Dying in the bread line

Benjamin Netanyahu is demonstrating that he has no qualms about crossing all red lines in contempt for the most basic rules of humanity.

Last Thursday, a crowd of civilians crowding desperately trying to get food from a humanitarian aid convoy was attacked by the Israeli Army.

At least 110 people died and more than 700 were injured.

When five months of war are almost over, it is difficult to find new qualifiers for the systematic violation of humanitarian law by the Netanyahu Government against a besieged Palestinian population, condemned to hunger and thirst, expelled from their homes and terrorized by indiscriminate military actions.

Thursday's victims were just looking for a meal that is in dramatically short supply due to Israel's decision to cut off regular food supplies to Gaza.

An unjustifiable collective punishment of two million people who are held

as responsible for the bloody attack of October 7 as its authors: the Hamas militiamen.

It has not been in the face of international condemnation, something to which the Israeli Prime Minister is indifferent, but rather in the face of the displeasure of its allies—and especially the United States—that the Israeli Government has given biased explanations of the events and has allowed itself calling them a “tragedy” in yet another example of Netanyahu's cynicism.

That France or the European Commission have joined the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, in demanding an independent investigation worries the Israeli president less than the fact that this massacre could torpedo an upcoming ceasefire in which Washington was very involved and that the president himself, Joe Biden, had informally announced for next week.

The death of civilians collecting food cannot go uninvestigated and it is the responsibility of the international community to ensure that this is the case.

But first it is essential to end the suffering of the Palestinian population in its most basic form: establishing a ceasefire and guaranteeing the supply of food and medicine.

And here the responsibility falls exclusively on Netanyahu.