US Military Begins Airdropping Food Into Gaza

With the humanitarian disaster in Gaza growing more desperate each day, President Biden on Friday afternoon announced that the United States government would begin airdropping food and other supplies into the territory. Jordan has airdropped supplies in recent weeks, and Biden said that kingdom and other countries would join the effort.

Biden’s announcement comes after a catastrophe that saw more than 100 Palestinians killed by some combination of Israeli Defense Forces gunfire and stampeding after they massed on a convoy of about 30 trucks that had arrived in Gaza City to distribute food in the pre-dawn hours on Thursday. It also comes after more than 100,000 Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the Tuesday primary election, with many in the battleground state doing so to protest Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. 

Over half of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents have been forced from their homes. In the IDF-pulverized north — where Thursday’s horror unfolded and hundreds of thousands still linger — one in six children under age 2 are acutely malnourished, according to an analysis by the Global Nutrition Cluster.

More broadly, nearly 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza are near famine level, and disease is mounting. Driven to extreme measures, many are grinding animal feed into flour — and a toddler reportedly died last week after eating bread made that way. “We began to eat fodder and barley like animals in order to survive,” his weeping mother told al Jazeera.  

Officials tell Reuters the US relief missions will begin as soon as this weekend. Planning for airdrops must be done with great care. “There’s few military operations that are more complicated than humanitarian assistance airdrops,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. 

It appears the US airdrops have begun Saturday:

The U.S. Air Forces Central Command has just conducted its First Round of Humanitarian Airdrops into the Gaza Strip, with 3 C-130 Transport Aircraft flying at Low Altitude dropping upwards of 66 Pallets containing 38,000 Meals for the Palestinian Population. pic.twitter.com/PXBncWuQhj

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 2, 2024

“The biggest risk is making sure nobody gets hurt on the ground.” In addition to that peril, airdrops have the drawback of being relatively inefficient, with each drop only equaling between one and four truckloads of cargo.

Delivering aid via trucks would be far safer and efficient — if only the trucks could get in to the beleaguered, 25-mile-long strip. On that front, Biden said the White House would be pressuring Israel to let relief flow. “We’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need,” he said. Trucks laden with water and baby formula have sat for a month at Gaza’s border with Egypt, reports the Wall Street Journal. 

When Israel began its response to the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel that led to the deaths of 1,139 Israeli civilians, military personnel and foreigners, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that the deprivation of food to Gaza civilians would be one of Israel’s tactics:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Meanwhile, Israeli protesters have been attempting to prevent aid trucks from proceeding into Gaza. When reporters asked one of them, 32-year-old Rachel Touitou if she had any empathy for civilians in Gaza, she shrugged and said, “Should I have mercy on the children of today who will be the terrorists of tomorrow?”

Today at the Nitzana border crossing Israeli citizens are bringing their machine guns and small children to block all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. The military is having fun. The kids are cooking cotton candy. pic.twitter.com/9rGpCnQS4A

— Jeremy Loffredo (@loffredojeremy) February 27, 2024

About 90% of children in Gaza reportedly have some kind of infectious disease, with 70% suffering from diarrhea in the previous two weeks. ”Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatized children are more likely to get sick,” said Dr Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, “and children who are sick, especially with diarrhea, cannot absorb nutrients well. It’s dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes.” Much, apparently, to the delight of Rachel Touitou and others. 

Initial US airdrops are likely to consist of military Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) ration packets. On Friday, Biden told reporters that, in addition to airdrops and truck shipments, the administration would “seek to continue to open up other avenues…including the possibility of a marine corridor to deliver large amounts of humanitarian assistance.”   

Of course, no Biden appearance would be complete without the obviously failing president misnaming someone or something important. True to form, Biden twice said “Ukraine” when he intended to refer to Gaza. He was reading from a prepared statement, but things went wrong when he dared to speak on his own: 

President Biden says they will be completing air drops of ‘food and supplies into Ukraine’, and the US is seeking to open up ‘other avenues in Ukraine’. Mr Biden meant to say Gazahttps://t.co/GD1gLkuJSj pic.twitter.com/zvx5phNx5p

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 1, 2024