Resisting Starvation in Gaza
The First in a Series ‘Visualizing an Era of Genocide’
As the genocidal campaign in Gaza enters its sixth month, Israel’s use of forced starvation as a tactic is escalating. First through a total siege, then by preventing the delivery of aid, and most recently by slaughtering aid seekers in the now-infamous Flour Massacres. Forced starvation is affecting everyone in the Gaza Strip, most acutely in the North with its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
Aboud Battah (@abod_bt77) is a young Palestinian journalist in the North of Gaza documenting the experience of survival under forced starvation. In a recent video, he recounts how Palestinians are foraging for basic sustenance, and how the native flora like Khobeiza (Mallow) is helping people survive.
Even then, as Battah details, Israeli forces have been targeting those foraging food from the ground, particularly where the Khobeiza plant grows thickly near the militarized apartheid border fence.
While the Israeli state is the primary besieger, with direct support from the United States, neighboring Arab regimes are also complicit in the forced starvation of Gaza. Despite the International Court of Justice’s interim ruling that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and instructing the Forces to allow aid delivery, over two million Palestinians remain directly threatened with starvation.
After more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, and massive protests, direct actions and condemnation against Israel have occurred across the globe, the political will of the ‘West’ has continued its full support of the far-right ethnonationalist Israeli war cabinet. While this genocide unfolds, alongside the multifaceted resistance to it, Aboud Battah continues his essential reporting from the ground.
This is the first in a series visualizing genocides across the globe created by Hisham Rifai and Ayman Makarem. View the second in the series ‘Zaghrouda’ in the Midst of the Sudan War and third Democratic Republic of Congo – The Genocide That Implicates Us All, by clicking the image below.
The artistic duo has also created the Revolution in Every Country comic series on revolutionary movement events and ideas in the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region.
Artist Bios:
Ayman Makarem is a Lebanese writer primarily interested in the intersection of the personal and the political.
Hisham Rifai is a Lebanese artist and illustrator. He is currently based in Antwerp, Belgium completing an advanced master’s in research in arts and design. His work aims to combine political urgency with artistic practices.
More media from Palestine in the image below.
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