A study published through the Harvard Dataverse uses location mapping and data to assert that nearly one-fifth of the population is missing from the Gaza Strip. Of Gaza’s 2023 population of 2.227 million, 377,000 people no longer appear. They are absent. Gaza’s population appears to be 1.85 million.
Those of us with Gazan friends have struggled to reconcile the scale of our friends’ losses with the official counts of Gaza’s death toll. For the numbers to make sense, our friends’ families would have to have been disproportionately targeted – or the number of deaths would have to be far greater than those counted by Gaza’s health ministry.
This measure of missing population makes a great deal more sense. It also lets us include those who have been forced to leave, taking on crippling debt for the sake of their children’s safety. How many, we do not know – but Harvard’s measure embraces their absence. Anyone who has been physically to places waking up from genocide knows that a pervasive, silent sense of absence precedes meaningful numbers. Spacial mapping captures that. Israel is emptying Gaza of its people.
Yet again, Alternative Jewish Voices implores our government to stand up and act on what we know of Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide. It is no excuse for our government to say that we cannot end the genocide alone. For two thousand years a Jewish adage has reminded us that we are obliged to undertake even the work we cannot complete.
It matters to state who we are and attach ourselves to morality, international humanitarian law and human dignity. It matters to every one of our battered souls that we do what can be done to stop the genocide taking place on our watch.
For 20 months, Israel’s government and occupation forces have pursued a campaign of genocide in Gaza, interspersed with destruction and land grabs in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. Now Israel has indulged its long-held desire to attack Iran, a nation of 92 million people.
Israel claims that this was a pre-emptive attack, a necessary act of self-defence to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. US State Department intelligence findings flatly contradict that claim. While it calls Iran a nuclear threat, Israel is the only Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons – undeclared, uninspected, and therefore all the more dangerous.
We, Jewish groups in 19 countries, believe that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu acted to divert attention from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its daily attacks and land seizures in the West Bank, and to extend Israel’s imperial domination over more of the Middle East. He further seeks to extend his own rule (and evade jail). Netanyahu has long wanted to lure the US directly into war against Iran. Ultimately, he seeks to bring down the Iranian government, in denial of the right of the Iranian people to chart their own way forward.
Shortly before it attacked Iran, the IDF virtually cut Gaza’s last communications and imposed a complete siege on the West Bank. Hourly, it pursues genocide in darkness. On June 20, Al Jazeera counted over 170 Palestinians killed in Gaza this week, while they were trying to obtain the food that they have a right to obtain.
It is too easy to condemn only Netanyahu, who is already on trial domestically and wanted internationally for crimes of genocide. The problem is wider. This regional war-crime spree is inherent in the logic of Zionism. Since 1947, the Zionist project has systematically expelled and murdered Palestinians. It has pursued territorial expansion and regional domination inspired by Western imperialism, while claiming victimhood as a persecuted Jewish collective.
Israel’s role remains dependent on the full support – diplomatic, military and economic – of Western powers. Donald Trump, ever ready to claim destruction as his own, openly refers to Israel’s attack as an action ‘we’ undertook. The German Chancellor says that Israel is ‘doing dirty work for all of us.’
Global Jews for Palestine rejects Israel’s atrocities and its racist narrative. This widening suffering and chaos will continue until all countries make it end. Governments must cease arming and justifying Israel’s crimes, and instead they must impose effective sanctions on Israel. As the world’s highest court has advised, we call on our governments to stop normalising and start bringing this disaster to its only credible end: ceasefire, accountability, and justice which realises the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
We, Jews from around the world urge all governments to abandon the racist, reckless project of Zionism and start the urgent work of justice. We pledge to continue and intensify our efforts to end occupation, genocide and the wider military adventures which threaten to engulf us all.
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MORE ABOUT GLOBAL JEWS FOR PALESTINE
We are Jews from many countries, who are members of local, national and international networks and organizations. We are multi-ethnic and multigenerational and our members embrace a broad range of viewpoints on Jewish religious and ethical traditions. We are connected by our involvement in the struggle for Palestinian rights, and by our determination to work for justice. We oppose Zionism and all forms of racism and colonialism.
We believe that it is our particular responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions undermine Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and overturn Jewish social justice traditions. At the heart of our work is the fight for Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a world free of racial and ethnic hierarchy, colonial domination, and unbridled militarism.
For 100 days Israel has starved the people of Gaza openly, in plain sight.
This 100th day is a Tuesday morning, and already this is a week of bitter pills to swallow. Gazan Palestinians continue to be pressed into ever smaller spaces. They continue to be driven toward the faint prospect of food. To save their children from starvation, they make themselves vulnerable to the deadly force that surrounds the GHF choke points. What should they do, starve or be shot?
The Guardian and others report that the UK and France have backpedalled and will not recognise the State of Palestine at the upcoming conference. Instead, they will talk about the concessions and steps that Palestinians should take to assure Israel, such that Israel will not want to obstruct their political rights.
Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has announced that the US will no longer pursue a Palestinian state in the land of Palestine. Any Palestinian state will be carved out of ‘a Muslim country’.
Aotearoa joined other countries in sanctioning two Israeli ministers this morning. Good, thank you, but even this bloodless tweak must be accompanied by assurances to the Israeli people.
Who will assure the Palestinian people this week? Who will comfort the children of Gaza this week? Gazan Palestinians are starving and being killed with impunity – on their own land, which is called Palestine and is recognised as such by ¾ of the member states of the United Nations.
Alternative Jewish Voices regards this ongoing genocide, this political farce with horror and heartbreak for our Palestinian whānau. This week forces us to understand a little more about being Palestinian, because these cycles of hope and cowardly abandonment are not new for Palestinians.
We send our deepest compassion to each Palestinian who is struggling alongside their Gazan family, and suffering these bitter setbacks. We will be with you for as long as it takes.
We urge every friend of Palestine to think sustainably about solidarity. That is what these setbacks demand. We cannot only bank the fiery rage that burns itself out. If we are to stand beside Palestinians through the long work of realising their rights and national aspirations, we need to act with the care, the comfort, the creativity and consistency that will endure.
We have rallied, written and shouted for the restoration of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. We urge our government to help preserve UNRWA, the lynchpin of Gaza’s humanitarian structure. Israel is bent on preventing UNRWA’s humanitarian capacity from being used.
We do not spend much time on the reality of this humanitarian provision. What is it that Israel is seeking to dismantle?
Humanitarianism is an ethic that places the value of human life at the centre of emergency (here, warfare). Assistance is prioritised according to need, and delivered within the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. In Gaza’s daily desperation for food, we see the abysmal absence of these principles.
As a response to emergency, humanitarian assistance is limited – a bandaid, not a cure. Humanitarians will not give Palestinians a state. Assistance neither prevents nor ends wars. It seeks to limit the harms of war, and it can only operate in the space agreed by all armed parties.
Yet humanitarianism acts on our human dignity in a way that I find enormously valuable. As an aspiration, it is the very best bandaid we’ve got in a world where we cannot prevent armed violence. Personally, the rights-based principles that give rise to humanitarian action also give me a guardrail to hold back the absolutes which make our differences harder to resolve. Absolutes can creep into any movement, sliding from principle to implacable rage that suggests we cannot live together.
It takes a hopeful belief in humanity to say that now, which Scott Anderson shares.
Gaza, 2015
Scott was the deputy director of UNRWA while I was in Gaza. I reported to him operationally for two years. He tolerated my response to United Nations bureaucracy, which involved unplugging my desk phone for, um, a while. Scott thrived in emergency, and led the UNRWA emergency operations room through the 2014 onslaught. I saw his physical bravery when we visited shelters together.
In November 2023, Scott went back. He was UNRWA’s director in Gaza through January 2025. This week we spoke about those 15 months, and only very briefly about Israel’s resumption of bombing after March 2025.
The 2014 war had been, Scott said, a high water mark of Israel’s willingness to coordinate with the UN on matters like humanitarian pauses (agreed cessations of fire which allow people to move and be supplied with food safely). Israel’s choices were now driven by anger, and some were “indefensible. It’s just a very difficult time right now and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to find safety for people who are innocent in Gaza.”
UNRWA has long been Gaza’s largest provider of safe shelter but this time, “most, if not all, UNRWA shelters have been hit … I think that when it was announced that UNRWA staff were part of October 7th, it took on a new dimension. I personally think it’s a way to put psychological pressure on the [Palestinian] community that UNRWA isn’t safe anymore. One of the [Israeli government’s] stated goals, besides eradicating Hamas, is to get rid of UNRWA.”
While Scott was there, “well over two hundred” of his UNRWA staff were killed “that we knew of. I’m sure there are some that are in the rubble, that we just aren’t aware of … And it wasn’t just us. [The IDF aerial strike which killed seven staff members of] World Central Kitchen was a kind of inflection point.”
After staff of other agencies were shot at while trying to retrieve bodies, “We did stuff we didn’t have to do before. We collected remains of people. It’s something I felt was important – first, for our own humanity but also for our Palestinian colleagues. Whatever we do in this life, we deserve a dignified burial at the end of it, right?”
I asked how (for lack of a better phrase) he hadn’t gotten himself killed. “It was dangerous. There were probably three or four times when I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out.”
We talked about the strangeness of Gaza’s once-familiar landscape. I have seen what remains of our offices. Mine is a shambles with no ceiling or front walls. My former apartment building is dust. Seeing those places is like driving through Shuja’iyya after 2014. I couldn’t even count the streets to locate myself, because there were no streets to discern.
“You’re right,” he said. “I went to Gaza City and the driver said, ‘Look, there’s Beirut Tower.’ I didn’t know where I was. There’s so much damage in the frame of reference. It’s just gone.”
To me, the daily horror stories from Gaza have sounded as if the whole notion of de-confliction – coordination intended to keep routes or places safe for the delivery of aid – has broken down. “No,” Scott shook his head, “I don’t believe that. I think that it didn’t work particularly well, and it really didn’t work particularly well with certain units of the IDF … You could see, they were scared … I don’t believe anybody’s out to hurt humanitarians, because it helps in most conflicts.”
So how did he cope, as the leader of people who needed to move through that environment? “It’s a pretty fine line between being pragmatic and principled, right? The only real leverage the UN has is saying that we’ll stop, but we won’t, and we all knew we wouldn’t.”
Is Israel’s flagrant disregard of humanitarian space and entitlements an aberration or a precedent? “I hope it’s an aberration, but I think that the way the humanitarian community functions needs to be re-examined as well. I do believe that. I don’t think the model still works [in] the more violent places where we’re working … The war has become so much more asymmetrical that it’s much harder now to protect sites and people.” When superpowers bomb a confined community, the very idea of reciprocal need falls away. The humanitarian risk and need are as one-sided as the weaponry.
I asked about the extent of Palestinian hardship during Scott’s time. Mutual assistance has always been integral to Gaza, but there are also networks and clans which profit from scarcity. “I do think that there was a sense of helping each other, but there was also opportunistic profiteering – which is the reality in most war zones… And frankly I remain shocked that there hasn’t been a pandemic or something. I think it’s because people are very intelligent, and very resilient. But it’s really pretty remarkable.”
Through it all, I have struggled to understand intention. Israel’s cabinet is brazen and fascist, and we have all read horrifying individual statements of genocidal intent from others in and out of office. We respond to that, because those speakers are culpable, and because we are also doing politics. But how should we speak beyond that? We have seen the harm done when all of Gaza is blurred into a single, militarised object; willfully denying Palestinians’ civilian protections. What is the converse of that?
Scott negotiated and interacted for years with Israel’s occupation institutions and military leaders. When I spoke about Israel’s plans for Gaza, he looked dubious. “I don’t know if it’s a plan. I often feel they’re a little schizophrenic when it comes to Palestinians and Gaza. They want them to leave, but they also don’t want to let them leave.”
So, for 19 months, two million people have been driven north and south, north and south. Presently they are forced south, pushed into smaller and smaller spaces and drawn desperately by the magnet of food. And now there is Trump and apparently, the most malicious in Israel’s government have carte blanche. Of the Israel / US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Scott says, “It’s clear that this is an attempt to sidestep the humanitarian principles, which doesn’t seem to have worked very well. The consulting group and head of the GHF have both withdrawn. This is a litmus test, certainly, and other countries – Russia for example – are watching.”
Visiting the Nasser hopsital in Khan Younis, Gaza July 2014. Image: UNRWA
Scott lived nine years and seven months in Gaza, across several senior roles. Israel has refused to grant him entry in another UN capacity within Israel, because “they didn’t want it to look like UNRWA was sneaking back in.”
Of his decade, he says, “I think we all came and did what we could.”
One of the great privileges of my own years in Gaza was the ability to cross boundaries and listen again. It does not diffuse my outrage. After all, there will be people sitting in cafes in Tel Aviv while Gaza starves. But crossing boundaries complicates what I understand of this as a human deed.
Scott leaves believing that, “From a distance, everything looks pretty black and white, but up close, it’s all shades of grey … You have to really dig into it to understand. If you’re a friend of Palestine, you should visit Israel and try to understand. And if you’re a friend of Israel, you should visit Palestine and try to understand. You have to have empathy and understanding, that’s what I would say [although] the scales are different.”
Scott has not said the word ‘genocide’. Organisations play different roles and speak within different constraints. Regarding the world court case against Israel for crimes of genocide, “The work UNRWA did in compiling statistics was used by South Africa in raising the case to the court. [UNRWA’s] primary role was documentation and advocacy.”
UNRWA’s tireless, principled advocacy is ongoing, based on the rights of Palestinians and on ground truth. This week’s statement by UNRWA’s Commissioner-General was sent under the title “aid distribution has become a death trap”.
Author’s note – this poem is a cry from the depth of injustice, told through a child’s voice raised in unbearable grief and fury. It is not just a lament; it is a moral and emotional appeal and a call for action. To politicians, community leaders, influencers, artists, and every person living in a safe and free society to understand: your indifference is murderous. Use the freedom you have; or risk losing it.
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 