Calculating Crimes, Calculating Funding

Israel's policy of siege against the Gaza Strip has long been decried as illegal and, as the United Nations Human Rights Commissions inquiry into the war on Gaza found, Israel's actions in Gaza may amount to crimes against humanity. A vital part of this policy was preventing some of the most harmless and basic foodstuffs from entering Gaza. Things like pasta and lentils were prohibited under security pretenses. Of course, the siege does not only target the civilian population indiscriminately by preventing foodstuffs from getting in. This fact sheet (Arabic Version) helps you understand how the many dimensions of the siege, like water problems and electricity, devastate the population.

But today we got more information into precisely how decisions were made by the Israelis to suffocate Gaza's civilian population through siege. The Israeli human rights organization Gisha had previously led the way in getting the Israeli government to release information about what gets in and what gets out. Here is a list. Through a freedom of information process, Gisha was able to release new government documents that showed what many of us had long known to be true. The Israeli government was calculating the precise minimum caloric intake per capita in Gaza and basing what is allowed in on those calculations. In essence, Israel was allowing Palestinians in Gaza to survive like caged lab rats, feeding them with an eye-dropper approaching only when supplies reached critically low levels. Here is the hard but necessary to read excerpt from Gisha's site (read the whole thing):

The documents contain a series of formulas created by the Defense Ministry to compute product inventory (pages 8-10). The calculations are presumed to allow COGAT to measure what is called the "length of breath" (section i, page 8). The formula states that if you divide the inventory in the Strip by the daily consumption needs of residents, you will get the number of days it will take for residents of Gaza to run out of that basic product, or in other words, until their "length of breath" will run out.

After the Israeli attack on a flotilla that was trying to break the illegal blockade, which brought heightened international attention to a dismal situation in Gaza that had been allowed to fester, the Israeli Prime Minister admitted what human rights organizations had been saying for years: the siege was not about Israel's security at all.

But it isn't only the Israelis that were doing math, Rep. Eric Cantor now also has his calculator out. The staunchly pro-Israel congressman who has never seemed to think that Israel is capable of committing any errors, recently took being unabashedly pro-Israel in Washington to a whole new vomit-inducing level. This congressman, who became know for his YouCut intiative, a web based project that allows participants to choose which pre-selected programs from which to cut spending, is now proposing a direct deposit system for Israel to receive U.S. tax dollars. If Republicans take Congress, which seems almost inevitable now, there will likely be cuts to foreign aid spending. Cantor wants to make sure that Israel, and only Israel, is protected from any such cuts.

At a moment when the Israelis, who have been feeding off American support to perpetuate disgraceful and dehumanizing crimes of occupation and siege for decades, are building settlements to kick the barrel out from under the U.S.-supported peace process, a key member of congress is seeking to finder better, quicker ways to help the Israelis do what they do best: take American money and make it work against the American interest.

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