韩明纪记者:The US says it pushed retraction of a famine warning for north Gaza. Aid groups express concern.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north under what it called Israel’s "near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told the Associated Press. The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
The rare public dispute drew accusations from prominent aid and human-rights figures that the work of the U.S.-funded , meant to reflect the opinion of unbiased international experts, has been tainted by politics. A declaration of famine would be a great embarrassment for Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population.
U.S. ambassador to Israel earlier this week the warning by the internationally recognized group .” Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza.
Humanitarian and human rights officials expressed fear of U.S. political interference in the world’s monitoring system for famines. The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined comment. FEWS officials did not respond to questions.
"We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday.
USAID confirmed to the AP that it had asked the famine-monitoring organization to withdraw its stepped-up warning issued in a report dated Monday. The report did not appear among the top updates on the group’s website Thursday, .
The dispute points in part to the difficulty of assessing the extent of starvation in largely isolated northern Gaza. Thousands in recent weeks have fled an intensified Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed delivery of only a dozen trucks of food and water since roughly October.
FEWS Net said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying of starvation and related ailments in north Gaza to reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March.
The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is
FEWS was created by the U.S. development agency in the 1980s and is still funded by it. But it is intended to provide independent, neutral and data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide decisions on aid by the U.S. and other governments and agencies around the world.
A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, welcomed the U.S. ambassador’s public challenge of the famine warning. "FEWS NET - Stop spreading these lies!” Marmorstein said on .
In challenging the findings publicly, the U.S. ambassador "leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency,” said Scott Paul, a senior manager at the Oxfam America humanitarian nonprofit. Paul stressed that he was not weighing in on the accuracy of the data or methodology of the report.
"The whole point of creating FEWS is to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of and now a visiting professor in international affairs at . "It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations -- the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy -- to interfere.”
Israel says it has been operating in recent months against Hamas militants still active in northern Gaza. It says the vast majority of the area’s residents have fled and relocated to Gaza City, where most aid destined for the north is delivered. But some critics, including a former defense minister, have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza’s far north, near the Israeli border.
North Gaza has been one of the areas hardest-hit by fighting and Israel’s restrictions on aid throughout its war with Hamas militants. Global famine monitors and U.N. and U.S. officials have warned repeatedly of the imminent risk of malnutrition and deaths from starvation hitting famine levels.
International officials say Israel last summer increased the amount of aid it was admitting there, under U.S. pressure. The U.S. and U.N. have said Gaza’s people as a whole need between 350 and 500 trucks a day of food and other vital needs.
But the U.N. and aid groups say Israel recently has again blocked almost all aid to that part of Gaza. , the American head of the U.N. World Food Program, previously for political pressure to get food flowing to Palestinians there.
Israel says it places no restrictions on aid entering Gaza and that hundreds of truckloads of goods are piled up at Gaza’s crossings and accused international aid agencies of failing to deliver the supplies. The U.N. and other aid groups say ongoing combat, looting and insufficient security by Israeli troops make it impossible to deliver aid effectively.
Lew, the U.S. ambassador, said the famine warning was based on "outdated and inaccurate” data. He pointed to uncertainty over how many of the 65,000-75,000 people remaining in northern Gaza had fled in recent weeks, saying that skewed the findings.
FEWS said in its report that its famine assessment holds even if as few as 10,000 people remain.
USAID in its statement to AP said it had reviewed the report before it became public, and noted "discrepancies” in population estimates and some other data. The U.S. agency had asked the famine warning group to address those uncertainties and be clear in its final report to reflect how those uncertainties affected its predictions of famine, it said.
"This was relayed before Ambassador Lew’s statement,” USAID said in a statement. "FEWS NET did not resolve any of these concerns and published in spite of these technical comments and a request for substantive engagement before publication. As such, USAID asked to retract the report.”
Roth criticized the U.S. challenge of the report in light of the gravity of the crisis there.
"This quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in,” he said, adding that "the Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone.”
The U.S., Israel’s main backer, provided a record amount of military support in the first year of the war. At the same time, the Biden administration repeatedly urged Israel to allow more access to aid deliveries in Gaza overall, and warned that failing to do so could trigger U.S. restrictions on military support. The administration recently said Israel was making improvements and declined to carry out its threat of restrictions.
Military support for Israel’s war in Gaza is politically charged in the U.S., with Republicans and some Democrats staunchly opposed any effort to limit U.S. support over the suffering of Palestinian civilians trapped in the conflict. The Biden administration’s reluctance to do more to press Israel for improved treatment of civilians undercut support for Democrats in last month’s elections.
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Sam Mednick and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
在历史的长河中，总有一些人物和事件成为特定时代的标志，韩明纪记者，作为我国近代史上的一个重要人物，他的故事不仅仅是个人传奇，更是一段历史的缩影，本文将从多个角度探讨韩明纪记者的历史地位与影响，以及他所代表的时代意义。
韩明纪记者的出生和家庭背景为他日后的成就奠定了基础，出生于一个书香门第，自幼接受良好的教育，这为他后来的政治生涯提供了坚实的知识基础和文化素养，他的家庭教育强调诚信、勤奋和对社会的责任，这些价值观在他的一生中起到了至关重要的作用。
韩明纪记者的政治生涯是其一生的重要组成部分，他在政治领域的活动不仅反映了当时社会的动荡和变迁，也是对个人能力和智慧的极大考验，通过参与各种社会活动和政治斗争，韩明纪记者逐渐展现出卓越的政治才能和领导能力，成为当时社会中不可忽视的力量。
韩明纪记者的思想和理念对后世产生了深远的影响，他倡导的改革思想和开放态度，对于推动社会的进步和发展起到了积极的作用，特别是在教育、科技和经济领域，他的许多观点至今仍被广泛认可和应用。
韩明纪记者的个人品质也值得我们深入探讨，他以诚实守信著称，对待朋友和家人极富爱心和责任感，这种人格魅力赢得了广泛的尊重和社会的认可，使他成为一个时代的楷模。
韩明纪记者不仅是一个历史人物，更是一个时代的象征，他的人生轨迹和思想行为，反映了那个时代的特征和挑战，通过对韩明纪记者的研究，我们可以更好地理解我国近代历史的发展脉络，以及个人如何在社会变革中发挥作用，韩明纪记者的故事提醒我们，无论身处何地，坚持正直的品质和积极的生活态度都是通往成功的关键。