The Flour Massacre and the Airdrop Gimmick

The illegal and pointless U.S. war in Yemen continues

There is no question that the Israeli government is responsible for these deaths. It is beyond shameful that the US would block a statement that says so, but it is consistent with the administration’s indefensible policy of unconditional backing for an atrocious war. The flour massacre, as some are calling it, is the dreadful result of the Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon combined with its indiscriminate use of violence against the Palestinian population.

The Israeli government has been the occupying power in Gaza since 1967. As such, it has an obligation to ensure that the needs of the population are being met, and instead it has been depriving them of basic necessities since October. It is Israel’s blockade that has been starving the people of Gaza for almost five months, and it is Israel that has been hampering the delivery of aid. Their policy of collective punishment created the appalling conditions that have pushed people to the brink. It was Israeli forces that then opened fire on the desperate civilians as they tried to get some flour.

This could have been the moment when the Biden administration finally stopped covering for Israel, but of course that isn’t happening. US officials can’t even bring themselves to condemn the killing of these desperate, starving people. Far from holding Israel accountable for this crime, the administration chooses to block others at the U.N. from blaming the government responsible.

Instead of confronting the Israeli government, the Biden administration is now reportedly contemplating using airdrops to deliver a small amount of aid into Gaza. No humanitarian relief agency believes this is the right solution. Airdrops are far too unreliable and inefficient. They cannot deliver aid at sufficient scale to make much of a difference. They are used only as a very last resort in situations where no other options are available. Jeremy Konyndyk of Refugees International told The Independent:

When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent Isis in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.