In a Feb. 8 article on ScheerPost (and reprinted in Consortium News), entitled, “Let Them Eat Dirt,” Chris Hedges identifies that the Israelis plan to follow the Nazi strategy which was applied in 1942 against Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, now against Palestinians trapped in Gaza: mass starvation. He takes the word “starvation,” which many have heard, and draws out the physiological and psychological effects on its victims.
Hedges asserts, “When Israeli leaders use the term ‘absolute victory,’ they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed.”
He explains: “Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)....
“I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs, scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not. The international community, as in Gaza, did little to intervene.”
Hedges goes on to disclose how starvation, stage by stage, enfolds a horrific way to die:
“The precursor to starvation—undernourishment—already affects most Palestinians in Gaza. Those who starve lack enough calories to sustain themselves.
