3/14/24

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Another day in the ER

In bed before 10, up at 2:55, let Lilly out to harass a whitetail deer on the lawn.  43°, high of 45°.  Close to 1" of rain is expected in the next 24 hours.  The wind is NNE at 9, 7-21/36.  Sunrise at 7:04, sunset at 7:36, 11+53. 

Treadmill; pain.  I haven't been on the treadmill since February 19th because of shoulder/wrist pains, with concern about exacerbation and the danger of falling.  The pain continued last night and early morning.  Two 8-hour Tylenol at 7 a.m.  

I'm grateful to Chris Van Hollen and The New Yorker, see below.

Genocide by starvation and disease, how it works for Israel with U.S. complicity thanks to Joe Biden.  From the current The New Yorker online, "Why America Isn’t Using Its Leverage with Israel: Senator Chris Van Hollen on the catastrophe in Gaza, and his differences with the Biden Administration" by Isaac Chotiner, March 7, 2024 :

Where are we right now in terms of getting aid to the people in Gaza? What is preventing that aid from reaching them in sufficient levels?

Well, we’re nowhere near where we need to be. We now have hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation. We also passed the grisly marker where at least fifteen children have died of starvation, so the situation has gone from bad to worse. The primary cause has been the continued restrictions on assistance by the Netanyahu government. . .  [y]ou have people like [Minister of Finance] Bezalel Smotrich holding up flour at the Port of Ashdod for at least five weeks, despite the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu promised President Biden that that flour would go to hungry, starving people. That’s just one example. You also have [Minister of National Security] Itamar Ben-Gvir indicating that he would not allow police to clear protesters who were blocking trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing.

These are Israeli protesters intentionally trying to block aid trucks from crossing into Gaza, correct?

Right. There’s also the issue of continued arbitrary denial of things like maternity kits from being able to cross into Gaza on the claim that somehow a maternity kit is a dual-use item, and that also holds true with other items like water purifiers and things that clearly are not dual use. [Dual-use items are items which could potentially be used for military purposes, aside from their intended purposes.] When there’s one of those items on the truck, the whole truck has to be turned around and go back to the start, which is now taking up to several weeks in some cases.  

You mentioned that you could fill us in more about the issue with Smotrich. What was it you were going to say?

So, this was a shipment of flour from Turkey that was at the port of Ashdod, and had enough flour to feed hundreds of thousands of people for weeks. Smotrich intervened and refused to allow the flour to be transferred because he didn’t want the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (unrwa) to be able to distribute it, even though we know that unrwa has been the primary distribution system for aid in Gaza. I should point out that Ambassador David Satterfield, our humanitarian envoy, has said repeatedly that he has received zero evidence from the Netanyahu government that U.N.-distributed aid has been diverted to Hamas. But Smotrich was holding this up, claiming that he didn’t want it to go through unrwa, and so the flour has to be transferred to the World Food Program, but before it could be released to the World Food Program, unrwa had to pay delay charges for the time that it was sitting in the port of Ashdod because Smotrich had not allowed it to be delivered, and when unrwa went to make that payment, it was rejected by the Israeli bank that refused to accept a payment from unrwa.

Am I correct that there is a law on the books in America which says that “funds appropriated or otherwise made available for United States assistance may not be made available for any country whose government prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance?” 

You cited that exactly right, . . . I’ve been flabbergasted that the Administration has not invoked and implemented the law you just cited, which is called the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act.

If that were invoked, what would follow?

So, what would follow from that is that, until the Netanyahu government allowed needed assistance to get to starving people in Gaza, the United States would suspend its military assistance. I should say that that does not cover the provision of defensive systems like Iron Dome, but it would mean a suspension of delivering bombs that could be used in Gaza. 

You’ve had a lot of conversations with people in the Administration about this. Is there a difference of opinion when you talk to people high up in the Administration about what’s actually going on, or about how to deal with it? Is there disagreement about, say, why aid is failing to reach Gaza? Are people in the Administration telling you, “Oh, no, in fact, the Israelis want to get aid in,” or is there an open acknowledgment that the Israelis are intentionally denying humanitarian aid to Gaza?

In all my discussions, Administration officials have recognized that the Netanyahu government has put up unacceptable barriers to the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, and so the question is not one of fact but what to do about it.

The idea that we’re giving massive amounts in aid to a country that is refusing our request to allow humanitarian assistance through so we have to airdrop food is embarrassing. I was wondering if you thought there was some sense of that embarrassment, and that that was what is responsible for the change in tone.

I do think that the Administration recognizes how bad it looks to repeatedly request the Netanyahu government take action and to repeatedly be ignored, while at the same time the Administration has been providing a substantial amount of military aid that’s being used in Gaza. I think the Administration recognizes the contradictions, but has not yet resolved those contradictions.

Yet another black spot on the record of Joe Biden, on whom the buck stops. 

A headline in NYTIMES: "Funniest novels since Catch 22."  I read Catch 22  as a young man before I went to Vietnam.  I remember sitting in the officers' mess hall one day in Danang and thinking to myself: "Catch 22 wasn't fiction.  I was true."  Perhaps it was the day I walked into the mess hall after finishing my watch at the TACC and seeing the 1st MAW chaplain, a bird colonel, and an Episcopal priest, hanging tinsel on an artificial tree while singing loudly "Christmas is a-coming and the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in the old man's hat.  If you haven't got a penny then a ha'penny will do.  If you haven't got a ha'penny then God bless you."  Maybe I didn't really think Catch 22 was true but, after living for months in a war zone, I sure didn't think it was 'funny.'

VA adventures.   I had two appointments this morning, one at 10 with the shoulder specialist in the PT Clinic, and the other with the hand specialist.  When I finished with both, I stopped in the men's restroom before heading home.  When I 'finished my business,' I discovered a toilet full of blood.  I went to the ER where I further discovered, after blood work, a digital exam, and a CT scan, that I had an internal hemorrhoid that had 'popped.'  I was thankful it wasn't something much worse.  Geri picked me up and drove me home.  She'll bring me back tomorrow for my acupuncture treatment for the shoulder pain and I'll be able to drive the Volvo home after its overnight visit in the parking  strange garage,