Odeh Bisharat, columnist for Haaretz, wrote in a column posted yesterday, about a Dec. 29 report in the Guardian written by Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh. Sridhar warned that if no dramatic change occurs in Gaza, there is the risk that a quarter of the enclave’s population—in other words, half a million people—will die within the year, mainly due to disease and the collapse of the healthcare system there.
“In other words, the 22,000 Gazans who have been killed in the first wave of bombings in Gaza are (excuse the expression) small change compared to what lies ahead. They are just a precursor to the catastrophe that is awaiting the Gaza Strip. We don’t have to wait, because we are already witness to the destruction of much of Gaza, places that more resemble hell than earth.
“The Jewish soul that finds itself in the most benighted places in the world, ready to help the victims of natural disasters, chooses these days to look aside when just around the corner one of the world’s biggest humanitarian disasters of the century is taking place. Even worse, there are those in Israel who are not satisfied with the disaster that is Gaza—one senior government official has not ruled out dropping an atomic bomb—kaboom and it’s all over,” he goes further.
