US congresswoman warns of 'forced' famine, 'unfolding genocide' in Gaza

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday warned against the "forced" famine in the Gaza Strip, and urged the Congress to suspend the transfer of American weapons to Israel.

"As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famines door," the Democratic congresswoman said in remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives. "A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government".

"This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated following the killing of another 30,000, 70% of whom were women and children killed," said Ocasio-Cortez. "There is hardly a single hospital left. And this was all accomplished, much of this accomplished, with US resources and weapons".

"If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents," she stressed, adding thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away.

It is against US law to provide weapons to forces who block US humanitarian assistance, she said.

"The time is now to force compliance with US law and the standards of humanity and fulfill our obligations to the American people to suspend the transfer of US weapons to the Israeli government in order to stop and prevent further atrocity," the congresswoman added.

Underlying that honoring the alliances does not mean "facilitating mass killing," she said: "We cannot hide from our responsibility any longer. Blocking assistance from one's closest allies to starve a million people is not unintentional."

"A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government".

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the ICJ. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.