Gaza's Famine Warnings Will Test Humanity — and Netanyahu
Starvation and disease typically cause more deaths than fighting. Bibi has yet another chance to reduce civilian casualties.
It’s on you.
Photographer: LEO CORREA/AFPBenjamin Netanyahu says he’s come under “inappropriate” pressure from some of Israel’s most loyal friends after America’s Jewish Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for early elections and President Joe Biden accused Bibi of doing more harm than good to his country. Netanyahu is right, of course, that it’s up to Israelis to decide whom they elect and when to do it. Yet at this point, diplomatic protocol seems like a footnote — and the least of the prime minister’s problems should he allow famine to take hold in Gaza.
According to the Integrated Food Security Classification, a two-decade-old organization whose assessments are used for planning by the United Nations and international aid organizations, as many as 1.1 million residents of Gaza — roughly half the population — are at risk of catastrophic food insecurity by July, and 210,000 in the North are likely to fall into the formal definition of famine between now and May. The IPC also said that the threshold for acute malnutrition among children, one of the criteria required for it to declare a famine, has already been passed.