Gavino Maciocco
Trump attacks migrants, “they are not people, they are animals”. Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister: “We are fighting human animals”. The increasingly explicit and violent colonial paradigm is proposed which allows us to distinguish between “lives worthy of mourning” and “lives unworthy of mourning”¹. Hunger, life and death: the “double standard”.
In the morning, at the beginning of the day (generally late), I find my email clogged with a mass of national and international newsletters and “alerts”. Little junk mail, everything else wanted, mostly for a fee. For some time now the temptation has been not to open that mail, or to delete it en masse, to unsubscribe from everything. Since the pandemic, that mail has now become a painful, repetitive bulletin of war and bad news. In recent times I have been struck by how frequently the news of collective deaths from hunger and thirst occurs.
March 15. La Stampa: “Sixty migrants killed by hunger and thirst in the Mediterranean. SOS ignored. Adrift for days without food or water, swallowed up at sea. The 25 survivors traveling to Ancona on the Ocean Viking.” Title and subtitle of the article by Eleonora Camilli, who writes:
“Died of hunger and thirst after a week adrift at the borders of Europe. There are at least 60 victims of the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea. Nobody responded to the SOS sent by the NGO’s switchboard Alarm phone to rescue the dinghy that left the port of Zawija, Libya, with around eighty people on board, including women and children. When in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, the humanitarian ship of
SOS Mediterranée, Ocean Viking, identified the ghost wreck, with 25 survivors, and found itself faced with a scene never seen before in seven years of activity. Severely emaciated and dehydrated people, at the end of their strength, who survived by drinking only sea water. Among them also 12 unaccompanied minors. Everyone was in shock after seeing their traveling companions die one by one. And for being forced to throw their bodies into the sea. A man of Senegalese origin, in a faint voice, told the rescuers that he had witnessed the death of his son and his wife: the little one, just one and a half years old, did not survive the second day, the mother died two days later after.(…) After the recovery of the castaways, the NGO carried out two rescue operations, saving another two hundred people, including 20 women and 30 minors, including very small ones, under the age of four. However, they will only touch the ground in five days. The NGO’s ship was in fact assigned the disembarkation port of Ancona, in the Marche region, 1,450 kilometers away. «It is a decision that only adds suffering to an already terrible situation, some castaways are still attached to oxygen to recover – says Valeria Taurino, general director of SOS Mediterranée -. That of distant ports is now a practice, but it is often inhumane”.
PS. March 16. The government has second thoughts: “In the end, the Ministry of the Interior gave the OK to disembark in Catania during the night, but only for the 23 survivors of Wednesday’s shipwreck, in critical health conditions after a week at sea. For the other 336 migrants on board the Ocean Viking the destination remains Ancona” (Ansa).
March 14th. Newsletter of the Corriere della Sera – The World Upside Down. Meritorious weekly online publication dedicated to news from the South of the World (generally ignored by newspapers). This issue is dedicated to Haitiwhere millions of people are suffering from hunger.
Sara Gandolfi writes: “The pearl of the Antilles today it is an unfortunate nation also due to the fault of us Westerners. The new wave of violence is the latest scourge, especially for the inhabitants of Port-au-Prince. Since the 2010 earthquake, no census has been taken in Haiti, but it is estimated that the vast majority of the population, around 10 million people, live in the capital. Almost all of them are barricaded in their homes, apart from the gang members who now dominate all the neighborhoods and govern the main slums. (…) The incessant gang attacks have paralyzed the country and left it with increasingly limited supplies of basic necessities. Making matters worse was the closure of Port-au-Prince’s main seaport, stranding dozens of containers filled with critical goods such as food and medical supplies. According to the authorities, half the population does not have enough food and 1.4 million people are suffering from hunger”.
“A sailboat of Haitian migrants, – adds Guido Olimpio – one of many that sail the Caribbean. Leaving, going away, fleeing from poverty and now from the savage power of criminal hordes: it is the obligatory choice for thousands of citizens. After the 2010 earthquake there was a massive exodus towards South American countries – for example Brazil – but with the worsening of the economic situation many had to set off again to start a new life. As with other nationalities, illegal immigrants head for the United States following “classic” itineraries: by sea or through the “continental” corridor, more or less long depending on availability”.
8/14 March. No. 1553 of Internazionale. Cover dedicated to “Gaza. The weapon of hunger”, with the editorial from Le Monde and five articles taken from various sources.
The one from the Financial Times, written by Mehul Srivastava, Neri Zilber and Heba Saleh, is titled: Gaza. Hunger becomes a weapon.
“It was still dark when around thirty trucks loaded with food supplies reached an Israeli checkpoint on Al Rashid Road, in the city of Gaza, a stretch of coastal road that four months ago was dotted with hotels, reception halls and food kiosks. ice creams. Around four in the morning on February 29, as videos shared by some Palestinians show, the street became a dystopian landscape, with hungry people climbing on the rubble of buildings destroyed by the Israeli army, lighting fires to keep warm and looking for something to eat. eat for families. News had spread of the arrival of an aid convoy. Amein Abou al Hassan, 40, had walked two hours to find something to feed his wife and three children. A bag of flour on the black market now costs $500. For weeks in the northern Gaza Strip around three hundred thousand people have been suffering from hunger and living on the verge of famine, the United Nations warns. Land mothers use donkey feed to make bread and children chew leaves torn from trees, say the UN officials who carried out a rare reconnaissance mission in the territory devastated by the military campaign. Public order is collapsing. The Palestinian police have disappeared, after their officers were killed by Israeli airstrikes. Gangs of young people roam the streets pouncing on the little ones loaded with things to eat. Some are desperately hungry, others steal to sell on the black market.”
“The event shows the consequences of Israel’s decision to hinder the delivery of much-needed aid, pushing millions of people into famine – commented Le Monde. This is not an isolated incident. On the contrary, it reveals what the Jewish state would like to do in the Gaza Strip after a military operation of which there is no end in sight, and this despite having failed to achieve its two declared objectives: the release of the hostages and the elimination of Hamas . After having transformed the Strip into a pile of rubble, Israel seems to want to destroy any form of administration, not just that of the Islamist organization. This is demonstrated by the attempt to abolish UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which plays a fundamental role in Gaza. Israel’s plan is confirmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s adamant refusal to support the return of a “revitalized Palestinian National Authority” to the Strip, as proposed by US President Joe Biden. Tel Aviv prefers chaos.”
March 15th. The Republic. Hunger, life and death, and the “double standard”. The interview with the Palestinian writer Suad Amiry. By Francesca Caferri.
RAMALLAH — If you want to understand the anger, the disappointment, the distrust that the Palestinians feel after more than five months of war in Gaza and the death of 32 thousand people, it is up to Suad Amiry’s house, in the Al Bira neighborhood, that come. The 73-year-old writer has for years been one of the most beloved voices of Arabic-language literature in the world.
(…) Are you telling me that October 7th is the natural result of the crisis between Israelis and Palestinians?
«Not a natural continuation, but the reaction to the Israeli occupation and an apartheid situation in which we Palestinians are third-class citizens. With the second class which is made up of Israeli Arabs.”
So if I ask you if you condemn Hamas for October 7th…
«I answer you that I respect international law which prohibits the killing of all civilians. But also that it seems to me that the West values some lives more than others. Why haven’t we heard condemnations for the Palestinian civilians killed in East Jerusalem and the West Bank before October 7?” (…)
References
¹ Lucia Re. War, law, vulnerability. Saluteinternazionale of 19 February 2024
“lives not worthy of mourning,” famine, Donald Trump, double standards, Gaza, Gaza. The weapon of hunger, Haiti, The World Upside Down, Mediterranean, Migrants, Ocean Viking, Port-au-Prince, SOS Méditerranée, Suad Amiry, Yoav Gallant, “lives worthy of mourning”