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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 o