Who is John Ging?

I should hesitate to take my facts about Palestine, or about much of anything else, from the Daily Torygraph, but assuming that JC implicitly vouches for them, let us have a closer look, Mr. Bones:

Gaza depends on Israel for all its fuel. However, Israel reduced supplies to pressure the Hamas authorities into stopping militants firing rockets across the border. The flow was turned off completely a fortnight ago after militants attacked an oil terminal on the Gaza border, killing two Israeli civilians. Mr Ging ["director of the main UN aid agency in Gaza"] criticised the militants but said that Israel was wrong to retaliate with sanctions. "Irresponsible acts of one side do not lift the clear legal responsibilities from the other side," he said. "Under international humanitarian law Israel has a responsibility to provide supplies for the civilian population of Gaza." Israel responded by saying that the crisis was being engineered by Hamas for propaganda purposes and that it was allowing in some humanitarian supplies. However, Gazan truck drivers have gone on strike, claiming that the piecemeal distribution of these modest fuel supplies was not cost effective. Their action was described by a senior British aid worker as "an industrial hunger strike." Louis Michel, the European Union Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, said. "It is unacceptable that public services, such as garbage collection, sewage treatment or hospitals, are at the brink of collapse because of a lack of fuel."

That is the conclusion of the DT article. Part of my dissatisfaction is that it began with what pretends to be, or was intended to be, but in fact is not, a still briefer summary of the same muddle:

The United Nations says it is being forced to stop delivering food aid to Gaza because of the fuel shortages caused by Israel's response to militant attacks. Almost a million Palestinians will go hungry if the UN stops deliveries . . . .

Those two little words "caused by" can get twisted out of shape beyond recognition rapidly when they fall into the hands of ax-grinders. And nowhere are there more ax-grinders per square metre than in the conceptual vicinity of the Palestine Puzzle.

The DT crew take a stab at even-handedness, sort of, by offering their customers a response-based cause. Unfortunately intellectual visibility is only decreased by their ploy: I cannot make out whether to blame the militants of Gaza or the statespersons of the Tel Aviv régime first. And those militant attacks can easily be understood as a response to some other factor located even farther back chronologically. The so-called ‘occupation’ for example.

It is tempting, but probably ridiculous, to fly to the opposite extreme -- to pick out the nearest rather than the most remote Real Basic Cause -- and blame the (alleged? anticipated?) hunger mainly on those damn truck drivers. "Once let the unions in, ma’am, and you’ll have no end of trouble!" At the Daily Telegraph that motto may seem suitable to pretty well any occasion, though they do not parade it too prominently in this case.

Mr. John Ging thinks like an attorney rather than a unionbuster, starting from "the clear legal responsibilities" of Tel Aviv. Clear enough, except that ‘responsibilities’ is not exactly the name of a cause. If Jewish statists were to be seized by an overmastering wish to meet their responsibilities as an Occupying Power, that psychological event, or more likely its stimulus, might make a presentable cause. The responsibilities as such do not make one, being only abstract entities that could effect nothing even if complied with in full.

Being an attorney, real or virtual, Mr. John Ging attaches a great deal of importance to legal standing. He takes for granted that truck drivers cannot be encumbered with obligations under international humanitarian law, not even when it sounds as if the immediate crisis could be resolved if they would simply deliver fuel at a financial loss to themselves or their employers. A more practically minded relief administrator might be presenting his begging bowl to the august International Community so as to be able to compensate the teamsters of Gaza and their bosses eventually.

Whichever particular Jewish statists it was that replied to Ging on International Humanitarian Law are almost laughably on a different level. "She hit me first" ("the crisis was being engineered by Hamas for propaganda purposes") is irrelevant juridically, and the announcement of partial compliance with one’s obligations ("[Israel] was allowing in some humanitarian supplies") only makes everything worse by recognition that some such obligations do exist, thus instantly raising the question of why full compliance should be refused. Possibly the Daily Telegraph received some account of the second point that it decided not to pass on to its customers. Everybody is free to guess that the pols of Tel Aviv do not consider fossil fuel a properly humanitarian commodity, since very few people die directly from the lack of it. That view may make a certain appeal to untutored common sense, but with international humanitarian law it has nothing much to do.

JC provided a quick summary of his own, though linked to the Telegraph’s:

The Israelis already have the Gaza Strip under military siege, carefully controlling what and who goes in and out of it. They have now cut off most fuel, and the United Nations has been forced to stop distributing food aid. This Israeli government action is an unvarnished war crime. It is known as collective punishment. There was already hunger and malnutrition among Palestinian children, which will now be worsened.

A blockade is not technically the same thing as a siege, of course, but never mind. JC thinks far more like a barrister than like a brigadier, so what matters is chiefly two very short phrases, "war crime" and "collective punishment." As with Ging, Esq., the practical side of the matter does not present itself to Prof. Cole first. It is interesting to find that one member of his peanut gallery does think more pragmatically:

I am also sure that if for example the European Community would send boats whith food to Gaza, the Israelis would not use force against them.

An airlift would be speedier than boats, and there are lots and lots of agenicies in the world, private as well as governmental, native as well as Western, that might mount at least the beginnings of one, but nevertheless, Anonymous@1937 does show definite signs of being more interested in fixing problems than in orating about them. [1]

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[1] A pity he defines his problems so vast as to be unfixable: "Not only Israel is to blame but also nearly everyone of us that does not fight these criminal governments." He means the régimes at Crawford, Tel Aviv and Cairo, certainly enough to be getting on with. The rest of "all the prowestern puppets and western governments" can wait till later, hopefully.