Concerned governments should impose targeted sanctions and suspend arms transfers to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid and basic services in Gaza, in accordance with Israel’s obligations under international law and the recent International Court of Justice order in South Africa’s genocide case.

“The Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has proven deadly for children in Gaza,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel needs to end this war crime, stop this suffering, and allow humanitarian aid to reach all of Gaza unhindered.”

A United Nations-coordinated partnership of 15 international organizations and UN agencies investigating the hunger crisis in Gaza reported on March 18, 2024, that “all evidence points towards a major acceleration of death and malnutrition.” The partnership said that in northern Gaza, where 70 percent of the population is estimated to be experiencing catastrophic hunger, famine could occur anytime between mid-March and May.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported as of April 1, that 32 people, including 28 children, had died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza. Save the Children confirmed on April 2 the deaths from starvation and disease of 27 children. Earlier in March, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials found “children dying of starvation” in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan and al-Awda hospitals. In southern Gaza, where aid is more accessible but still grossly inadequate, UN agencies in mid-February said that 5 percent of children under age 2 were found to be acutely malnourished.

Human Rights Watch in March interviewed a doctor in northern Gaza, a volunteer doctor who has since left Gaza, the parents of two infants who doctors said died of starvation-related complications in both mother and child, and the parents of four other children suffering from malnutrition and dehydration.

Human Rights Watch reviewed the death certificate for one of the children, and photos of two of the children in critical condition that showed signs of emaciation. All had been treated at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.

Human Rights Watch health advisers also reviewed verified pictures and videos online of three other evidently emaciated children who died and four others in critical condition who also showed signs of emaciation.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who heads Kamal Adwan hospital’s pediatrics unit, told Human Rights Watch on April 4 that 26 children had died after experiencing starvation-related complications in his hospital alone. He said that at least 16 of the children who died were under 5 months old, at least 10 were between 1 and 8 years old, and that a 73-year-old man suffering from malnutrition had also died. 

Dr. Safiya said one of the infants died at just two days old after being born severely dehydrated, apparently exacerbated by his mother’s poor health: “[She] had no milk to give him.”

Nour al-Huda, an 11-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis, was admitted to Kamal Adwan hospital on March 15. Doctors there told her mother that Nour was suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, and an infection in her lungs, and administered her oxygen and a saline solution. “Nour al-Huda now weighs 18 kilograms [about 40 pounds],” her mother told Human Rights Watch. “I can see her chest bones sticking out.”

International humanitarian law prohibits the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies,” is a war crime.

Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, the Israeli government has deliberately blocked the delivery of aid, food, and fuel into Gaza, while impeding humanitarian assistance and depriving civilians of the means to survive. Israeli officials ordering or carrying out these actions are committing collective punishment against the civilian population and the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, both of which are war crimes.

Israeli government actions that undermine the ability of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to carry out its recognized role in distributing aid in Gaza have exacerbated the effects of the restrictions.

A doctor who volunteered at the European hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza for two weeks in late January said that medical staff were forced to treat patients with limited medical supplies. He described the difficulty of treating malnutrition and dehydration, lacking essential items such as glucose, electrolytes, and feeding tubes. He said that one patient’s mother, desperate for solutions, resorted to crushing potatoes to create a makeshift liquid for tube feeding. Despite its nutritional inadequacy, the doctor said, “I ended up telling my other patients to find potatoes and do the same.”

On January 26, the International Court of Justice, in a case brought by South Africa, ordered provisional measures, including requiring Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid” and other actions to comply with the 1948 Genocide Convention. On March 28, the court indicated that Israel had not complied with this order and imposed a more detailed provisional measure requiring the government to ensure the unimpeded provision of basic services and aid in full cooperation with the UN, while noting that “famine is setting in.”

MSNBC Video added by IC: “Death by starvation is slow and cruel’: famine is projected to take hold of Gaza within weeks”

Governments should impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals responsible for the continued commission of the war crimes of collective punishment, deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid and using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.

Several countries have responded to the Israeli government’s unlawful restrictions on assistance by airdropping aid. The United States also pledged to build a temporary seaport in Gaza. However, aid groups and UN officials have said such efforts are inadequate to prevent a famine. Another attempt to deliver aid by sea was halted after an Israeli attack on aid workers on April 1.

On April 4, the Israeli cabinet agreed to several measures to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza, apparently following pressure from the US government.

“Governments outraged by the Israeli government starving civilians in Gaza should not be looking for band-aid solutions to this humanitarian crisis,” Shakir said. “Israel’s announcement that it will increase aid shows that outside pressure works. Israel’s allies like the US, UK, France, and Germany need to press for full-throttle aid delivery by immediately suspending their arms transfers.”

Starvation in Gaza

Prior to the current hostilities, 1.2 million of Gaza’s then-2.2 million people were estimated to be facing acute food insecurity, and over 80 percent were reliant on humanitarian aid. Israel maintains overarching control over Gaza, including over the movement of people and goods, territorial waters, airspace, the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies, and the population registry. This leaves Gaza’s population, whom Israel has subjected to an unlawful closure for more than 16 years, almost entirely dependent on Israel for access to fuel, electricity, medicine, food, and other essential commodities.

Nonetheless, before October 7, large amounts of humanitarian assistance reached the population. “Before this crisis, there was enough food in Gaza to feed the population,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Malnutrition was a rare occurrence. Now, people are dying, and many more are sick.”

The WHO reported that the number of children under age 5 who are acutely malnourished has jumped from 0.8 percent before the hostilities in Gaza to between 12.4 and 16.5 percent in northern Gaza. Oxfam said on April 3 that since January, people in northern Gaza have been forced to survive on an average of 245 calories a day, “less than a can of fava beans.”

According to a nutrition vulnerability analysis conducted in March by the Global Nutrition Cluster, a network of humanitarian organizations chaired by UNICEF, 90 percent of children ages 6-23 months and pregnant and breastfeeding women across Gaza faced “severe food poverty,” eating two or fewer food groups each day.

Children with preexisting health conditions are particularly vulnerable to the devastating effects of malnutrition, which significantly weakens immunity. And starvation, even for survivors, leads to lasting harm, especially in children, causing stunted growth, cognitive issues, and developmental delays.

Gaza’s Health Ministry announced on March 8 that about 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza suffered from malnutrition, dehydration and inadequate health care. Poor nutrition during pregnancy harms both the baby and the mother, increasing the risk of miscarriages, fetal deaths, compromised immune system development, growth impacts, and maternal mortality.

Older people are also at particular risk of malnutrition, which increases mortality among those with acute or chronic illnesses. HelpAge International reported that even before October, 45 percent of older people in Gaza were going to bed hungry at least once a week, with 6 percent hungry every night.

The impact on Gaza’s population of the Israeli government’s use of starvation as a weapon of war is compounded by the near-total collapse of the healthcare system. Out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only 10 are operational, none of them fully, both as a result of the Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport, as well as the severe restrictions on the entry of fuel and other supplies.

Accounts from Gaza

On March 19, Andrea De Domenico, head of OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territory, visited Kamal Adwan hospital, where he said about 15 malnourished children arrive daily due to shortages in food, water, and proper sanitation. He described dire conditions at the hospital, noting damage to certain areas and its reliance on a single generator.

Among the cases that Human Rights Watch investigated:

• A man from Beit Lahia said his infant son, Abdelaziz, died just hours after his severely malnourished mother gave birth to him in Kamal Adwan hospital on February 24. He shared Abdelaziz’s death certificate with Human Rights Watch, which said that Abdelaziz was born premature. His father said that the hospital staff hooked Abdelaziz up to a ventilator because he was having trouble breathing, but that the ventilator stopped working after the hospital ran out of the necessary fuel a few hours later. “Abdelaziz died immediately,” he said. He expressed concern for his wife, who had been surviving on legumes and canned food, emphasizing their ongoing struggle to access adequate nourishment.
• The father of newborn twin girls said that one of his babies, Joud, died at Kamal Adwan hospital on March 2 after suffering from malnutrition, eight days after she was born. He said that he struggled to feed his family prior to the girls’ birth, but that they only had bread to eat, without meat or protein. He said that after the twins’ birth, his wife could not produce milk to breastfeed the girls and that store-bought milk was scarce. He described Joud’s deteriorating condition, saying that her “limbs became very cold, and she was breathing very slowly.” His mother-in-law accompanied Joud to the hospital, where she later passed away. The father expressed concern for the health of the surviving twin.
• Fadi, a 6-year-old boy from al-Nasser neighborhood in Gaza City, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes damage to the lungs. Fadi’s mother said that because of the Israeli blockade, she struggled to obtain the necessary medication and provide adequate nourishment. By mid-January, Fadi’s health had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer walk, prompting his hospitalization. “Fadi weighed 30 kilograms [about 66 pounds] before the war, now he is 12 [about 26 pounds],” she said. Fadi was evacuated from Kamal Adwan hospital on March 23 and was receiving treatment at a hospital in Cairo, a relative said on March 28.
• Wissam Hammad, the uncle of 5-year-old Muhammad, who has cerebral palsy and is lactose and gluten-intolerant and can only eat blended food, had great difficulties in securing food for him:

Most of his food should be fruit and vegetables, which is what I try to buy. But all I can find and afford are oranges. The problem is that he cannot chew, so we need to break down the food for him. Everything is very expensive.

• Dr. Ahmed Shahin, a pediatrician, said that before he could leave Gaza on November 16, Osman, his 14-year-old son with cerebral palsy, who uses a gastrostomy feeding tube, had lost seven kilograms (about 15 pounds) since the beginning of the hostilities because they lacked access to both the specific food he needed—such as vegetables—and electricity to blend his food.

Obstacles to Aid Delivery

Ongoing Israeli bombardment and ground operations, lack of security assurances from Israel, widespread infrastructure damage, and communications disruptions make it difficult to distribute the little aid that does get into Gaza. Humanitarian organizations have reported that Israeli forces have attacked their aid convoys and workers. Israeli forces have also shot at and shelled people congregating to collect aid, killing and injuring hundreds.

An Israeli government spokesperson stated on March 18 that aid entering Gaza faced no limits apart from security concerns. Other officials have blamed the UN for distribution delays and accused Hamas of aid diversion or the Gaza police of failing to secure convoys. On March 29, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s body governing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, disputed the March 18 UN-supported humanitarian report warning of an imminent famine, and said that it “does not reflect the full situation.” COGAT denied that the Israeli government was purposely starving Gaza’s civilian population. Human Rights Watch wrote to COGAT on April 2 seeking comment on our findings, but did not receive a response as of the time of publication.

However, OCHA reported on April 8 that only one of four food aid missions that require coordination in Gaza were facilitated by Israeli authorities in March. Only nine World Food Programme aid shipments have made it to the north since January 1, the most recent of which was 18 truckloads on March 17. The World Food Programme said at least 300 trucks are needed every day for the north alone.

The United States has resorted to airdropping food into Gaza and plans to build a floating pier at sea to deliver aid, a proposal criticized by 26 nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, as “risky, expensive, and ineffective.” UN Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick has stressed that road transport is the only viable solution for increasing aid flow.

The restrictions on aid delivery make accessing food for people requiring a specific diet particularly difficult. Several representatives of humanitarian organizations said that they have been unable to provide food for children on special diets or to reach them. A Palestine Children’s Relief Fund staff member said they could only provide baby formula and could not respond to the needs of children with specific diet requirements. Medical Aid for Palestine said the special food items they had in storage ran out quickly, and since then, they have been unable to find and provide those in need with specialized food items:

Assistance is barely coming in: a quarter of the population is at risk of famine. Under these circumstances, people with disabilities and [people in vulnerable situations] suffer the most. When you speak about food, it’s hard to support people who need a specific diet and medical assistance.

Following an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza on April 1, 2024, which hit three marked vehicles from the international food organization World Central Kitchen and killed seven aid workers from several countries, Cyprus announced that ships carrying around 240 tons of aid for Gaza would turn back. World Central Kitchen, Project Hope, and ANERA, all providers of food aid, suspended their Gaza operations in light of the attack, and the United Arab Emirates paused its involvement in a maritime aid corridor.

Via Human Rights Watch

Some 70% of people in Gaza are forced to drink contaminated water or water with too much salt in it, which is a health hazard, according to Doctors without Borders (MSF). Although each person needs about 3 liters a day of drinking water, and needs four times that for hygiene and other purposes, entire families are getting only 3 liters a day, according to MSf. There is an estimated one toilet for every 500 people.

There is a severe risk of a massive spike in infant mortality from dirty water, not to mention malnutrition from insufficient food being allowed into the Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on a seldom-considered issue concerning the Israeli assault on the civilians of Gaza, which is the water and sanitation catastrophe. The Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu forced over a million Palestinians of Gaza into the far south of the Strip, Rafah, which is only 20% of its land area. Although the Israelis said that this zone would be safe for noncombatants, they have been bombing it in recent days and say they will invade it. Some two-thirds of the Palestinians so far ethnically cleansed from their homes in the north and center of the Strip have congregated in Rafah.

Although most press reporting has considered mainly the deaths of Palestinian civilians from Israeli bombardment, which have risen to over 27,000, some 70% of them women and children, the deaths from malnutrition and dirty water, i.e. from poor sanitation, have not been reported with the same clarity. Israel has destroyed the Gaza hospital system on the phony pretext that medical complexes are “power centers” and sites of militant Hamas activity. There is no compelling evidence that this narrative is true, and in some instances it has been debunked by US newspapers of record.

Hosny Muhannad, spokesman for the Gaza Municipality, explained to al-Arabi al-Jadid that “the scorched earth policy followed by the [Israeli] occupation [government] during its aggression against the Gaza Strip led to the cessation of many basic service sectors, including the work of municipalities, including repairing main and secondary roads, rainwater drainage, and wastewater drainage from the streets.”

The ground water in Gaza is heavily polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Because of climate change and the rising Mediterranean, salt water has leaked into the aquifer. Only 4% of ground water in Gaza is believed by international health experts to be potable.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Gaza’s water crisis: Destruction and desperation”

Clean water came from three desalinization plants, but the Israelis closed them after October 7 and only restored their production after severe pressure from the Biden administration. However, they deliver water through pipelines. Many of the pipelines don’t work because there is not enough fuel to operate their pumps. Other pipelines have been broken by intensive Israeli bombing.

Neither the some 150,000 remaining Palestinians in North Gaza nor the 1.4 million crowded into Gaza have clean water and sanitation. All 2.25 million Palestinians in Gaza need assistance in these areas.

The UN reports, “Currently only 5.7 per cent of water is being produced from all the water sources in Gaza, compared to pre-war production levels. Safe drinking water and water for domestic use, including personal hygiene, remains very limited.”

There had been 284 groundwater wells. As noted, the water they yielded was problematic. It has a high salt content, which can cause dehydration, and it is often polluted. In ordinary times people could boil it, but people living in tents and shelters without sufficient fuel cannot reliably boil their water. Only 17% of the wells are operating. Some 39 were destroyed by Israeli bombing, and 93 have been damaged.

Needless to say, Gaza City, Rafah and other municipalities cannot run wastewater treatment centers in the midst of this war, in which Israeli pilots and tank commanders have deliberately targeted civilian buildings and infrastructure. None of the wastewater treatment systems are operative. They have either been damaged by bombing, or don’t have enough fuel. There isn’t enough power for solid waste management.

Muhannad told Al-Arabi al-Jadid, “the repeated Israeli targeting of streets and intersections, and the repeated attacks on the already exhausted infrastructure, which caused great destruction in it and hindered its ability to deal with weather depressions and rainwater, which have become traffic obstacles for private vehicles, ambulances, and civil defense”

The bombed out streets are pockmarked so rain water and sewage is standing in these holes.

Gaza is afloat in piss and shit. That is a cholera and hepatitis epidemic waiting to happen.

Infants and toddlers are extremely vulnerable to dehydration from diarrhea, and there is almost certainly an epidemic of dead babies as a result of these unsanitary conditions. Although bombing has killed perhaps 8,000 children (probably many more), the lack of water and lack of clean water will potentially kill many thousands more.

It should be remembered that one reason given by al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks was that US policy in Iraq in the 1990s was to deny the country chlorine imports for water purification, resulting in thousands of deaths of infants.

OCHA notes, “Two out of out of three desalination plans are partially operating: the Middle Area plant produces an average of 750 cubic metres per day and is distributed via water trucking and the South Gaza desalination plant produces 1,700 cubic metres per day; around 600 cubic metres are distributed via water trucking and 1,100 cubic metres via the water network. The UAE’s small desalination plant located on the Egyptian side of Rafah, operates at full capacity, providing 2,400 cubic metres per day, following the construction of a 3-kilometre transmission line.”

That is 4,850 cubic meters of water per day, or 4,850,000 liters. Each individual needs on the order of 12 liters per day of water for drinking, food, hygiene and cooking purposes, according to the World Health Organization. The 2.2 million Palestinians therefore need about 26.4 million liters a day of water. They are only getting 18% of that from the desalinization plants, assuming it can be distributed to them, which is the only really potable water to be had.

h/t WHO .

The groundwater is dirty. Some refugees are reduced to cupping their hands amidst the sewage in the streets and drinking from it.

The reason I question whether the water from the remaining desalinization plants is even being reliably distributed is that OCHA says this: “Mekorot Connections: Two of the three water pipelines are not functioning (the Mentar pipeline since the beginning of the conflict, and the Bani Suhaila pipeline since 18 December. The Bani Saeed pipeline is functioning, but is currently producing 6,000 cubic metres per day, which is only 42 per cent of its full capacity. Plans are in place to repair the Bani Suheila pipeline, but there are challenges for safe access, communication, and coordination of repair activities.”

OCHA notes anecdotal reports from aid workers and medical personnel of a rise of hepatitis A cases in Gaza.

Since the building materials for constructing toilets and repairing the sewage system are considered dual use by the Israeli authorities (i.e. they could be used by Hamas for its own infrastructure), they are not being let in at the requisite rate. UNICEF tried to construct 80 family latrines this week. But “the sanitation coverage remains very low. WASH partners continue to construct family latrines, but the lack of cement, wood and other construction materials slows down the progress.”

Finally, OCHA says, “The crisis is exacerbated by a fuel shortage, hindering sewage station operation and leading to environmental and public health concerns. The situation is worsened by continuous restricted access to essential sanitation supplies and services in Gaza.”

OCHA adds that these killings brought deaths to 23,968 and injuries to 60,000 since October 7.

There is also a key bullet point on their infographic that floored me. OCHA says that the Israeli campaign has left 378,000 people at catastrophic phase 5 levels of starvation.

US AID explains that Phase 5 levels of starvation indicate that “acute malnutrition levels exceed 30 percent, and more than 2 per 1,000 people are dying each day.”

Given that 378,000 people are being categorized by the UN as at phase 5, this definition suggests that 756 Palestinians in Gaza are dying of hunger each day, which comes to a projected 22,680 deaths from starvation over the next month.

Since half of the people in Gaza are minors, that would be roughly 11,000 children murdered by denial of food. These projections are inexact and contingent, but would hold true if the amount of food aid allowed into the Gaza Strip by the Israelis does not increase dramatically in the next weeks.

Breaking: Starvation has reached unprecedented levels… Thousands in western Gaza city rushed out upon hearing of a food truck's arrival, only to be fired upon by the Israeli army. #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/WTDXaL0bwQ

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) January 14, 2024

This policy is deliberate. As the South African complaint against Israel for genocide noted, “On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” The complaint also quoted Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz, who posted on X on 12 October 2023, “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”

Aljazeera English Video: “Gaza humanitarian crisis: UN warns risk of famine increasing every day”

Even the Palestinian children who don’t die of hunger will be permanently damaged by prolonged acute malnutrition, defined as an inadequate energy or protein intake. An article by Valeria Dipasquale et al. in Nutrients points out that “Acute malnutrition has been recognized as causing reduction in the numbers of neurons, synapses, dendritic arborizations, and myelinations, all of which resulting in decreased brain size. The cerebral cortex is thinned and brain growth slowed. Delays in global function, motor function, and memory have been associated with malnutrition. The effects on the developing brain may be irreversible after the age of 3–4 years.”

Yes, the fascist government of PM Binyamin Netanyahu is making war on the brains of Palestinian children, who risk cognitive impairment. The longer this starvation-siege continues, the more likely it is that the effects on small children will be irreversible.

It should also be remembered that some 94 percent of water available on a regular basis in Gaza is not potable, and so many children and adults are contracting gastrointestinal diseases and suffering from diarrhea. Infants and toddlers can easily die of dehydration in these circumstances.

Dipasquale et al. write, “Organ systems are variably impaired in acute malnutrition. Cellular immunity is affected because of atrophy of the thymus, lymph nodes, and tonsils . . . Consequently, the susceptibility to invasive infections (urinary, gastrointestinal infections, septicemia, etc.) is increased ”

It is precisely in the crowded conditions of southern Gaza, into which the Israeli government has forcibly displaced over a million people, that respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases proliferate. By starving the population, Netanyahu is virtually guaranteeing disease outbreaks. We are likely to see a massive spike in infant mortality from disease and weakened immune systems, quite apart from children dying of hunger.

These assumptions may be deeply flawed. The Houthi or Helpers of God government of northern Yemen can likely go on harassing container ships attempting to ply the waters of the Red Sea. Biden is bombing them, but the Saudis bombed them for 7 years and finally gave up on accomplishing anything that way. Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, and can’t be crippled by destroying infrastructure, since they don’t have much of it. Little unmanned aerial vehicles can be hidden and it is difficult to take out the launchers. An Israeli general once complained that he wished Hezbollah in Lebanon had larger rockets, since those would be easier to find and destroy.

Both the Houthi drone strikes on container ships and the Biden response in bombarding Yemen have spooked the shipping industry. Around 10% of world trade goes through the Suez Canal on some 17,000 ships per year. On the order of 12% of world energy supplies also are shipped through the Red Sea. So after two days of US and UK aerial strikes on Yemen, which elicited further Houthi threats, oil prices at one point hit $80 on London’s Brent exchange on Friday.

If the conflict with the Houthis heats up further, Americans could feel it at the pump. Biden should ask Jimmy Carter whether Americans forgive a president who gets involved in fruitless Middle East conflicts and causes their gasoline prices to soar.

One thing Biden could do is halt the Israeli destruction of all of Gaza, which anyway can’t destroy Hamas. The Houthis would likely settle down if the Gaza war wound down. Shooting missiles at them will just stir them up.

Moreover, Biden’s position on Gaza is deeply unpopular in his own party, and particularly among young people– a swing vote in recent years. A UC Berkeley Opinion poll reported by David Lauter and Jaweed Kalim at the LA Times finds that 55% of voters under 30 say that Israel should announce a ceasefire even if it means that Hamas remains significant in Gaza. Only 18% disagree.

NBC News from 3 weeks ago: “Poll shows Biden losing support among young voters ahead of 2024 election”

In contrast, a slight majority of voters over 65 believe that Israel should fight on until Hamas is taken down entirely, though about a third of elderly voters disagree.

According to the Pew Research Center, Barack Obama got 66% of the youth vote in 2008, and 60% of it in 2012. He outperformed Mitt Romney by 24% among those under 30.

The Center writes, “In Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania, Obama also failed to win a majority of voters 30 and older. Yet he swept all four battleground states, in part because he won majorities of 60% or more among young voters. Just as critically, young people made up as large a share of the overall electorate as they did in 2008, according to the national exit poll (19% in 2012, 18% in 2008).”

So Obama benefited from the under-30 vote in two absolutely essential ways. First, they came out to vote in large numbers, and mostly voted for him. Second, they provided the margin of victory in four swing states where Obama did not win 51% of the over-30 vote.

Candidates should not underestimate the possibility of youth apathy. Famously, the under-30 set declined to go to the polls in big numbers in 2004. They had largely turned on Bush because of the Iraq War, but they weren’t brought out to vote by enthusiasm for John Kerry. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a Democrat, lamented, “The little bastards screwed us again.”

The youth aren’t enthusiastic about Biden. At all. And the campaign to wipe Gaza off the map is one reason. In backing the odious Binyamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich in their creepy annihilation of tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children and noncombatant men, Biden doesn’t only risk becoming unpopular with the under-30 crowd but risks reducing their enthusiasm to vote. The young voters see the horrors of the Israeli campaign on Tiktok and YouTube in a way that the older set does not, since US corporate news is corrupt and distinctly pro-Israel.

The Biden team believes that the voters have nowhere to go because his opponent will be Trump. Hillary Clinton benefited from fear of Trump among youths, who voted in 2016 in numbers similar to 2012. But her percentage of the under-30 vote fell to 55%. It was only a 5% fall from Obama in 2012, but in a race where she lost some swing states by tiny margins, this youth deficit may have contributed to her defeat. The Trump boogey man was not enough– she needed to elicit the enthusiasm of the youth.

Is the administration really so convinced that they can’t be Kerry-ized or Carterized? Doing and saying deeply unpopular things that anger key parts of your base just because you think the rival candidate is unelectable is a hell of a gamble. Ask Mrs. Clinton.

Despite a Difficult Year, Children’s Rights Made Progress

( Middle East Monitor ) – Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a symptom or syndrome that occurs after seeing, directly experiencing or hearing a stressful and traumatic factor (trauma) that can lead to the death of the affected person. One of its factors is a person’s direct experience of the violent death of a family member or close friend. This disorder may also occur as a result of repeated exposure to the horrific details of an incident (trauma); likewise, police officers who are exposed to the details of criminal cases.

The injured person feels fear and helplessness in relation to these experiences, and often shows disturbed and restless behaviour. War and killings also cause trauma to survivors. Trauma is a psychological term that comes from the Greek word meaning wound and is known as a psychological injury. This occurs after being in a very stressful or uncomfortable situation. Being in such a situation makes you think that you have no security and that you are always in danger. As such, you feel helpless and constantly anxious.

The destructive war of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continues with heavy bombing by fighters and the targeting of homes, hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure. International organisations and experts have said that this is a “text-book case of genocide”. At the time of writing, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 70 per cent of the victims are children and women. Worldwide demonstrations demand a ceasefire.

However, it is now important to consider the trauma inflicted on the people of Gaza; they will suffer from it for the rest of their lives, and most people, especially children, will suffer from PTSD. This could seriously jeopardise the future mental health of the Palestinians in the enclave. In this regard, three painful psychological traumas caused by the attacks of the Israeli regime against the people of this region can be mentioned in particular.

Many cannot be sure if their loved ones are safe or not, or even still alive

For a start, there is the crisis of not knowing the whereabouts and fate of relatives. In a month of war, the Israeli regime has tried to cut off internet access for Gaza, as well as telephone links. Many Palestinians have been unable to discover the whereabouts, fate and health status of their relatives, friends and acquaintances under heavy Israeli bombardment. Many cannot be sure if their loved ones are safe or not, or even still alive. To put it more simply, they are anxious that they may have lost their loved ones and they still don’t know about it. Moreover, a large number of Palestinians have been forced to move from the north to the south of Gaza. This has also caused difficulties in finding out about relatives and friends.

Then there is the exposure of Palestinian children to horrific images in Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli air and artillery attacks, which causes severe shock. This is something that even adults cannot bear, leading to anxiety and serious mental and psychological damage. They see the dead bodies of their family around them, and see themselves as helpless with an uncertain future. They do not imagine any safe place and their psychological security has been lost.

The Guardian: “A safe space for Gaza’s children: ‘They still have dreams for the future’

We have probably all seen images of parents clutching their dead child, which have gone viral on social media. The parents feel unable to be separated from their child. It is a shocking image that touches the heart of every decent human being. With more than 4,000 children killed so far, if one or both parents have survived they will face serious mental issues in the shape of deep trauma to their souls.

According to UNICEF, more than half a million children in Syria under the age of five are stunted due to chronic malnutrition. Moreover, 2.4 million children within the country and 750,000 displaced beyond its borders do not go to school as a result of their displacement. The number of children who have suffered mental and psychological injuries due to constant exposure to violence, shock and trauma has doubled. Undoubtedly, this case will apply more strongly to the people of Gaza, especially the surviving children.

The people of Gaza are Palestinians, most of them refugees or descendants of refugees who were forced to move to Gaza from other areas of historic Palestine since 1948. They have been practically held in a concentration camp and separated from their home towns and villages like a severed limb, with no way out of this situation because Israel does not allow them to exercise their legitimate right to return to their homes. As a result of this particular trauma, some people in Gaza will lose their sense of psychological security and feel threatened and helpless.

Psychological trauma can leave a person with distressing feelings, memories and anxiety that won’t go away. It can also cause numbness, disconnection and a lack of trust in others. People have to endure these severe traumas, even after the war ends, and many will definitely suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. This will have long-term negative political, economic, cultural and psychological effects, with the main consequence being a sense of the need for revenge that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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(The Conversation) – In 1903, a local mob killed 49 Jews, including several children, and raped and wounded 600 others, in the city of Kishinev, then part of the Russian Empire. These three days of violence later became known as the Kishinev pogrom.

A few days later, the Jewish-Russian poet Hayim Nahman Bialik published a Hebrew poem that every Israeli school child still knows today.

I am a scholar of the Holocaust and genocide. When thinking about the unfolding Israel-Hamas war, I am reminded of this Bialik poem, “On the Slaughter.” It laments Jewish helplessness and victimhood – and condemns apathy to violence, including the murder of children.

Bialik writes:

“And damned be he who says: Avenge!
Such vengeance, for the blood of a small child,
Satan has yet to devise.”

Hamas militants killed approximately 30 Israeli children when they attacked civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,400 people altogether. At least 20 Israeli children remain hostage in Gaza.

Today: “2 mothers share how they’re protecting their kids in Israel and Gaza”

Since Oct. 7, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 2,000 Palestinian children and more than 8,000 people overall, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza began intensifying on Oct. 28, as Israeli ground forces entered Gaza.

Both sides in this war have focused on the deaths and kidnapping of children, sharing images and videos of the children as a testament to the other side’s cruelty.

Particularly, Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli children evokes collective Jewish memories of pogroms and the Holocaust – and the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.

For Palestinians, too, the killing of their children represents both the injustice of Israeli rule and occupation, and the perceived attempt to stop Palestinians from having their own country. The collective Palestinian memory of the Nakba in 1948, when Israeli forces killed thousands of Palestinians and pushed out 750,000 people from their homes, is replete with tales of children who lost both their homeland and their parents.

A new kind of protection

Bialik ended up emigrating to what was then called Palestine in 1924, and today he is considered Israel’s national poet.

Bialik wrote a longer poem, titled “In The City of Slaughter,” in 1904, after he visited the site of the Kishinev pogrom. Bialik fumed against Jewish men for hiding, instead of protecting their wives and daughters from rape.

Bialik called for a new type of warlike Jewish manhood. If neither God nor the authorities could protect them from slaughter, Jews had to create a state of their own – and Jewish men had to learn to fight and kill.

Over the next four decades, the numbers of slaughtered Jews, including children, piled up.

In the Holocaust, Nazis and their collaborators killed an estimated 1.5 million Jewish children.

It was this kind of violence against defenseless innocents that the establishment of Israel in 1948 was supposed to prevent.

‘Never again’

Most Jews who emigrated to Israel in the late 1940s were Holocaust survivors. They had experienced precisely the kind of defenselessness that Israel said it would never allow to happen again. Their sense of vulnerability and their memory of victimization were transmitted from one generation to another.

The popular slogan “never again,” referring to the Holocaust, meant what Bialik had intended: not only the prevention of violence against Jewish people, but a new breed of tough and brave Jewish fighters, prepared to die for their new homeland.

Israel’s failure to protect its people is partially why the Oct. 7 attacks were so shocking to the Israeli public.

The Israeli military’s delayed response left people in the attacked communities feeling utter helplessness. The intentional cruelty of Hamas’ killings, often videotaped and live-streamed, reminded Israelis of past anti-Jewish violence.

Children in Gaza

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, half of the population is younger than 18.

In 2014, Israel airstrikes, coming in response to intense rocket fire from Gaza, killed over 500 Palestinian children. The Israeli government described the children’s deaths as unfortunate, but unavoidable. The reasoning is that bombing presumed Hamas targets was much less risky and costly, in terms of Israeli lives, than a ground incursion into Gaza.

Since Oct. 7, Israel has carried out unprecedentedly massive aerial bombardments of Gaza.

NBC News: “‘This is increasingly becoming a children’s crisis’ in Gaza: UNICEF spokesperson ”

The images of dead and mutilated Palestinian children have served to mute some people’s criticism of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis – and to heighten other people’s sense of Palestinian innocence and Israeli brutality.

There are two major difference between this round of killing and previous ones, most prominently in 2014.

First, this time the violence began with the slaughter of over 1,400 Israelis.

Second, Israel’s current bombing campaign has killed more Palestinians, including children, than at any other time in the past.

Hamas’ slaughter of Jewish children is now being reciprocated by what the Israel Defense Forces says are unintended – but certain – killings of even larger numbers of Palestinian children.

Children are the ultimate victims

Both sides in the Israel-Hamas war are now flaunting and weaponizing their child victims to support their political causes.

For the Israelis and their supporters, the murder and kidnapping of children shows the inhumanity of Hamas and its supporters – and fuels calls for violent retribution.

For Palestinians and their supporters, Israel’s killing of even more children in Gaza helps wipe away Hamas’ crimes and exposes Israel’s alleged intent to kill all Palestinians.

Many people have flooded social media with images and videos of killed Palestinian and Israeli children, as well as bloody crime scenes where they were killed.

People have plastered posters of kidnapped Israeli children across the streets in American and European cities – and have videotaped those who tear them down.

But in Israel, at least, the media has mostly avoided showing images of both Jewish and Palestinian child victims. Showing kidnapped or killed Israeli children is considered demoralizing, and showing killed Palestinian children is considered to be enemy propaganda. In Gaza, people have been photographed and recorded carrying and mourning dead children, wrapped in blood-stained white cloth.

Is this Satan’s vengeance for the violence of men? In his deepest hour of despair, Bialik never hoped for more violence as a response to a massacre. As he wrote 120 years ago:

“If there is justice – May it appear at once!
But if it appears
Only after I had been eradicated under the sky –
May its throne be toppled forever!
And may Heaven rot in everlasting evil.”

Omer Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When humans embrace the dehumanization of others, we release our ugliest, most destructive selves. Dehumanization is a perverse force that propagates violence and justifies the lust for war and its atrocities.

On August 6, 1945, Sakue Shimohira was 10 years old when an atomic blast obliterated her home in Hiroshima, Japan, burning her mother into an unrecognizable block of ash. Afterward, the only feature that could identify her was a single gold tooth.

Sakue struggled to survive in Hiroshima’s post-apocalyptic, postwar landscape, while her older sister soon fell into despair and threw herself in front of a train. When the American soldiers of the occupying army arrived, Sakue remembered that they constructed an airstrip in front of the shack where she was living. “There were skeletons all over the area,” she said, “so when they built the airstrip, the bones were crushed into dust.”

The American soldiers handed out chewing gum and chocolate to orphans like her. Some of the Japanese children quickly learned how to say “hello” in English, but Sakue confronted the soldiers in her native Japanese. “Why?” she insisted. “Why did you kill my family? Why did they deserve to die?” She added, “Of course, they didn’t understand Japanese. They just smiled at me. ‘Give them back to me!’ I shouted.”

Recalling such memories so many decades later, Sakue’s face still reveals how that historically disastrous bombing blotted out her inner light. As she put it, “I carried this pain that I couldn’t talk about. Even today, I can’t say my sister’s name aloud. It hurts too much.”

Dehumanization and People Living Under the Mushroom Cloud

In recent years, I’ve traveled to Japan numerous times with university students to study the legacy of the first and only use of atomic weapons as World War II ended. In that way, my students and I became moral witnesses to the consequences of the terror for people under those mushroom clouds that shattered, incinerated, and flattened the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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But in my own country, the United States, the continuing specter of nuclear catastrophe generally fails to pierce a commonplace apathy toward such weaponry. Instead, most Americans hold war’s ultimate horror at arm’s length, while rationalizing the way our country and so many others on this planet all too regularly lurch into such conflicts as the only right and just way to address human greed, tyranny, and fear.

Almost 80 years after those first atomic blasts, Americans have yet to seriously reckon with how easily we learned to rationalize such structural violence. Meanwhile, our country continues to pour endless money into the wasteful creation, stockpiling, maintenance, and now the “modernization” of those weapons of mass, even global, destruction. In his poignant diagnosis, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton concluded that we developed a deep “psychic numbing,” while becoming detached and morally disengaged from the growing possibility that such weaponry could, in the end, create a “nuclear winter” and destroy humanity.     

In Japan, my students and I have had the distinct privilege of meeting atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha as they are known there. One hibakusha, an elderly, somewhat stern man, told us that he was outside of the city of Nagasaki with his brother when the second bomb exploded. The two boys rushed into the city to search for their father and finally found his body near his workplace, burned (like Sakue’s mother) almost beyond recognition.

We listened as his testimony viscerally evoked that horror from so long ago as if it had only taken place days earlier. He remembered how, as a child, when he tried to prepare the body for burial, he touched his father’s head and the skull crumbled beneath his fingers, while parts of the brain oozed into his hands.

In those precious moments in Japan when my students and I heard the stories of hibakusha, we could also ask questions. “Do you hate Americans?” the students often asked. “What kind of assistance was there for you and other hibakusha in the terrible aftermath of months and years after the war?” And we would thank them for sharing their painful and invaluable stories with us, but it never felt like enough. So many of them have a single request: that we take their words back to the United States with us and share them with others here.

During our conversation with that elderly man in Nagasaki, one moment was particularly unforgettable. Despite the harsh struggle and war-time brutalization he endured as a child, the elder we now experienced was a soul of deep reflection and humane philosophical searching. During the question-and-answer period following his testimony, he told us about his life-long struggle to understand what had happened to him and why. He mentioned a book that helped him better grasp how the world arrived at such a place of inhumanity and violence, historian John Dower’s award-winning history, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.

“I know that book!” I blurted out. He stared at me, and I stared back. Dower’s history had also deeply impacted my life and thought, so I felt a sudden powerful connection with that hibakusha and was simultaneously rendered speechless after my outburst, overwhelmed and amazed by the journey that man had taken in his life to meet me then and there.

Two Truths About War and Dehumanization

Dower’s investigation helped me better understand two truths about violence. First, dehumanization always precedes and paves the way for the horrors of war. Human beings won’t kill other humans if they truly believe their lives are as worthy as their own. In his book, Dower vividly exposes the dehumanizing, racist imagery that enveloped both the United States and Japan in the early 1940s. The Japanese were portrayed here as “vermin” and “apes,” “inferior men and women,” “primitive and childish” creatures. They were “the Yellow Peril” or “the menacing Asian horde.” Versions of such tropes of dehumanization lubricated the eruption of violence that followed and have emerged repeatedly in human history. 

And it wasn’t just the Americans. Japanese cartoons from the era depicted Westerners as a kind of vermin like lice, caricatured President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a demon, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and FDR as “debauched ogres” looming over Mount Fuji, a sacred symbol of Japan. American cartoons typically drew Japanese bodies in bright yellow.

I remember my mother, who grew up in California during that war, remarking on a Japanese flag I brought home from one of my trips. “That was such a symbol of hatred when I was a child,” she told me. And such dehumanization paved the way for devastating violence as the only possible solution. Both sides plummeted into “victimage rhetoric” that portrayed the “enemy” as barbaric, irrational, and irredeemably violent, while “we” were moral, rational, and sensible. Tragically, this way of thinking justified the horrors to come. Given such an enemy, only through colossal destruction could we save the world, or so people came to think.

Dower’s book reveals a second truth about violence as well: dehumanization does more than just enable war. It also generates an annihilating energy all its own through which the atrocity-laden destruction of war multiplies exponentially. In the case of the Pacific front in World War II, violence begat ever greater violence and the hunger for it grew ever deeper and more insatiable until there was a veritable “frenzy of violence” on both sides in the final year of that war. More than half of all American deaths occurred in that single year and that was when the kamikaze, or suicide plane, became “the consummate symbol of the pure spirit of the Japanese” to “turn back the demonic onslaught.”

Meanwhile, the Americans abandoned precision bombing and initiated the full-scale firebombing of Japanese cities. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 burned to death more than 100,000 civilians in a single night. More than 60 cities were similarly targeted, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese in a final paroxysm of violence that preceded Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today’s Escalation of the Drumbeats of Dehumanization

In these terrible recent days, we again can hear the drumbeats of dehumanization in Ukraine, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, as grief explodes in the face of unimaginable violence, loss, injury, and the sort of pain that rips at the very fabric of our world. Human beings are once again being described as “animals.” The other side is pure “evil.” The only remedy for such a conflict, people imagine, is to wipe the enemy out and achieve “full victory.” Indescribable destructive force against the other is rationalized as necessary because of the terrible violence wreaked on us.

But we won’t find our way out of such a morass of violence through more of the same, or through the further dehumanization of people we call our enemy. In the end, dehumanization destroys us, too, even if we don’t realize it. The perennial question facing the world is this: Is there a way for us to move toward a greater rehumanization?

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In reality, we don’t have to accept psychic numbing or endless dehumanization and violence as the only possible responses to our broken world. We can glimpse a different way forward when we turn our attention to people whose experiences of horrific violence, amazingly enough, didn’t destroy them. Instead, their awareness was crystalized, leaving them with so much to share with the rest of us about the deep, irreplaceable importance of every human being and the immeasurable value of our fragile planet.

Along with the remarkable hibakusha I’ve been privileged to meet, I also have come to know U.S. veterans of war with the same astonishing kinds of awareness. I wrote a book about them and their struggles to remain human in a world all too saturated with violence titled And Then Your Soul is Gone: Moral Injury and U.S. War Culture.

Imagining a Different Veterans Day

As Veterans Day approaches, I’m thinking about those veterans I respect so dearly who have themselves come through such crucibles of horror. Many live with the deep despair that accompanies military moral injuries. Yet they refuse to give up on life, hope, and the belief that there could be a different way forward. They remind me of Sakue who, in the end, offered this reflection: “There are two kinds of courage.  One type of courage is the courage to die. I chose the courage to live.”

American veteran and former Iraq War medic Jenny Pacanowski witnessed that conflict’s calamitous effects on Iraqi children. She shared her agony with a military chaplain, asking him, “Why would God do this to the children of Iraq, to the soldiers, to the medics who only want to bring healing?” The chaplain responded, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Such a facile response made her deeply angry. It was as though her soul could no longer occupy her physical body and left her to float above it, connected by only the most fragile tether, as she screamed in anger and sorrow. That was close to 20 years ago. As she told me, “To truly reintegrate, and invite my soul back into my body, I needed to tell my story in a secure space.” Today, Jenny is like a comet blazing a trail to support the peace-building activities of women veterans.

Recently, I was introduced to the poetry of Vietnam War veteran Doug Rawlings. He was in his early twenties when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam. Returning to the United States, like so many others, he was “confused, angry, and lost.” But he’s been writing poetry for more than 50 years and, in his most recent collection, he explains, “Most of us do not want to be vulnerable, especially men, and, exponentially, veterans. However, the vulnerability in the poet invites vulnerability in the reader/listener.”

One of Rawlings’ poems speaks to me strongly in this painful moment on our planet. Near the U.S. Army base at Long Binh in what was then South Vietnam, there was “a beautiful if dilapidated French villa.” During the war, it was repurposed as an orphanage. A hand-painted sign in front of it read in English: “Please don’t shoot the orphans.” 

In response to that memory, Rawlings wrote:

“Imagine all the interstates in and out of our cities
Clogged with cars brought to a standstill by
‘Please don’t shoot the orphans’ plastered on placards

Their drivers stumbling out of their seats
Onto the median strips crisscrossing this land
Of the mobile and free to question

If not just for a minute
How their own busy lives can possibly be
Intertwined with the lives of orphans

Their hearts in their mouths when they realize

The hands on their steering wheels
The fingers dancing across their radio dials

Hold the answer to those questions”

The answer is directly in front of us if only we would pay attention. Please don’t kidnap, maim, starve, or deny water, electricity, or healthcare to children anywhere. Don’t separate them from their parents, drown, bomb, rape, burn, imprison, shoot, bury in rubble, use as human shields, or kill the children. Please, do not find ways to justify such horrors. Instead, look them squarely in the eye and decide that you will demand an alternative.

If we are to remain human on this planet in this devastating moment, there is — or at least, should be — no other way. 

Copyright 2023 Kelly Denton-Borhaug

Via Tomdispatch.com

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The wording in Article IX, Section 1, of Montana’s constitution couldn’t be clearer: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” Accordingly, in April, a district court judge in Yellowstone County voided a permit for a natural-gas-fired power plant under construction there. Over its lifetime, it would have released an estimated 23 million tons of planet-roasting carbon dioxide and that, ruled the judge, was incompatible with a “clean and healthful environment” in Montana or, for that matter, anywhere else.

Within a week, the state legislature had voted to reinforce a 2011 law barring the consideration of climate change in policymaking and so allowing the construction of the power plant to resume. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. Last month, the lawmakers were slapped down a second time when another district judge ruled in favor of a group of 16 youthful Montanans in a suit filed in 2020 seeking to strike down that very 2011 anti-climate legislation.

In her ruling, Judge Kathy Seeley wrote, “Montana’s climate, environment, and natural resources are unconstitutionally degraded and depleted due to the current atmospheric concentration of [greenhouse gases] and climate change.” She added that “every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.” The state, she made it abundantly clear, is obligated to correct such a situation.

The plaintiffs, who were all in their teens or younger when their suit, Held v. Montana, was filed three years ago, are represented by a nonprofit group, Our Children’s Trust. Since 2011, it has been pursuing climate action on behalf of this country’s youth in the courts of all 50 states. The Montana case was simply the first to go to trial. The second, a climate case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, is scheduled to begin next summer. 

Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican serving in the House of Representatives, responded to the Held v. Montana decision with the worst sort of condescending bluster. “This is not a school project,” he insisted. “It’s a courtroom… Judge Seeley did a huge disservice to the courts and to these youths by allowing them to be used as pawns in the Left’s poorly thought-out plan to ruin our power grid and compromise our national security in the name of their Green New Fantasy.”

The only fantasy, however, was Rosendale’s characterization of the proceedings. The plaintiffs’ case was overwhelmingly persuasive, with extensive testimony from climate and pediatric health experts showing that people younger than 25 were going to be especially vulnerable to the many impacts climate change is going to have on physical and psychological health. In her ruling, Seeley summarized some of the damages to which the plaintiffs had testified. 

All of the young people in the suit were afflicted with allergies and asthma (three especially severely) and had suffered significant health problems thanks to the unavoidable inhalation of smoke from North America’s ever-increasing wildfires. Much of that damage had occurred during Montana’s horrendous fire seasons of 2017 (when more than 2,400 fires burned across 1.4 million acres of the state) and 2021 (when more than 2,500 fires burned almost 1 million more), followed, of course, by the smoke from the devastating and ongoing Canadian wildfires of this spring and summer.  

Three Indigenous plaintiffs testified that climate disruption has already ensured that their traditional sources of food and medicinal plants would become ever scarcer. As a result, it is preventing them from taking part in their usual cultural practices, including ones involving increasingly scarce snow. As the lawsuit put it, the changing planet has “disrupted tribal spiritual practices and longstanding rhythms of tribal life by changing the timing of natural events like bird migration.”

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Testimony also showed that the extreme heat of recent summers, only expected to grow more severe in the coming years, is threatening the health of the plaintiffs, all of whom engage in extensive outdoor work or recreation. Those who participate in competitive sports have seen their training severely curtailed by summer heat (and for one of them, a Nordic skier, by lack of winter snow). The plaintiffs’ ability to hunt and fish, especially important in Montana, is being dramatically limited by drought and wildfire.

Some of the plaintiffs testified that increasing damage from storms, flooding, wildfires, and drought will make it ever more difficult, if not impossible, to keep their family’s property intact for coming generations. And backed by the testimony of several experts, the young plaintiffs explained how the increasing chaos brought on by climate change had left them with feelings of deep distress, despair, and loss.

Congressman Rosendale undoubtedly read none of their testimony, which made it so much easier for him to callously dismiss their plight, while accusing them of being witless “pawns” of far greater forces. How, after all, could anyone have been left unmoved by the poignant testimony of 20-year-old Olivia Vesovich? She told the court that, given the severe and ever worsening impact of climate change, she “would not want to make a child endure that. It is one of the greatest sadnesses of my life — and my family is one of the most important parts of my life — that I may not be starting a family of my own. It breaks my heart, it really does.”

Plaintiffs from the Future

From the 1990s through the first two decades of this century, academic discussion of “intergenerational climate justice” weighed the interests of the “current generation” that may or may not do what’s needed to end greenhouse gas emissions against “future generations” lacking any say in the matter. They will nonetheless suffer its increasingly severe consequences. (Of course, those of us in privileged societies have also largely ignored the billions of people globally with no say in the matter and so the functional equivalents of those “future generations.”)

Now, with heat waves, megafires, increasingly severe freak storms, and floods striking ever more often, those at-risk future generations are finally beginning to show up, well ahead of schedule. That, after all, is just what the Held v. Montana plaintiffs are, as are the young Global South activists who shook up the most recent world climate summits by refusing to accept the selling-out of their future.

Though it’s cited often enough in relation to climate change, there’s nothing magical about the year 2050. It’s just a nice, round, midcentury number. That’s undoubtedly why world climate negotiators have chosen it as the target year for national pledges to drive greenhouse gas emissions down to zero.

Come 2050, the Montana plaintiffs will only be in their thirties and forties. By that time, they should know whether the world acted boldly enough in the 2020s to turn the climate emergency around.

In court, the young plaintiffs expressed deep concern not only for their own health and well-being but for those of their potential children and grandchildren. What kind of future will they and their kids face? For one thing, those still living in Montana in 2050 can expect to deal with wildfire and smoke disasters far worse than the ones endured in 2017, 2021, or 2023. Predictions are that, without drastic action, between 2041 and 2070, much of Montana will see a 600% increase in the incidence of “very large wildfires” — those covering 20 square miles or more.

The fire risk will have been raised largely by intensifying global heat. Consider this warning from U.S. government scientists, should the world economy carry on with business-as-usual in the coming decades:

“[A] teenager in eastern Montana in 2075 might experience maximum summer temperatures that his or her grandparents would have had to travel to the Mojave Desert to see, [while] a child born in southern Texas in 2060 might experience as much as 6 weeks per summer when maximum temperatures are hotter than his or her grandparents experienced just once per year. And in this same future, a child in the southeastern United States can expect to spend more than half of his or her summer experiencing heat waves that would have occurred only 3 days per year for his or her grandparents.”

Unless there are steep reductions in global carbon emissions, Montana will be eternally burning, while much of the country to the south and east grows even hotter and more unbearably humid. So, should young Montanans migrate north to Canada? At one time, that seemed like a viable climate escape route. But in 2023, with a large share of the U.S. population inhaling smoke from the extraordinarily vast and intense wildfires burning across that country, month after month, northward migration could just be a jump from the frying pan into the all-too-literal fire.

A Constitutional Right to a Future

Such dire forecasts are based on worst-case “business-as-usual” scenarios, and that’s important. After all, catastrophe is not inevitable. If today’s youth find themselves facing such nightmares in the 2050s, it will be because our nation and the rest of the world didn’t act in a necessary fashion in this decade. Such conditions can indeed be prevented, but only if the climate struggle intensifies.

When the Montana 16 filed their suit in 2020, only two of them were old enough to vote in that fall’s election. But as Judge Seeley ruled, they all had standing to challenge the fossil-fuel juggernaut in a court of law. And so far, they’re winning.

Amber Polk, assistant professor of law at Florida International University, focuses her studies on new legal claims by the environmental rights movement. She recently wrote a short history of “green amendments” — constitutional provisions like the section of Article IX on which Held v. Montana relied. Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania all added such provisions to their state constitutions in the 1970s, as environmentalism was surging. But in the 1980s and 1990s, legal cases based on green amendments foundered until, in 1999, the Supreme Court of — you guessed it! — Montana struck down laws that permitted water pollution, basing their decision on the constitutional “right” of state residents “to a clean and healthful environment.”

Fourteen years later, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court relied on a similar green amendment to strike down a law permitting hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) statewide. Until Held v. Montana, though, green amendments had not been used to challenge laws explicitly affecting climate policy. Count on one thing, however: they will be widely tested in the coming years (though a conservative, anything-but-environmentalist Supreme Court could prove a problem in wielding them).

The Montana case, writes Polk,

“sets a groundbreaking precedent for climate litigation and demonstrates a new way in which green amendments can be invoked to elicit environmental change. It suggests that in other states with green amendments, state laws cannot forbid the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and their climate impact during environmental review… In the states that have green amendments, climate advocates will certainly rely on the Montana youth case as they challenge state laws that promote climate change.

And expect ever more challenges in places where such green amendments exist. New York typically passed one last year and 13 other states — some red like Montana, some blue, some purple — are considering them, according to Polk.

Unfortunately, only limited reductions of greenhouse gases can be achieved via state-by-state challenges to bad laws. Congressional action would be needed to, for example, achieve the most essential policy of all: a rapid, mandatory phase-out of oil, natural gas, and coal nationwide. You would, however, need a very different Congress to have a hope in hell of passing such a bill. Still, such a phase-out is a goal of Juliana v. United States, another youth climate lawsuit, originally filed in federal court in 2015 and still pending after eight long years.

In that case, 21 plaintiffs, aged seven to 19 (at the time of its filing) and backed by Our Children’s Trust, allege that the federal government has permitted the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels despite knowing that they cause “dangerous concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere and a dangerous climate system, and irreversible harm to the natural systems critical to Plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty, and property.” These activities, it adds, “unconstitutionally favor the present, temporary economic benefits of certain citizens, especially corporations, over Plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty, and property.”

In Juliana, the youthful plaintiffs are asking the courts to order the federal government to take wide-ranging, ambitious climate action, including “to prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO₂.”

Three administrations — Obama’s, Trump’s, and now Biden’s — have vigorously fought back against the youths’ case and, in 2021, it appeared doomed when an appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing. This summer, however, Juliana came back from the dead when a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial after amending their filing. It remains in limbo, however, thanks to continued fierce opposition from President Biden’s Department of Justice. As CNN reported, the DOJ “has argued there is no federal public trust doctrine that creates a right for a stable climate system for U.S. citizens.”

Such a refusal to take climate disruption seriously came even as the president was touring the country and bragging about energy and electric-vehicle projects related to the climate provisions in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Biden, it seems, is happy to take credit for limited green actions, but isn’t faintly ready to plan for truly phasing out fossil fuels and so keeping the world livable through this century and beyond. So, give some credit to the young who are pushing him, the courts, and Congress to ensure that they have a future worth living for. In truth, nothing matters more than that.

Copyright 2023 Stan Cox

Via Tomdispatch.com