UN on Gaza: An “imminent” disaster years in the making

Let’s play a game. Guess when this article was written:

Leading UN agencies are issuing increasingly dramatic warnings about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Israeli forces continue their search for a captured soldier, Gilad Shalit. There have also been numerous expressions of international public dismay. But effective inter-governmental action to end the crisis is so far lacking, due largely to deadlock within the UN security council.

“An already alarming situation, with poverty rates at nearly 80% and unemployment at nearly 40%, is likely to deteriorate rapidly unless immediate, urgent action is taken,” the UN agencies said in a joint statement. The UN Relief and Works Agency said Gaza was “on the brink of a public health disaster” due to electricity and water shortages caused by Israeli military action.

Now guess when this article was written:

Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month’s sealing of Gaza’s goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago.

The first “imminent” disaster article was written in July, 2006. The one above is from yesterday. So is this:

“It’s been closed for so much longer than ever before… and we have nothing in our warehouses… It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster,” said AbuZayd, whose agency is the largest aid body providing services to Palestinian refugees.

Then there’s this one, from 2007:

“The situation in Gaza is worsening by the minute. Humanitarian disaster has been imminent for years but something has to be done now and very quickly,” Eyad Nasser, spokesman for the Red Cross in Gaza, told Ynet Saturday.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

A humanitarian disaster was also predicted in May, 2006. Twice. And I’m sure if I checked my old archives, I’d find the same thing from even earlier.

It’s amazing how, for a place that is always on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, the mortality rate of Palestinians seems to be among the lowest of all the world’s disasters. You want to see a real disaster? Children in Haiti are dying of starvation.

The five-year-old teetered on broomstick legs; he weighed less than 20 pounds, even after days of drinking enriched milk. Nearby, a four-year-old girl hung from a strap attached to a scale, her wide eyes lifeless, her emaciated arms dangling weakly.

In pockets of Haiti accessible only by donkey or foot, children are dying of malnutrition, their already meagre food supply cut by a series of devastating storms that destroyed crops, wiped out livestock and sent food prices spiralling.

At least 26 severely malnourished children have died in the past four weeks in the remote region of Baie d’Orange in Haiti’s southeast, aid workers said Thursday, and there are fears the toll will rise much higher if help does not come quickly to the impoverished Caribbean country.

This is all I can find on Haiti about food aid in the UN News Center.

With seeds, water and ‘plastic’ UN helps Haiti offset hurricanes, food prices

However, this is the lead article.

Ban regrets that Israel has not heeded his call to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza

You have two instances of humanitarian disasters. In one, children are dying of starvation. (Click on the link. You’ll see what a starving child looks like.) In another, bureaucrats are whining that a disaster is “imminent,” but nobody can seem to find so much as a skinny child to hold up to the cameras.

Where is the world’s outrage?

Why, with Israel, of course. If the Haitian children were charges of Israelis, you’d find the world running to their defense in a nanosecond. But since Israel has nothing to do with them, they are being allowed to die off-stage—while the fake Gaza humanitarian “crisis” is being decried all the way up to the SecGen’s office.

Say it with me, folks: It’s Israeli Double Standard Time. But don’t worry, it only occurs on days that end with a Y.