Utolsó frissítés: 2026.06.03. — Szerző: Anti-Propaganda News Blog
For decades, international public opinion and the mainstream media have been spinning in an endless moral merry-go-round whenever the horizon in the Middle East is engulfed in flames. Statements arrive regularly, trying to cover up the reality with pharmacy-scale portioned condemnations and abstract moral declarations. However, making legal and moral judgments on individual actions is ultimately the task of international criminal courts. Our collective, human task should not be the comfort of judging, but to stop the violence.
But to stop violence, it is essential to name the structural soil that systematically produces it. We cannot talk about the consequences without the root causes.
The blindness of condemnation without context
Violence is produced by the structure of colonialism and Zionism. This is not an abstract ideological statement, but a historical and material fact. Without what the state of Israel has been systematically doing to the Palestinian population for decades, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would exist in the form they do today.
The political and media directives that demand condemnation of Hamas’ actions without a single word about the historical background that created and nurtured it are, in effect, refusing to ask the real question. Because the honest, cutting-edge question is: What should they have done?
The Palestinians in Gaza did not start with armed resistance. They tried all forms of peaceful, civilized protest. During the Great March of Return of 2018-2019, tens of thousands of unarmed civilians marched to the cordons surrounding Gaza. The response of Israeli snipers to this peaceful march was the systematic shooting of unarmed people – on a scale and brutality that has been documented with pinpoint accuracy and without question by international human rights organizations.
They tried the civilized way. They were killed for it. So anyone who reflexively condemns Hamas today would have an obligation to answer the question: what exactly is the alternative they are proposing to the Palestinians?
Write the proposal for the "dieting" people
We must demand that anyone who speaks from abstract moral heights write down their specific proposal. Not in generalities, not in the sterile language of diplomatic salons. Specifically. Addressed to the Palestinians in Gaza whose lives are regulated by closed-minded administrative decisions by an external occupying power.
This survival manual should be written for people who:
-
Their food is rationed according to Israeli decisions.
-
Its water and electricity are rationed.
-
They are rationing your medications, fuel, and space.
-
His access to the outside world is restricted to the nearest inch.
Recall the leaked Israeli government documents in which officials calculated with engineering precision the number of calories that could be allowed into Gaza. The explicit goal was to keep the entire population on the brink of malnutrition, just above the threshold of mass starvation. An entire population was literally force-fed by an occupying power.
If the vocal condemners are unable to write a concrete, feasible, and dignified proposal for these people, then behind their superficial humanism lies a single unspoken, dark answer: lie down and die in silence. Anyone who doesn't dare say this out loud should deeply examine why their proposal cannot be written.
Rejection of empathy disguised as moral purity
When Westerners are asked to imagine themselves in the shoes of someone born in Gaza, the attempt almost always fails. Because they are incapable of it. They do not imagine the reality of Gaza, but they project their own privileged lives: their European or American freedom, their education, their intact family network, their living parents, siblings, and children. They imagine a predictable future, the freedom to travel – and then, from this comfortable armchair, they declare that they „would never join Hamas, and they would never commit violence.”.
This is not empathy. This is a radical rejection of empathy disguised as a superior moral judgment.
True empathy is not a projection of our own security, but a ruthless sense of another person's reality. It means imagining a life that:
-
Born in grief and captivity.
-
It is built on continuous, generational losses.
-
Where the absence of murdered family members and the sight of ruined homes are part of everyday life.
-
Where there is no way out, no journey, no real education, and no future.
-
Where your daily calories, water, and medicine are calculated for you by the occupant on the other side of the wall.
If someone can truly, unobtrusively imagine this existence and ask themselves the question: „What would I become in this cage?” – the only honest answer is: „I don’t know.”
Every other answer, every confident instruction, is merely the comfort of distance masquerading as moral clarity.
Stopping violence does not begin with vocal condemnation of the symptoms, but with the elimination of the material and political conditions that produce it. The legal justice of individual acts must be entrusted to the courts. The immediate and urgent task of humanity is to put an end to the system of oppression that keeps this destructive spiral alive.
Sources:
Under the Israeli Ministry of Defense COGAT The existence and disclosure of documents on calorie counting in Gaza prepared by the organization Government Activities in the Territories (GAAT) are documented in the following primary sources, legal proceedings, and international press materials:
1. Title and background of the official document
Document title „"Red Lines"” (Red Lines), which the Israeli Ministry of Defense produced in January 2008, when the blockade on Gaza was tightened, but tried to keep secret for years.
-
The starting point: The document contained a mathematical formula that determined the minimum calorie intake needed to keep the Gaza population alive (by gender and age group), and then converted this into the minimum number of food trucks that should be allowed in to avoid immediate mass starvation but keep the population under pressure.
2. The legal path to disclosure (Gisha)
The documents were not leaked, but rather came to light as a result of a formal, years-long Israeli court case:
-
Gisha (Israeli human rights organization): The organization filed a lawsuit against the Israeli Ministry of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act to release economic and food guidelines for the blockade of Gaza.
-
Supreme Court decision (2012): The Israeli Defense Ministry fought in court for three and a half years to withhold the documents, citing security reasons. Finally, in October 2012, the court ordered the government to hand over the materials to Gisha.
-
Official materials from Gisha: The documents obtained and details of the litigation are still available on the organization's website and archive (Gisha: "Legal battle for the release of the 'Red Lines' document"„).
3. International press and media sources
When the documents became legally accessible in 2012, leading global and Israeli newspapers analyzed their contents in detail:
-
Haaretz (Israel): One of the very first Israeli newspapers to report in detail on the court decision and the contents of the document.
-
Article: „"Israel used 'calorie count' to limit Gaza food during blockade, MD files show" (October 17, 2012)
-
-
Reuters: The international news agency reported the Israeli army's calorie calculation model as fact.
-
Article: „"Israel counted calories to limit food weighing into Gaza: Gisha" (October 17, 2012)
-
-
BBC News: He provided a detailed analysis of how COGAT determined the daily minimum of 2,279 calories per person.
-
Article: „"Israel Gaza blockade 'calculated calories for Palestinians'" (October 17, 2012)
-
-
The Guardian (United Kingdom): In a report, he showed how the "diet" and restrictions had an impact on everyday life in Gaza.
-
Article: „"Israel forced to release study on Gaza blockade calorie limits" (October 17, 2012)
-
4. Human rights and UN reports
The „Red Lines” document and the statements of Israeli officials at the time (for example, the famous statement of Prime Ministerial Advisor Dov Weisglass that „"Palestinians should be put on a diet, but not so that they starve to death"”) have become integrated into the international legal and human rights discourse:
-
Human Rights Watch (HRW) & Amnesty International: Several of their reports cite the period 2008-2010 as evidence of deliberate economic and humanitarian strangulation.
-
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC): The Special Rapporteurs on Gaza (including Richard Falk and Michael Lynk) used the data Gisha sued for in official UN reports to support the legal definition of collective punishment.
