Israel, it seems, has been denying shipments of pasta headed for Gaza. Senator John Kerry, who’d been visiting Israel, heard about the idle trucks filled with food aid and asked around. “Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid,” he was told. “Only rice shipments.” A call Kerry made to Ehud Barak quickly got the pasta added to the list of acceptable humanitarian aid. Comments from Representative Brian Laird helped lentils onto the list of officially allowed foods. American politicians do not like seeing starvation used to change electoral outcomes.
Of course, there’s another way we could guarantee that food gets through to Gaza: tell the Sixth Fleet to escort UN aid ships into Gaza. It’ll never happen, but it would work, wouldn’t it?
