Water shortages in Gaza had been extreme even earlier than Israel threatened to chop the electrical energy provide. Picture: Ahmed Zaqout/Anadolu/Getty Photographs
On 9 March 2025 Israel introduced it is going to reduce off electrical energy to the Gaza Strip. On 10 March, the United Nations Kids’s Fund warned: “Extreme water shortages in Gaza have reached crucial ranges, with just one in 10 folks capable of entry protected consuming water.”
In response to the Israeli announcement, Francesca Albanese, the UN particular rapporteur for Gaza, has urged worldwide motion with the next message: “Genocide alert! Israel reducing off electrical energy provides to Gaza means, amongst others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clear water.
“Nonetheless no sanction/no arms embargo in opposition to Israel means, amongst others, aiding and helping Israel within the fee of one of the vital preventable genocides of our historical past.”
It’s on this context that we, as members of South African Jews for a Free Palestine, be aware the article by Adi Cohen-Hazanof, the deputy chief of mission on the Israeli embassy in South Africa. In a piece revealed on 8 March she purports to “right” what she phrases a “misinformed” article by Sõzarn Barday on Israel’s utilization of water as a weapon of struggle revealed within the Mail & Guardian on 25 February.
Cohen-Hazanov’s key assertion is that the Israel Defence Forces respects the precept of distinction — that it’s dedicated to “minimising hurt to uninvolved civilians”. Nothing may illustrate the absurdity of this declare higher than the image accompanying the piece. It’s the type of picture of Gaza that we at the moment are used to: a wasteland of ruins full of the destroyed remnants of buildings. All the area has been devastated — together with residential buildings, faculties, hospitals, mosques and all life-sustaining infrastructure.
Amnesty Worldwide’s report, concluding that Israel is committing genocide, paperwork this nicely. So does South Africa’s software to the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice.
These and different paperwork additionally reveal the absurdity of Cohen-Hazanov’s extra particular declare — that water isn’t getting used as a weapon of struggle. She writes: “Proof signifies that Israel maintains the World Well being Organisation’s minimal every day water requirement for people in battle zones, which is 15 litres …”
Please, we beg her to inform us, what proof?
Human Rights Watch (HRW) places it, extra particularly at two to 9 litres a day. Lack of water, in accordance with the HRW report, has contributed to hundreds of deaths. The conclusive analysis from the HRW relies on interviews with a spread of actors: Palestinians in Gaza, employees at Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, healthcare professionals and folks working with UN businesses and worldwide support organisations in Gaza.
Whereas Cohen-Hazanov insists on presenting Israel as a benefactor, the HRW finds that throughout the time investigated, “Israeli authorities and forces undertook a variety of deliberate actions to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of entry to water and sanitation”. These actions of their summation “amounted to the crime in opposition to humanity of extermination in addition to acts of genocide”.
On 6 March 2025, the UNs’ Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights launched a report by a panel of specialists. In it, they specific alarm at “Israel’s resolution to droop as soon as once more all items and provides, together with life-saving humanitarian support getting into the Gaza Strip”. They point out the cruelty of this throughout Ramadan. In addition they denounce Israel’s unilateral resolution to “break the Gaza ceasefire settlement and calls by ministers to re-open the ‘gates of hell’ within the besieged enclave”.
This assertion additionally places these actions into a bigger context: “Creating unlivable situations for the Palestinians underneath Israeli occupation seems to be Israel’s dedication throughout all the occupied Palestinian territory, from the decimated Gaza Strip to the West Financial institution.
“The annexation of territory by pressure is advancing at full velocity within the West Financial institution, the place refugee camps and cities are being bombed, depopulated and looted, and different areas are attacked by armed settlers with complicity of Israeli forces.”
These numerous findings haven’t been written by Hamas, or a physique that could possibly be considered an enemy of Israel, however unbiased establishments which are broadly revered. It follows from this that Cohen-Hazanov’s article quantities to little greater than low-cost propaganda — what Israel itself refers to as Hasbara.
We denounce such makes an attempt to mislead the general public and to hide ongoing atrocities. We take part a rising Jewish motion, globally, that requires an finish to ethnic cleaning and genocide in Palestine. Neither atrocities will be reconciled with foundational Jewish values resembling justice and compassion.
The battle continues for a free Palestine in our lifetime.
Merlynn Edelstein, who has an LLB and teaches English, is a member of South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and has revealed a quantity of poetry referred to as Bearing Witness: Beloved Maryam and Different Poems after the 2014 assault on Gaza.
Jared Sacks is a member of SAJFP and has a PhD from Columbia College within the Metropolis of New York.
Mervyn Bennun was an advocate until 1965 when he went into exile. He was a member of the Congress of Democrats after which joined the ANC. After graduating with an LLM, he lectured at Exeter College. He returned to South Africa in 2000, and resigned his ANC membership on the age of 86 in June 2022. He’s a member of SAJFP.