If Gaza's Children Starve, Israel Will Lose Its Moral Legitimacy Forever

[Nanjeanne]

By David Rothkopf, a former senior U.S. government official and the author of ten books on foreign policy and politics.

The fighting in Gaza must stop. Not tomorrow. Today.
All available resources must immediately be directed to stopping the unprecedented famine that is underway in that embattled sliver of land that has already seen unspeakable suffering. As bad as the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was, the people and government of Israel must now recognize that today not just the country's security but its legitimacy are at stake as never before.

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Former USAID Administrator Gayle Smith told me, "We are already seeing death by starvation and are looking at an accelerating trajectory towards famine from now through May and likely catastrophic famine by July."

Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, said, "When children begin dying of evident starvation, as we're now seeing, that is indicative of extreme, sustained deprivation. Given the overwhelming levels of food deprivation and rapidly accelerating malnutrition in the latest reporting (doubled since January), this famine is building momentum very rapidly.
"There will a lot of kids right now who are at the level of advanced malnutrition that the dying kids were approximately four weeks ago. The numbers will keep rising until something major changes the trajectory."

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If the race to avert catastrophic famine is lost," she states, it will not be the fault of aid groups: Responsibility should be laid firmly at the feet of the politicians whose responsibility it is to create such conditions.

That means, first and foremost, the Israeli government. But it also means all the nations of the world who are in a position to help, right now. The blame-shifting and inflamed rhetoric and political posturing and disastrous decision-making that have brought us to this awful point must stop. Fundamental decency requires it.
But so too does the recognition that the failure to effectively intervene now to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will be a moral stain on the reputation of Israel from which the country may never recover.

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