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Worldnews

Gazas Starving Men And Women Chase Trucks, Face Death To Feed Families

A journey through Gaza’s al-Rashid Street, where hunger drives thousands to risk death chasing aid trucks each day. Gaza City – I only recently witnessed what it’s like for the crowds waiting desperately for aid in Gaza. I don’t see them in Deir el-Balah, but we travel north to Gaza to visit my family, and on the coastal al-Rashid Street, I saw something that made my heart uneasy about the much-discussed ceasefire in Gaza – what if it doesn’t address the aid crisis? This crisis prompted Hamas to request amendments to the proposed ceasefire, on the entry of aid and ending the United States- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), at whose gates Israel kills dozens waiting for aid every day. Since Israel broke the last ceasefire in March, our visits to the north have become highly calculated, less about planning and more about reading the escalation levels of Israeli air strikes. The intention to go north, formed before sleeping, is cancelled when we hear bombs. Conversely, waking up to relative quiet could spur a snap decision. We quickly dress and pack clothes, supplies, and documents, always under one lingering fear: that tanks will cut the road off again and trap us in the north. By the first day of Eid al-Adha, June 6, we had been avoiding visiting my family for three weeks. Israel’s ground assault, “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, was at its peak, and my husband and I decided to stay put in hopes of avoiding the violence. But eventually, the longing to see family outweighed fear and our daughter Banias really wanted to see her grandfather for Eid, so we made the trip. The journeys reveal the dysfunction of Gaza’s current transport system. A trip that used to take just over 20 minutes in a private car – door to door from Deir el-Balah to my family’s home in Gaza City – now requires multiple stops, long walks, and long waits for unreliable transport. To reach Gaza City, we take three “internal rides” within central Gaza, short trips between neighbourhoods or towns like az-Zawayda, Deir el-Balah, and Nuseirat, often on shared donkey carts or old cars dragging open carts behind them. Waiting for these rides can take an hour or more, the donkey carts holding up to 12 people, and car-cart combinations carrying six in the car, plus 10 to 12 in the cart. Then comes the “external ride”, longer, riskier travel between governorates usually involving a crowded tuk-tuk carrying 10 passengers or more along bombed-out roads. Since the January truce – broken by Israel in March – Israel has allowed only pedestrian and cart movement, with vehicles prohibited. The entire trip can take up to two hours, depending on road conditions. Exhausting journeys have become my new normal, especially when travelling with children. My last two trips north brought me face-to-face with the “aid seekers”. That harsh label has dominated news headlines recently, but witnessing their journey up close defies all imagination. It belongs to another world entirely. On June 6, to fulfil Banias’s Eid wish to see her grandfather, we boarded a tuk-tuk as evening fell. Near the western edge of what people in Gaza call al-Shari al-Jadeed (“the new road”), the 7km Netzarim Corridor that the Israeli army built to bisect the enclave, I saw hundreds of people on sand dunes on both sides of the street. Some had lit fires and gathered around them. It’s a barren, ghostly stretch of sand and rubble, filled with the living shadows of Gaza’s most desperate. I started filming with my phone as the other passengers explained that these “aid seekers” were waiting to intercept aid trucks and grab whatever they could. Some of them are also waiting for an “American GHF” distribution point on the parallel Salah al-Din Street, which is supposed to open at dawn. A bitter discussion ensued about the US-run aid point that had “caused so many deaths”. The aid system, they said, had turned survival into a lottery and dignity into a casualty. I sank into thought, seeing this was entirely different from reading about it or watching the news. Banias snapped me out of my thoughts: “Mama, what are these people doing here? Camping?” Oh God! This child lives in her own, rosy world. My mind reeled from her cheerful interpretation of one of the bleakest scenes I’d ever witnessed: black smoke, emaciated bodies, hunger, dust-filled roads. I was silent, unable to answer. Men and boys passed by, some with backpacks, others with empty white bags like flour sacks, for whatever they might find. Cardboard boxes are too hard to carry. The aid seekers walk from all over Gaza, gathering in the thousands to wait all night until 4, 5, or 6am, fearing that Israeli soldiers will kill them before they can get into the “American GHF”. According to reports, they rush in to grab whatever they can, a chaotic stampede where the strong devour the weak. These men were death projects in waiting; they know, but they go anyway. Why? Because hunger persists and there’s no other solution. It’s either die of hunger or die trying to survive it. We reached Gaza City. Dust, darkness, and congestion surrounded us as the tuk-tuk drove through completely destroyed roads. As each jolt shot through our backs, a passenger remarked: “We’ll all have back pain and disc issues from this tuk-tuk.” A silence fell, broken by Banias, our little reporter from the pink world: “Mama, Baba, look at the moon behind you! It’s completely full. “I think I see Aunt Mayar in the sky next to the moon,” Banias said, about my sister who travelled during the war to Egypt, then Qatar. When we asked how, she explained: “She said her name means the star that lives beside the moon. Look!” We smiled despite the misery, too drained to respond. The other passengers listened in to her dreamlike observations. “Baba, when will we study astronomy in school?” she asked. “I want to learn about the moon and stars.” We didn’t have time to answer. We had arrived, and the curtain fell on another exhausting day. I told my family what I saw on al-Rashid, and they listened, shocked and intrigued, to their “field correspondent”. They, too, were preoccupied with food shortages, discussing mixing their last kilo of flour with pasta to stretch it further – conversations ruled by fear of hunger and the unknown. We didn’t stay long, just two days before heading back along a road filled with fear of bombing and aid seekers. Only this time it was daylight, and I could see women sitting by the road, ready to spend the night waiting for aid. About two weeks later, on June 26, we made the trip again. I travelled with my two children, my sister – who had come back with us on the last trip – and my brother’s wife and her two young children: four-year-old Salam and two-year-old Teeb. My husband came the next day. We were seven in a small, worn-out minibus, and we had nine others crammed in with us: three men beside the driver, a young man with his wife and sister, and a woman with her husband and child. Sixteen people in a van, clearly not built for that! Although vehicles are banned from al-Rashid, some do manage to pass. Tired and worried about the young children with us, we took the risk and, that day, we made it. I don’t know whether it was fate or misfortune, but as our van neared the area around the Netzarim Corridor, World Food Programme trucks arrived. Two trucks stopped on the road, waiting to be “looted”. People in Gaza will tell you this is a new policy under Israeli terms: no organised distribution, no lists. Just let the trucks in, let whoever can take aid, take it, and let the rest die. On a nearby street, three others also stopped. People began climbing the trucks, grabbing what they could. Within moments, all vehicles, tuk-tuks, and carts, including our van, stopped. Everyone around us – men, women, and children – started running towards the trucks. A commotion erupted in our car. The young man travelling with his wife and sister insisted on going despite their pleas not to. He jumped out and two other men followed. I was most shocked when a woman behind us shoved past, telling her husband and son: “I’m going. You stay.” She ran like the wind. Other women and girls left nearby vehicles and sprinted to the trucks. I wondered: Would she be able to climb up the side of a truck and wrestle men for food? Human waves surged around us, seemingly from nowhere, and I begged our driver to move on. The scene felt like a battle for survival, well past thoughts of dignity, justice, and humanity. The driver moved slowly; he had to keep stopping to avoid the crowds of people running in the opposite direction. My anxiety spiked. The kids sensed it too. None of us could comprehend what we were seeing, not even me, a journalist who claims to be informed. The truth: reality is entirely different. As we drove, I saw young men clutching bags, standing by the roadside. One had a knife, fearing he’d be attacked. Other men carried blades or tools because being attacked by fellow hungry people is not unlikely. “We’ve become thieves just to eat and feed our children,” is the new phase Israel is imposing through its “humanitarian” US-run foundation and its “distribution policy”. And here we are, in this collapsing social order, where only the cries of empty stomachs are heard. How can we blame people for their misery? Did they choose this war? The car wound its way through until the flood of aid seekers finally dissipated. It felt like emerging from another world. We reached an intersection downtown, completely drained. I silently unpacked the car, wondering: How many sorrowful worlds are buried within you, Gaza? That day, I saw the world of the aid seekers after spending 20 months immersed in the worlds of the displaced, the wounded, the dead, the hungry, and the thirsty. How many more worlds of suffering must Gaza endure before the world finally sees us – and we finally earn a lasting ceasefire? Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Healthwatch

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News_Naija

Seyi Makinde And The Dis/honour Of Re-naming Schools

On Tuesday, students of The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Oyo State, protested the renaming of their school after the recently deceased ex-governor of the state, Dr Omololu Olunloyo. Earlier, the officials of the Student Union Government in the school wrote to the House of Assembly to appeal for a reconsideration of the renaming of the polytechnic by Governor Seyi Makinde. They feared renaming their school would erode its brand identity along with the values it carries. The problematic situation that re-naming a school after a dead politician kick-starts is not unprecedented. When former president Dr Goodluck Jonathan also tried to rename the University of Lagos after the late Chief Moshood Abiola, the students too resisted the move so fervently that the government had to back down. What should have become an act of honour dishonoured the memory of the dead, a fault of our leaders who failed to read the room. Makinde should have known better than to repeat the mistake of attracting disrespect for the dead in the name of honouring them. Understandably, the students (and alumni) are protesting the unilateral decision to rename their school. Renaming a street or market after someone is not the same as for an academic institution. The stakes are different, and an institution that has acquired a name, character, and prestige faces the setback of abruptly building a new image. To re-name an academic institution after someone is to co-opt its accrued character, value, and prestige and endow them on that individual (and vice versa). The larger society benefits from this institutionalisation of values. There are two problems I espy with the governor overlooking the history of a community pushing back at renaming a school that has made a name for itself. One is that the Nigerian government characteristically does not consider the feelings of the public (unless, of course, such an emotional surge directly affects the outcome of an election). Makinde knew there would be protests, but he must have shrugged them off. Like a typical politician, he knows Nigerians are given to short-term rage. We vent, but we also famously adapt. If you can ride out an outrage for a few days (or at most, weeks), you will get away with anything in Nigeria. While people might eventually resign to the decision, it is pertinent to ask where the honour is for the dead? Of what practical use is a commemorative act that the community does not want to reinforce? Without an emotional or ethical, or functional bond with the community that is supposed to take the value being honoured forward, is the whole affair not robbed of meaning? Which brings me to the second issue. In our society, the acts of renaming institutions or landmarks after people monumentalise vanity. We hardly honour heroes in this part of the world and are far less practised in the art of celebrating those who make meaningful achievements that uplift the collective. Instead, we over-recognise those whose greatest contribution is to plumb new depths in corrupting social ethics. Thus, the skills a society builds from honouring inspirational individuals are oriented towards the political class, who have done nothing significant other than eroding our collective will. Rather than thoughtful acts of honour, they are barely more than idolatrous genuflections by politicians who want to seem as if they are doing something but can hardly be bothered to put in some rigour into the exercise. In the past few weeks, much has been said about the spate of renaming of public buildings in supposed honour of the sitting President Bola Tinubu. Within a mere two years, nine different landmarks and buildings have been renamed after him. As if that is not enough, there is also a Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages in the works. The desperation to splash the Tinubu name everywhere makes you wonder, ‘Are these re-namers so consumed with their sekárími politics that they forget that these acts of honour must at least have some meaning?’ This man is only halfway into his first term, and the entire political establishment cannot seem to do enough to gratify his ego. Must they publicly ridicule him by playing to his insecurities? If everyone around the President has to act as if he has established a legacy worth memorialising in just 24 months, there is a 99 per cent chance they are merely overhyping a tenure that is pretty much forgettable (and will, in fact, be mostly forgotten as soon as ‘Dear Leader’ makes his exit). The way we do political honour in Nigeria hardly ever seeks to inspire another generation to greatness; it is mostly to stroke egos. That is why much of the effort is never more than tawdrily slapping a name on buildings/landmarks to project an idea of indelibility of achievement in leadership and public service. The haste with which they do these things speaks to the disjuncture between the impact of the legacy being supposedly honoured and reality. Renaming so many places after a man who has yet to achieve anything significant in office is an expression of fear that the vapidity of his leadership will dissipate in the transience of political power, and the public must be forcibly oriented to put off this inevitable fate. Listen to the FCT Minister Nyesom Wike’s justification for renaming the International Conference after Tinubu, and it is not hard to tell that this is mere brownnosing. He is not alone. None of the people who have “honoured” Tinubu by naming one thing or the other after him has managed to articulate a coherent thought on how they believe the honour will inspire us to greater causes, project humanistic ideals, or even bequeath a worthwhile legacy. The best they come up with is how Tinubu is some graven image before whom every knee must bow. It is a desperate effort to subsume the character of a public space under an individual’s ego. Frankly, our society needs to move beyond this act of co-opting public places to endow individuals with honour without really thinking about what it means. Let me put it on record that I commend Makinde for at least promising to digitise the late Olunloyo’s library, and I hope he sees that through. However, renaming the polytechnic after him has no value for his memory. Makinde would have done better for the man’s memory by establishing something like a maths institute within that polytechnic in his name. Such an institute would be tasked with recruiting visionary individuals and setting them to task to create the resources to identify, build, and promote specially gifted mathematicians among us, who will go farther in honouring the memory of the man. Such an institute can also provide educational resources to promote mathematical learning since many students struggle with the subject. That would have been a more befitting honour for a man whom almost everyone I know and have read agrees was a brilliant mind. Virtually everyone speaks of Olunloyo’s mathematical genius and the many prospects he embodied. We do not need to waste time addressing what he did not achieve despite his potential, nor do we need to accompany him with any regrets. However, as a society, we owe it to ourselves to invest efforts in identifying the emergent gifted and the talented among us and giving them a platform to flourish. An institute like that would not only represent his life, but it would also have meaning within society. Even better, that would be a real honour.

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Worldnews

Why We Need To Retire The Term Pro-Palestinian

This media shorthand is increasingly used to conflate violence with acts of solidarity and protest against mass murder. A July 5 CNN article reported on three incidents in Melbourne, Australia: attempted arson at a synagogue, a confrontation at a restaurant and three cars set on fire near a business. The piece was scant on the details of the alleged crimes and the identities of the perpetrators, but it did clarify that the business “has been targeted by pro-Palestine protesters in the past”. That the author chose to conflate activism in support of the Palestinian cause with violent acts that are low on facts and high on conjecture is indicative of how Western media have come to operate. Media reports are increasingly linking by default acts of aggression to activism they call “pro-Palestinian”. Here are more examples: Before his name was released, we learned that a gunman shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” in a shooting rampage that killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21. Reports linked the suspect to what news outlets described as “pro-Palestinian” advocacy. When on June 1 an Egyptian national attacked demonstrators voicing support of Israel in Colorado, the media also linked the incident to “pro-Palestinian protests”. Softly landing on the term “pro-Palestinian” allows reporters to meet editorial standards for brevity. But brevity is not a fixed journalistic value. Accurately informing the public is. The word “pro-Palestinian” has become political shorthand for a well-worn and misleading coupling: Palestinian advocacy and violence. Stripped of critical context, the term offers news consumers a reductive explanation – a violent act distilled and opaquely linked to “Palestinian” entities as imagined and understood through a narrow and distorted lens. A failure to engage with contexts is not neutral omission. Rather, it is an affront to knowledge processes and a bow to power structures that govern mainstream journalistic storytelling. What historical, cultural and religious claims do Palestinians make? Most news consumers in the West are unprepared to answer this question. In a closed information ecology, they rarely encounter these claims in full – or at all. Like many who have followed the historical arc of all things Palestine or reported on it, I’ve used the term pro-Palestinian myself. It felt functional at the time: concise and seemingly understood. Now, however, that shorthand misleads. Any word that is prefaced by “pro-” demands honest re-examination. When circumstances shift and new meanings emerge, the hyphenation clanks as anachronistic. We’re in one of those moments – a circumstance that is the epicentre of global opprobrium, humanitarian collapse and spectacular moral failure. To describe activism and peaceful protests against the genocidal violence in Gaza as “pro-Palestinian” is disparaging. Opposing the strategic starvation of a trapped population is hardly pro-Palestinian. It is pro-humanity. Is it “pro-Palestinian” to call for the end of violence that has claimed the lives of more than 18,000 children? Is it “pro-Palestinian” to call for the end of starvation that has killed dozens of children and elderly? Is it “pro-Palestinian” to express outrage at Gaza parents forced to carry body parts of their children in plastic bags? The term “pro-Palestinian” operates within a false linguistic economy. It flattens a grossly unequal reality into a story of competing sides as if an occupied, bombarded and displaced people were an equal side to one of the most advanced armies in the world. Gaza is not a side. Gaza is, as one UNICEF official put it, a “graveyard for children”. It is a place where journalists are killed for bearing witness, where hospitals are obliterated and universities reduced to rubble, where the international community is failing to uphold minimal standards of human rights. In an era of impatience with rigour, “pro-Palestinian” is the rhetorical crutch that satisfies the manufactured need for immediate alignment (fandom) without critical thought. It permits bad-faith actors to stigmatise dissent, dismiss moral clarity and delegitimise outrage. To call Elias Rodriguez, who carried out the shooting in Washington, DC, a “pro-Palestinian” shooter is a framing device that invites readers to interpret words of Palestinian solidarity as potential precursors to violence. It encourages institutions, including universities, to conflate advocacy with extremism and put a chill on free expression on campus. Obfuscations in the conventions of reportage, euphemism or rhetorical hedging are the last things we need in this catastrophic moment. What’s needed is clarity and precision. Let us try something radical: Let us say what we mean. When people protest the destruction of lineage and tillage in Gaza, they are not “taking a side” in some abstract pro-and-con debate. They are affirming the value of life. They are rejecting the idea that one people’s suffering must remain invisible for another’s comfort. If people are advocating for human rights, then say so. If they believe that Palestinian life is worthy of dignity, safety and memory, say so. And if they are calling for the “liberation” of Palestine and use phrases like “free Palestine” – phrases charged with decades of political, historical and emotional weight – that too deserves clarity and context. Liberation and freedom in most of these calls do not imply violence but a demand for freedom from occupation, siege, starvation, statelessness, and killing and imprisonment with impunity. Collapsing these diverse expressions into a vague label like “pro-Palestinian” blurs reality and deepens public misunderstanding. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Follow Al Jazeera English:...