The unheralded news from the rest of the world, including BBC, is never without compelling reports from a little place called Gaza. On January 21st tens of thousands of Gazans, reportedly led by Hamas members, staged a mass prison break into more or less friendly Egypt. Now they must return. What does Israel have planned for them, and how can anyone help them survive what appears to be the sentence of execution by famine?

   

Gazans for the first time face slow starvation; Hamas members face selective execution.  On January 25, three days after the great prison break from the town of Rafah, Israel attack the town from the air without provocation, executing four more Hamas members.

 

Those few who have visited Gaza, as has this writer, have met a family bonded society, with many factions and two religions, Islam and a small traditional Christian minority. They are held together by their common plight: imprisonment.  I know of no other place like it.

 

Every major presidential candidate has traveled to Israel to pay homage and seek its blessings, but not one of them went inside Gaza.  Neither did they go to China, France, or Germany to seek support in the American election; so why to Israel?  Israel has more direct political clout and media influence in Washington than any other nation. Therefore, only Israel can move to starve an entire population while Congress and the press look on.  Worst of all, the most powerful sect of American “Christians,” broadly called “evangelicals,” applauds in programmed ignorance as Israel commits genocide in the name of Christian Zionism.  It is among these Christians that a breakthrough must, and will come first.

 

How is it those two competing tribes, Israeli Zionists and Philistines, having a combined population less then one of our middle sized states, cause so much controversy?  It is not because our press goes out of its way to dramatize life in Gaza; to the contrary, they ignore it.  A recent Zogby poll says the major media hardly mentioned President Bush’s recent trip to Israel, attempting to cool down the public attention toward his visit.  Mr. Bush saw little of the Philistines (the Arabic word for Palestinian) except for leader Mahmoud Abbas, who Mr. Bush ignored for the most part.  Furthermore, according to the same poll, very few Americans care about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, being more concerned about economy issues more near to them.  The US press makes the people of Gaza irrelevant by ignoring events there.

 

We can not get away from the news of Gaza in spite of all the efforts of our press and our administration to stifle it. What we see and hear is too human, too real, too dramatic to ignore.  Something unprecedented has gone on in this little strip of towns and villages four miles wide and 20 miles long: 300,000 people broke out for a buying spree in Egypt, and the foreign press covered and filmed it. Most returned to Gaza, the gulag that they call home. 

 

Gaza is unique in all the world, for it may be the only walled in society.  In places this barriers is 18 feet high, made of corrugated steel.  But Gaza’s walls and fences were built not to keep intruders out, but to keep the citizens in.

 

Recent rare news clips have exposed for the first time, the wall that separates southern Gaza from Egypt for about four miles.  It is worth noting that neither Egypt nor Gaza built this wall.  Israel built it when it took over policing of Gaza‘s small south border with Egypt. Israel managed the Rafah Gate when I went there in 2003.  Israel devastated a kilometer wide no-man’s land inside the wall where when they saw anyone from overhead approaching it, often killed them.  In 2005 Egypt took over managing the no-man’s land by agreement with Israel.

 

Egypt’s Gaza wall has, according to Hamas, Israeli cameras and computers in place monitoring everyone who comes and goes, identifying and remotely scrutinizing each face. Egypt is compelled to cooperate with Israel, making it more or less a jail keeper.

 

When the Gazans breached the wall, the USA was quick to tell Egypt that $100 million in US Aid to Egypt would be suspended, pending its forcing the Gazans back inside their bottle.  Egypt has even cut off the flow of supplies to its own citizens near the Rafah gate to discourage Gazans from their buying spree.  Stores are reported bare.

 

A certain Arab Christian Gazan, who I know but will not name, told his family member in the USA by cell phone that he went to see the holes in Gaza‘s border.  There, he said, he saw husbands and wives and reunified families that had not seen each other in years, meeting at the breach in the wall.

 

Only about five percent of the Gazans broke out into Egypt Monday, January 21, 2008. They did it out of hunger and desperation; they went to buy whatever they could find in the poor Egyptian villages outside the Rafah gate.  Most who found food quickly returned to their families. Now Egypt says they must remain inside, like a prisoner whose leave is over, and Egypt is forced to seal them in. If Egypt does not do so, it will face the combined wrath of the USA and the pit bully of the Middle East, nuclear Israel.

 

This leads to the obvious question:  Why do the powers in Washington want to put the Arab genie back in the bottle?  What is the USA’s plan for the 1.4 million Gazans? Mr. Bush must have a plan; else what did he, Prime Minister Olmert, and the other Zionists he met with, have to talk about?

 

Both Israel’ Prime Minster Olmert and the Bush Administration have made it clear they will allow the Gazans to starve…a little, just so it’s not too obvious.  What other possible reason can there be for such a walled ghetto than to keep the prisoners in and keep observers out?  The Philistines are not supposed to come out of their gulag alive!  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert discreetly avoided mention of food when he told a Zionist Knesset faction:

 “We have no intention of making their lives easier… as far as I am concerned, every resident of Gaza can walk because they have no gasoline for their vehicles, because they have a murderous regime…”  

 

Israel has also made it clear the Palestinians can have a state of their own, but only if Israel has the power to police it, as they police Gaza and the West Bank now.  Therefore, there is no place in Israel’s plan for 4 or 5 million Philistines with dreams of self-determination.  Israel’s ambition is for virtual slave labor camps that are pretend states. Prior to its uprisings, Gaza provided thousands of day-laborers for Israel’s fields and factories. This is what Zionists in Israel wants.

 

Today Israel has complete control over every Philistine, so why would they give this up?  To keep the status quo, Israel sees the need to starve the Gazans so that the survivors will become more submissive.  Israeli leaders insist two states will never work because the Philistines will remain in revolt as long as they breathe.  Former Prime Minister Arial Sharon had offered to conduct an annihilation of every Arab, if political Israel could stand the international pressure from his acts. He was dead serious and he is far from the only Israeli leader who believes this way.

 

It is increasingly obvious that the USA has no problem with experimental genocide of the Gazans by starvation and selective execution. The famine is already well underway.  We saw many news clips of seemingly healthy and vigorous men, and a few women, crossing the wall, but we did not see the sick nor did we see those with no money to buy or barter for goods.  Gazans have had a full year of malnutrition to weaken many.  These we do not see on film strips. Starving people tend to stay at home. So do moneyless people. Those who started the dusty foot march into Egypt had money to spend.

 

The Key to Managed Starvation, a Controlled World Famine

It is currently less than politically unacceptable to starve a population of 1.4 million people in an open air cage.  But it will become less noticed once we hear of widespread famine in central Africa (Sudan is one example) and South Asia.  Unfortunately this is coming, and it too must be and can be dealt with.

 

The world’s poor face an induced famine of unimaginable proportion created by the rise in the price of basic commodities now underway. This induced famine is subsidized to the tune of some $15 billion per year for starters. Yes, those who run the machine that makes food scarce and expensive are taxpayer and consumer subsidized for doing so! They are the false and specious Ethanol industry, sold in the USA as a solution to the US energy shortage. The plan calls for subsidized burning of a large part of the world’s food surplus to make alcohol for autos. It has already driven wheat and soybeans out of buying range of the Gazans.

 

Bloomberg.com published “Cereal Price Rises Threaten South Asia‘s Rural Poor,” By Jay Shankar and Thomas Kutty Abraham, on Jan. 24, 2008. It quoted the Asian Development Bank which observed: “Rising cereal prices worldwide may put 300 million rural poor at risk of starvation in South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh” The report estimated 617 million live on less than $1.00 per day.  Bloomberg attributed the higher food prices to several factors listing number one among them: “the use of corn and other crops for bio-fuels”.  Similar reports have recently come from Indonesia and Malaysia.

 

The economy of the Gaza society has been systematically destroyed by isolation. Few Gazans have anything with which to buy food, even when it is abundant and cheap. But food is no longer cheap or abundant, even in the US supermarkets.  Now it costs $5.00 for a gallon of milk in some US cities. Imagine the prices in Rafah where everyone is desperate? We know the cost of bread is up over 300%.

 

Gaza is, at present, the only caged society that depends on its jailers for its substance.  We published an amazing account of how 100% of Gaza’s wheat for bread is elevated over its north wall and dumped on the ground.  If no on the outside brings the wheat, or if the flow is interrupted by Israel, or if there is no fuel to move and grind it into flower, Gazans go hungry.

  

Summary:

Israel has systematically forced Palestinian attrition from the occupied lands for 59 years– attrition by emigration for those able to leave, and attrition by violent death for thousands who stay.  Our research reveals that food burning now assures widespread world famine. With this going on, Israel might get away with starving the Philistines while the media focuses attention elsewhere on bigger tragedies. So huge is the problem we see that a million missing Philistines might be overlooked, lost in the shadows of a world wide tragedy… a tragedy that may someday be remembered in infamy as “The Famine of the Food Burners.”  Shall we stand idly by and allow it?

 

Ethanol: Burning Food, the Path to Global Famine, Carlson,

http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2017

 

Rising Cereal Prices Threaten South Asia‘s Rural Poor

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601012&sid=aBty28Q0MlFg&refer=commodities#

 

A Short Walk into the World s Largest Prison, Carlson, March 2003

https://whtt.org/index.php?id=435

 

Eviscerating Gaza, Sky News: https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2024