Gaza food aid recipients complain about Joe Biden's air-dropped free food
As Joe Biden spends millions to drop free food onto Gaza amid Hamas reports of mass starvation, the question arises as to whether the Gazans actually are starving.
Israel says they aren't, but no need to take their word for it. More about that later.
Gaza's denizens themselves have decided to let us know.
This one doesn't like the food choices, looking like he's never missed a meal:
Azati complains about the drop in aid and the quality of the food in the aid packages:
— Gator Nana (@GatorNanaJag) March 10, 2024
They concentrate us in a certain place and then drop the aid somewhere else, on the border or in the sea....
It's silly... and the dishes are silly... we'd better drop a kilo of flour. This is… pic.twitter.com/OLhJJXr2zh
Based on other tweets seen around on X (Twitter), others have complained that the meals-ready-to-eat for troops in the field being dropped are spaghetti instead of falafel and pitas, and one claimed the menu contained pork, which is not halal, though I doubt guys with a lot of beer guts practice a lot of halal otherwise. Picky, picky, picky, not the behavior of supposedly starving people, and recall that captured Hamas fighters looked like this:
I think we found out whose been stealing all the humanitarian aid rations. Allahu Snackbar!! #HamasTerrorists pic.twitter.com/5zGuuxVfak
— Adam (@aSeegz) December 8, 2023
Meanwhile, this one's using Biden's airdropped food aid to feed stray cats:
— Gator Nana (@GatorNanaJag) March 10, 2024
This one's upset that it came from Americans.
In the attached video, you see a resident of Gaza who is so hungry that he decides to throw away the American aid that was dropped to him at the expense of the American taxpayer, and I am among them. Not only does he complain about the food someone else gives him because he… pic.twitter.com/ZXtn3Ji8Xm
— Intel Catalyst (@IntelCatalyst) March 5, 2024
Starvation? This is not how starving people act.
This one has a pretty clear-eyed view of what is going on:
Listen to what this man says about the situation in North Gaza and listen to what he DOESN'T say.
— Imshin (@imshin) March 6, 2024
He doesn't say there is no food.
He says the food is not reaching the needy. It is going to the wrong people, to those who don't need it, because of favoritism. And that food in… pic.twitter.com/ZJkoncdcLQ
According to the Jerusalem Post, there probably are hungry people but mass starvation isn't what's going on:
A former senior Israeli defense official who I spoke to on condition of anonymity has also said that “there is no food shortage in Gaza; there are those who are hungry since Hamas has taken all of the food and they don’t have enough money to pay Hamas on the black market.”
According to this former official, the food does not reach those who need it most since Hamas controls approximately 70-80% of the area. What happens is that Israel and foreign countries bring food and aid into Gaza. Then gangs take the supplies at gunpoint, and a significant portion of the population is left unable to afford necessities.
“THE SITUATION in Gaza is akin to hunger in New York, where homeless people suffer not from a lack of food but from a lack of money to purchase it,” he explained.
There probably are hungry people in Gaza, but that's because Hamas has control of all the food drops and aid -- and shakes the locals down for their money at extortionate prices if they want any.
No money to Hamas, no food for them:
That's consistent with all modern man-made famines everywhere else.
According to scholar Michael Rubin, writing in the National Interest about a place called Somaliland, a section of Somalia that is a pretty functional undeclared country, quite unlike Somalia itself which gets diplomatic recognition:
Somaliland became independent in 1960 and, after a failed merger with Somalia, re-declared independence in 1991. While “Blackhawk Down” seared Somalia’s failure and anarchy into the American mind, Somaliland remained at peace. Democracy and government capacity matter. When drought hit the Horn of Africa in 2006, 2011, and 2017, Somalis suffered, but Ethiopia and Somalilanders rallied, transporting food where the population needed it most and saving their citizens’ lives. Much of the population of Somaliland escaped starvation as, local government officials explained to me, they were able to transport food across the country without fear of looting.
Emphasis is mine.
We sure as heck don't see that in Gaza. Aid trucks are being looted and burned by Hamas supporters who steal all the aid and then sell it to Gazans for profit.
Now we see more of this dynamic with Biden's airdrops intended to alleviate hunger at great cost to the U.S. and great danger to our servicemembers, effectively putting more food in Hamas's greedy gullets and pocketbooks, if not serving as food for dumpsters and stray cats.
Experts on famine know what goes on in famines, particularly man-made ones, where soup kitchen-style aid doesn't work the way they think it will work. Amateur do-gooders toss food at endangered populations thinking they can feed them, when what these populations really need is money to buy food because bad guys have all the food and control all the routes in for food.
We see that now in Gaza, with Hamas eating all the food, and well-fed Hamas allies expressing customer service complaints as various ingrates.
Gaza doesn't need food. Gaza needs Hamas out of there. Israel's war to end Hamas as an organization is the only effective idea here in ensuring that Gazans are going to get food.
Image: Twitter video screen shot