UN: 15,000 pregnant women facing famine in Gaza

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A UN agency has warned that an estimated 15-thousand pregnant women are among half of Gaza's population that is at the risk of an imminent famine.

The United Nations Population Fund attributes the situation to the continued Israeli blockade on life-saving aid to Gaza. The UNPF said that Israel has closed the doors to humanitarian aid and opened the gates to starvation in the territory. The agency added, the catastrophe is incomprehensible and entirely avoidable. The UN and other international aid agencies have repeatedly issued such warnings to Israel but to no avail. Israeli forces on the ground have rather attacked aid workers and Palestinians waiting for food assistance on numerous occasions. According to the UN, 254 aid workers have been killed since Israel launched its war on Gaza late last year.

Kevin Barrett, when you take a look at the story here, a UN agency warning about the pregnant women, that's a headline in itself. And then you have the fact that they're at risk of famine. That's another headline. I'm looking at this pier that the U.S. built, which I believe a quarter of it is now broken off and sailed off into Ashdod. Isn't that reflective of the type of disconnect from reality of the depth of the situation that the U.S. is in when it comes to how it could stop all of this from happening? We're giving up hope on the Israeli regime, by the way.

Kevin Barrett: Yes, the U.S. is showing complete incompetence or really much worse. It's actually showing that it is participating with genocidal intent in this genocidal campaign against Gaza. The pier breaking off does symbolize that incompetence, but just building the pier in the first place was obviously not really designed to deal with this situation. The United States could stop this catastrophe instantly with one phone call from the Biden White House ordering the Israelis to stop their genocide campaign, with the threat of everything that the United States could do to Israel theoretically, up to and including declaring war on this genocidal state as part of a relief operation. The United States theoretically could do all sorts of things.

But wouldn't have to go nearly that far. All it would have to do is threaten a reversal of longstanding U.S. support for Israel and a complete cessation of any funding and diplomatic efforts, and to support Palestine instead of Israel. The United States is supposed to be a sovereign country and theoretically could do all of those things. But instead, because the United States has been taken over by this neoconservative Zionist wing of foreign policy thinkers who are basically loyal to the extreme expansionist designs of the Likudniks in Israel, the United States has been completely complicit and has simply done these PR stunts, such as building a pier that just breaks off. Even if the pier were functioning, it wouldn't come even close to stopping this famine that, as we heard, is threatening the pregnant women of Gaza with utter starvation. The pier wouldn't fix that, even if it were functioning. It would at most allow a small proportion of what's needed in.

What's needed is to open the Rafah border crossing. There's plenty of aid waiting there. And the Israelis are blocking that. And the Americans can tell them to open it up any time that the United States wants to. But it apparently doesn't want to, making US leaders equally complicit in genocide. And this genocide campaign is deliberately targeting women and children. The Israelis have been very clear and blunt about this for years,that they are targeting Palestinian women and children. The IDF soldiers proudly wear one-shot, two-kills T-shirts showing an image of a pregnant Palestinian woman with a target on her belly. And Ayelet Sheked, the minister in Israel, has called for Israel to exterminate the so-called little snakes, meaning Palestinian children, as well as the mothers who bear them. And these are just a couple of examples of the clear genocidal intent to exterminate Palestinian women and children coming from the entire leadership class of the state of Israel, supported by the entire leadership class of the United States of America. Both of those leadership classes need to be arrested and put on trial for genocide, convicted and executed.

We know that the ICJ in particular and also the ICC now have obviously zoomed in on the Israeli regime in terms of issuing statements and condemnations, the latest from the ICC in terms of the arrest warrants. But don't you think that the focus should also be on the U.S.? If Israel is executing and is the gun that's shooting, the U.S. is providing the bullets. So shouldn't the U.S. also be held accountable in that respect and the focus to be on the U.S. ?

Sakina Dattoo: The U.S. is obviously accountable. However, expecting the U.S. to do anything to stop this genocide, I think, is asking too much. The U.S. is not an independent country anymore. It is run and controlled by the AIPAC, which is the Zionist lobby. The same can be said for here in the UK, because the friends of Israel are the ones who are controlling all the decision makers in the government here.

So I think what has been happening in the past years is a culmination. I think the world was sleeping not realizing how all the nations were being entrenched by this Zionist lobby. Today, we have reached such a stage that the world is just watching such a massacre. Every time you think that it can't get worse, it does. And Israel is acting with complete impunity, no matter what ICJ says, no matter what ICC says, no matter how many demonstrations around the world take place, and people asking for a genocide to stop, they're not going to listen to anybody because they have the support of the biggest nations around the world. And these nations themselves are also not independent. We here in the UK, all the activism, all the processions we've been leading up to, there is no way that the politicians who have taken huge sums of money from Israeli lobbies, that they are going to stop, for example, arms sales.

The same, I think, is in the US. I think at this stage now, the only solution I see is that people, in the streets in every part of the globe, need to take steps. They need to really push their governments. We need to make it impossible…And for those countries that have elections this year—we have elections in less than six weeks. the US has got elections—I think it is the people now who have to show their governments that we are not complicit with this and anyone who in any manner has been linked to the Zionist lobby, they are not going to be voted in. That is the only solution I see because I don't see the leadership of any of the Western countries, Arab countries, Muslim countries, I don't see any of them being able to do anything at all.

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