Letter to Israeli Ambassador opposing starvation in Gaza

 Here is the text of a letter I have just sent to the Israeli Ambassador to Canada (I am a Canadian).  I encourage anyone who feels as I do to write to the Israeli Ambassadors to their own countries.

Ambassador Iddo Moed'

Embassy of Israel,

50 O’Connor Street.

Ottawa, ON K1P 5E1

 

Your Excellency, 

I am writing to you in my dual capacity as a Jewish Canadian and a retired scholar of international human rights and comparative genocide studies. I wish to express my extreme concern about the ongoing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide being committed by the state of Israel in Gaza. I am particularly concerned about the starvation that Israel’s continual blockade is causing.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has denied that there is starvation in Gaza. This is an outright lie. Israel is engaging in what the late (Jewish) scholar Helen Fein called genocide by attrition. An example of genocide by attrition is the Holocaust. Jews who were not outright murdered were starved to death, both in the camps and in the ghettoes.

Many pro-Israel organizations consider comparison of the current situation in Gaza to the Holocaust to be anti-Semitic. Sadly, however, this comparison is apt. I happened to be reading a book about the murders of Jews in Lithuania at the same time I was reading news stories about Gaza. In the concentration camps, Nazis fed Jews thin soup with potato peels. In Gaza, mothers are forced to feed their children thin soup with a few lentils.

Please stop this starvation at once.  Air drops are insufficient and dangerous.  The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Fund is a farce. Truckloads of food donated inter alia by the Canadian government and various well-established, efficient and knowledgeable non-government organizations are waiting at Gaza’s border. Let them in.