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This Week’s Issue

The Israeli Government and the dilemma of Gaza

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Written by

Trevor Ammundsen

Published on

September 9, 2025

Hunger in Gaza.

OPINION

I am like many people in New Zealand in that I do not really know what hunger is, yet alone have any experience of famine. Like most people the closest I get is about midday when I realise I skipped breakfast for some reason and set about catching up with a good brunch. Occasionally we see the results of famine on TV and tut tut about the children with doleful eyes and bodies that seem to be just bone. But recently I have had an experience which has opened my eyes somewhat and has raised a few questions, one of which is indicated by the title.

A couple of weeks ago someone very dear to me was taken into hospital, it doesn’t matter what for. The initial prognosis was that the patient was to have no foods or fluids for five days, after a day they were allowed blocks of ice. This would allow the treatment to have its curative effect and the patient would be released. The Doctor said that the patient could easily handle five days with no food. I smiled, told the patient the Doctor thought he were fat, and remarked that I should be able to do a month. All good at this stage.

After three days of no food the patient was in agony in the abdominal region, real agony. The medical people decided that morphine was the answer. Regular doses were needed to keep the pain down, but it could not eliminate it altogether. Another two such days followed and we seemed to be getting nowhere, although the patient was enjoying the morphine, I thought the radio adverts were really good movies. Then another Doctor suggested it could be a muscle spasm or lack of nutrients, the patient possibly needed magnesium for the spasms. The medical team then wandered off to have lunch and think about this.

On the sixth day, the medical team decided to serve the patient food, delivered through a tube. No menu was provided so I guess it was a list of nutrients, certainly no room to get a good steak down the line. The result was very quick however. The patient had their first night of real sleep that night and the pain went. At the time of writing the recovery the abdominal pains have gone and the original condition seems to be back on track to recovery.

What is the point of my pondering you may ask. The answer is quite simple, I found the result of real hunger quite disturbing. The patient was not in a lah lah land situation whereby people didn’t care if they ate or not. He was pretty much normal and had a normal appetite yet in just a few days of no food, he were in absolute agony. Starvation hurts!

So if I, a normal caring human being, am disturbed by the sound and sight of early starvation, how come Benjamin Netanyahu, with his actions in Gaza, is not? Is it ignorance? Could he actually think the Gaza children screaming in agony, until such time as they are too weak to scream anymore, are not really in a bad situation? What about the Jewish people who elected him? Are they happy with the genocide their government commits in their name?

For those that are not aware of the situation in Gaza the Israelis responded to an attack by the Palestinian activist group Hamas (called Terrorists if you are Jewish or Freedom Fighters if you are Arab) which resulted in about 1200 deaths and the taking of 256 hostages. Their response has been the complete annihilation of the Gaza strip with over 63,000 deaths being caused by Israeli military actions. They have also continued their programme of controlling the Palestinian population by calorie control. By eliminating Palestinian farming and banning fishing, the Israelis control the Palestinian diet. As a senior advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister said in 2006, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”. This gives the Israelis great power over their neighbours.

The Israeli Government that Netanyahu leads either has got its mathematics wrong or is deliberately starving the people of Gaza. The mathematics are not too difficult however. So the conclusion most thinking people have come to is that we are witnessing a genocide of biblical proportions. I understand the history of suffering the Jewish people experienced in World War II. Let us hope that they don’t go down in history as perpetrators of genocide led by their government.