International law is an ass

Those who use it as a sword against Israel are worse

Israel has decided to take control over the distribution of food and other humanitarian aid in Gaza. It will lift its two-month blockade of aid shipments and permit around 60 trucks to enter Gaza each day. The Israeli Defense Force will inspect the trucks as they enter Gaza. American contractors will provide security for the deliveries at distribution hubs inside Gaza.

Israel is taking control of aid distribution because the alternative is Hamas using aid shipments to revitalize itself. According to Israeli officials, Hamas had been siphoning off humanitarian aid and reselling it, thereby garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 18 months.

The Washington Post, which prints death toll estimates provided by Hamas uncritically and without skepticism, sniffs that “Israel has not provided evidence of such large-scale theft.” But how hard is it to believe that Hamas is stealing large amounts of aid?

This, after all, is a terrorist outfit that siphoned off vast amounts of money and material with which to build a massive tunnel system for the purpose of waging war on Israel. It’s a terrorist outfit that massacred Israeli citizens, as well as non-Israelis who happened to be in Israel; uses Palestinian women and children as shields; and kills its fellow Gazans in order to maintain power.

Of course it will steal, and has stolen, humanitarian aid and convert it into large amounts of money in order to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza and rebuild its terrorist forces and infrastructure. Israel’s plan will minimize such theft.

It’s not just the Washington Post that’s displeased by Israel’s attempt to make sure humanitarian aid finds its way directly to ordinary Gazans, not Hamas. International aid groups are also upset.

Israel’s plan contemplates the involvement of humanitarian organizations that Israel vets. But Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the rabidly anti-Israel U.N, declared that the U.N. does not support Israel’s plan. Accordingly, U.N. agencies say they will not participate in it.

Nor is just the U.N. that’s turning its back on hungry Palestinians. According to the Post, most of the humanitarian aid groups that operate in Gaza back the UN.’s position and will not participate.

One excuse for this stance is that by participating in Israel’s aid distribution plan, humanitarian organizations might be committing war crimes. This ridiculous claim was presented by nearly two dozens aid organizations in a briefing paper to Western governments.

If international law truly makes it a crime for humanitarian organizations to help Israel distribute food and other aid to civilians in Gaza, then international law is an ass. Actually, international law is an ass anyway.

In reality, though, international law has nothing to do with the non-participation of the U.N. and other aid organizations. The reality is that hatred of Israel by the U.N. and others in the “aid” community supersedes the desire to help feed a population that we’re repeatedly told — and have been told for at least a year — is on the verge of mass starvation.

Do some of these organizations want starvation in Gaza so they can bolster their case against Israel? I don’t know. But that’s a more plausible reason for their refusal to help feed Gazans than fear of committing war crimes if they don’t refuse.

It’s clear, in any case, that anti-Israeli virtue signaling is more important to the U.N. than helping distressed Gazans.