With the recent detection of Poliovirus in the sewage water that flows freely throughout the Gaza Strip, it is time to address the fact that Israeli government has deliberately manufactured the conditions for the breakout of disease and infection amongst vulnerable Palestinians, aimed at inflicting torment and mass murder.
Labelled a “ticking time bomb“, the discovery of Poliovirus in Gaza’s sewage water threatens thousands that are now at risk of contracting the virus which can cause life-long paralysis. The detection was made through a joint effort conducted by UNICEF and the Gaza Health Ministry. “Normally if you have a case of polio, you’re going to isolate them, you’re going to make sure that they use a bathroom that nobody else uses, make sure that they’re not in close proximity to other people, [but] that’s impossible,” Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care physician, told Al-Jazeera. While the Israeli military responded by stating that they had instructed the inoculation of invading soldiers, due to an earlier detection they had made of Poliovirus in sewage.
Israel’s Intent To Manufacture Epidemics In Gaza
Right after the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out “worrying trends” in the spread of disease throughout the Gaza Strip, in early November of last year, retired Major General Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, publicly advocated in favor of allowing the spread of epidemics in Gaza in order to aid the war effort. Eiland, who is a well known and respected former senior Israeli official, wrote that “the international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics,” going on to state that “We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.”
Despite his prominence, it could be argued that this does not prove intent on part of the current Israeli administration to manufacture conditions to encourage epidemics. Israel’s current Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, posted a photo of the article on his X [formerly Twitter] account and wrote “I agree with every word of Giora Eiland in this column.” Although Smotrich is often portrayed as a fringe radical, he is an active minister in the Israeli government and his Religious Zionism bloc holds the second amount of seats of any Party forming the current Israeli coalition.
On top of this, countless genocidal statements issued in the wake of the ongoing war were indicative of the direction of Israel’s assault on Gaza from the beginning. This is partly why the South African case presented at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of committing Genocide against the people of Gaza, was so convincing to the court’s judges. At this point, the World Court has ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, so working from this reality alone is enough to consider that one of the weapons of war would be disease.
After all, Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, had infamously stated that a “comprehensive siege” is being imposed upon the Gaza Strip, asserting that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Later, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would call the Palestinians Amalek, invoking the biblical story in which God commands the slaughter of all men, women, children and even livestock of the Amalekites.
Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, who has partial collaborative powers over a portion of the West Bank, has also accused the Israelis of “deliberately causing thirst, spreading diseases and epidemics among them, especially with the malfunctioning of sewage systems and the flooding of wastewater.”
How Israel Deliberately Spreads Disease Throughout Gaza
The idea that Gaza could be suddenly become overwhelmed with disease is false, it already is. Statistics published by the Gaza Media Office at the beginning of last month, indicated that “1,477,748 Palestinian displaced individuals have contracted infectious diseases due to displacement from various areas in the Gaza Strip”, which means that roughly 75% of the some 2 million internally displaced refugees have contracted an infectious disease. According to CARE, between October 2023 and May 2024, there were over “586,000 cases of acute respiratory infections and over 220,000 cases of diarrhea” alone, on top of a high-prominence of scabies, skin rashes, and Hepatitis A.
On November 28, WHO official Margaret Harris told a United Nations briefing in Geneva that “everybody everywhere [in Gaza] has dire health needs now because they’re starving, because they lack clean water, and [they’re] crowded together,” continuing on to state that “eventually, we will see more people dying from disease than we are even seeing from the bombardment.”
This came after Human Right Watch (HRW) published a piece that expressed the “grave concerns” of public health officials, about “an imminent infectious disease outbreak in Gaza, including waterborne illnesses like cholera and typhoid”, stating that this will come about due to the “comprehensive siege” conditions of “catastrophic cuts to water, fuel, and electricity, as well as very limited deliveries of food, water, and medical supplies, the lack of clean water”. These siege conditions created what the UN Children’s Fund spokesperson, James Elder, described as “the perfect storm for disease“.
UNICEF’s James Elder says circumstances in Gaza could cause just as many children to die from disease as have died in Israel’s airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/9RkdHKDGVB
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) December 5, 2023
All of what is noted above was not said behind closed doors and all by major human rights organizations, in addition to countless officials at United Nations. They have been screaming from the rooftops about the impending calamity of epidemics that are being fostered by Israel’s policies directly. There has been more than enough time for the Israelis to amend their policies, but they refuse to do so with full knowledge of what the result will be. While some Israeli propagandists would try to suggest that Israel is not deliberately causing the spread of disease, their argument is akin to saying that locking someone in a jail cell and cutting their water supply doesn’t mean that you deliberately caused their death through dehydration. The Israeli government has full knowledge of what their actions are causing, with one of their most prominent Ministers actively advocating spreading disease, as noted above.
Back in April, Israel’s own top human rights group B’Tselem, published a report entitled ‘Manufacturing Famine: Israel Is Committing The War Crime Of Starvation In The Gaza Strip‘ in which it is stated that Israel has deliberate policies of manufacturing a man-made famine inside Gaza. It also noted that the malnutrition caused as a result of Israeli policies can itself increase the “susceptibility to diseases and infections, especially among children, as well as the chance that these will result in death. It significantly extends recovery time from existing illnesses and injuries, and increases the chance of long-term health effects. There is already a high mortality rate among children in Gaza due to a combination of malnutrition and existing diseases.”
Also in April, Doctors Without Borders released a report on the “silent killings” being carried out in Gaza, where people are dying of preventable diseases due to the lack of medical care made available, due to the fact that “Gaza’s healthcare system has been devastated, with men, women and children at increasing risk”. Damning evidence and accusations were also just leveled at the Israeli regime in a new 66-page Oxfam report called ‘Water War Crimes: How Israel has weaponised water in its military campaign in Gaza‘, which details how the systematic destruction of Gaza’s water infrastructure has meant that the average Gazan has around a fourth of the daily minimum water supply under emergency situations. On top of that, 97% of the water was already undrinkable in the besieged coastal territory prior to the war and the water that Palestinians are currently forced to drink is largely contaminated, sometimes with sewage that has traces of poliovirus in it.
This is why the conservative estimate for the true Gaza death toll, published in the Lancet medical journal, stated that around 186,000 people could soon be dead, when factoring in indirect and yet to be counted deaths. If nothing is done soon, and Israel continues to have its way, the death toll could end up dwarfing the already shocking figure that grabbed headlines, which if this were to come true would mean that a minimum of 8% of the entire population of Gaza will be murdered. There is simply no other way to look at this, Israel is deliberately manufacturing the outbreak of disease on a mass scale inside Gaza.
Maybe viruses don’t exist.
What israel is doing in Gaza is obviously not conducive to the best health, whether viruses exist or not.
The ‘no virus’ people think health is about things like clean food, clean water, psychological and emotional factors, etc.
When it comes to things like polio, it could be caused by chemicals. (I’m not trying to suggest israel is using chemicals; I’ve seen no evidence of that. I’m just saying that, according to the ‘no virus’ people, polio, historically, was caused by chemicals).
With regards to the detection of a molecule in sewage water: that molecule is not necessarily “a virus” (iow, a molecule that reproduces and harms people). Even if viruses do exist, I’m not sure whether they survive in water.
With regards to the topic of ‘acute respiratory infections’, i dont know. Assuming viruses don’t exist, it could be caused by bacteria. (There’s also the idea that bacteria are not intrinsically harmful, and that disease is caused by an imbalance of the different types of bacteria).
The quality of the air might also have something to do with it, considering all the debris form buildings that have been blown up.
People in Gaza can’t even bury their dead. That obviously has to have a negative effect on their health.