KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, @voiceinwild
Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal.
She just wrote the piece “When Starvation Is a Weapon, the Harvest Is Shame” for The Progressive. She recounts how in the Irish famine, “starving people died with their mouths stained green because, according to historian Christine Kinealy, their last meal was grass. Shamefully, British occupiers profited from exporting out of Ireland food crops so desperately needed. Over a seven year period, beginning in 1845, one million Irish people died from starvation and related diseases. It was a conscious mass killing. …
“Now, in the occupied Gaza Strip, weapons dealers benefit from increasing military shipments to Israel. Palestinians, like the Irish, have resorted to eating mixtures of grass and animal feed. …
“Human Rights Watch says the Israeli government is starving civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip. Aiding and abetting this war crime, the U.S. government has approved 100 military sales to Israel over the past five months. …
“In Northampton, Massachusetts, six activists are on day three of occupying the office of Representative Jim McGovern. They are demanding he call on the president to immediately halt all weapons shipments to Israel, even if Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza. …
“In May of this year, an Irish NGO called AFRI (Action From Ireland) will hold an annual ‘famine walk’ to commemorate when hundreds of desperate people trekked in cold and stormy weather to beg mercy from British officials designated to assess who would qualify for small portions of food or tickets to enter a workhouse. …
“Each year, the organizers of AFRI’s famine walk focus on a place in the world afflicted by famine. ‘This year’s famine walk will focus on the unspeakable horrors being visited on the population of Gaza,’ says AFRI’s coordinator, Joe Murray, ‘with “Irish” President Biden forgetting his history and playing the part of a “Black and Tan” in providing the means to obliterate an entire population.’ …
“People in the United States ought to occupy local offices of every elected official, denouncing all forms of violence, insisting on an immediate end to any support for Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.”
