The Biden administration’s shameful weaponization of food aid – Mondoweiss
The Biden Administration has done more damage to the international norms of humanitarian law and food security than any other U.S. government in recent history. The war in Gaza has had many casualties, including dead, captive, displaced, and mourning Palestinians, Israelis, and Lebanese. One additional casualty is the global commitment to the norms of international human rights, the law of war, and international humanitarian law for which the U.S. spent so much effort building consensus since the end of the Second World War. By enabling Israel’s disregard for these norms, the Biden Administration has made it difficult if not impossible to credibly call out other governments, such as Russia, when they flagrantly violate them. Now another casualty is the reputation of FEWS as well as of Ambassador Lew, one of America’s finest senior public servants. Ambassador Lew attacked the latest FEWS Gaza update as “irresponsible” the week of December 23, questioning the population figures used in its analysis. FEWS uses the best available figures for population and humanitarian supplies, based on their technical judgment regarding accessible data. This is a not uncommon technical issue in some countries that FEWS has reported on over the years. In addition, the IPC scale FEWS uses to determine famine conditions is on a per-10,000 people basis, so the total population would not matter in determining whether or not famine conditions prevail. FEWS quickly withdrew the update under apparent pressure from USAID officials. It’s noteworthy that — since May — FEWS updates have already been projecting impending famine, absent increased humanitarian food shipments reaching Gaza, and the Famine Review Committee in November projected impending famine for parts of Gaza. These findings and projections are fully consistent with what the most respected voices in the humanitarian community have been warning of for months as a consequence of Israel’s failure to permit major increases and predictability in humanitarian supply. This censorship of a careful technical update, relying on global standards and careful review, further erodes the norms of global food security, undermining any pretense of an impartial U.S. government assessment of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. This follows on the Biden Administration’s failure to enforce U.S. law and policy following the October Austin-Blinken letter to the Israeli government threatening cessation of arms shipments to countries impeding humanitarian aid. The outgoing Biden Administration has a choice: It can leave office having done more damage to the international norms of humanitarian law and food security than any other recent administration, or it can return to honoring the norms that previous Administrations of both parties upheld and go on record calling out Israel as a violator of basic humanitarian norms rather than censoring reports identifying famine as a result of those Israeli actions. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34494): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34494 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110529050/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
