For Immediate Release
Contact: David Reinbold, dreinbold@americanhumanist.org
(Washington, D.C., March 7, 2024) — The American Humanist Association, speaking as it has been for eight decades for humanist principles, is today calling on the government of the United States to leverage the enormous resources and power at the command of the United States to immediately prevent the starvation and famine that is impacting hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the occupied territory of Gaza.
Starvation and famine resulting from armed conflict are extreme humanitarian outcomes that are beyond what has been happening so far in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In addition, such outcomes are beyond those of dozens of other armed conflicts around the world that are producing heartbreaking outcomes of death, injury, displacement and more for millions around the world.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has stated that 576,000 people, nearly a quarter of the population of Gaza, are one step away from famine, and 1 in 6 children under the age of two in northern Gaza are already suffering from “acute malnutrition and wasting.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also has stated that the UN and humanitarian aid organizations “cannot effectively deliver humanitarian aid while Gaza is under such heavy, widespread, and unrelenting bombardment.”
Last weekend, the United States dropped a mere 38,000 meals into Gaza, an action that cannot even be characterized as minimally impactful, given the enormity of the problem facing the people of Gaza. According to Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International, airdrops “are probably the most inefficient possible way to deliver aid.” Airdropping aid is a performative exercise by the Biden Administration and makes no meaningful impact on the prospect of famine. Allowing ground-based aid deliveries, which are controlled by the State of Israel, is the only solution to prevent starvation and famine. We call on the Biden Administration to significantly increase pressure on the Israeli government to allow sustained ground-based aid deliveries to safely and immediately reach the people of Gaza.
Sunil Panikkath, President of the American Humanist Association said, “American humanists are calling on their government to do much more, to do everything in the vast power of the United States, to prevent the starvation and famine facing hundreds of thousands in Gaza as a result of a conflict that is sustained by American military supplies and American taxpayer funds.”
He continued, “It would be wholly consistent with the most basic humanitarian principles, principles that the United States has espoused around the world for decades, for the Biden Administration to put as much credible pressure on the government of the State of Israel as is necessary, including the credible threat of the suspension of military cooperation and military aid, to restart and sustain ground-based aid deliveries at a level that prevents starvation and famine. That is the only defensible path for the United States at this point and that is what American humanists are demanding from their government.”
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The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.