

The Israeli “dossier” regarding the accused UNRWA employees has been examined by at least three British news organizations and is said to contain no evidence to back up the charges made against them.

The International Court of Justice is demanding, including Justice Aharon Barak from Israel, that the Israelis implement “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life in the Gaza Strip.”

This directive of the ICJ is being egregiously violated by Israel as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri for the right to food states, “There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza...other than to deny people access to food.”

President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken who immorally and illegally suspended American aid to UNRWA, as famine in Gaza became inevitable, should restore full funding without delay and urge the nations which unlawfully followed the lead of the United States to resume their assistance as well. Even a fully funded UNRWA can’t deliver all the needed aid amidst Israel’s bombing and shelling.

There’s a global consensus of people who are united in supporting a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in order to stop the killing, to deal with the famine and the disease epidemics thereby saving thousands of lives. The adamant refusal of Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas along with Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan to back a complete cessation of this slaughter of innocent people, it’s not war, is a moral failure on their part and unacceptable. Sens. Shaheen and Hassan should begin work today to refund UNRWA.

Dr. Tariq Haddad of Falls Church Virginia has lost a hundred family members, all civilians, many professional people like himself who’ve been massacred in Gaza by Israel’s Air Force bombardments. This, unfortunately, is a common occurrence in Gaza. Many families have and continue to be wiped out. It’s long past time to stop this wanton carnage.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan had enough of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Beirut, Lebanon. Reagan called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and in his diary wrote, “I was angry...I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately and said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off.”

President Reagan’s phone call worked, the guns went silent. President Biden, now it’s your turn to save Rafah and a million and a half people, refugees in their own land.