内容摘要：Tuesday’s choreographed humiliation was months in the making. Of 91 attempts the UN made to deliver aid to besieged North Gaza between October 6 and November 25, 82 were denied and 9 were impeded. Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of conducting a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians in Gaza as early as September 2024. In a report to the UN General Assembly, he warned that famine and disease were “killing more people than bombs and bullets”, describing the hunger crisis as the most rapid and deliberate in modern history. Between May 19 and 23, only 107 aid trucks entered Gaza after more than three months of blockade. During the temporary ceasefire, 500 to 600 trucks were needed each day to meet basic humanitarian needs. By that measure, over 40,000 trucks would be required to meaningfully address the crisis. At least 300 people, including many children, have already died of starvation.

Tuesday’s choreographed humiliation was months in the making. Of 91 attempts the UN made to deliver aid to besieged North Gaza between October 6 and November 25, 82 were denied and 9 were impeded. Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of conducting a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians in Gaza as early as September 2024. In a report to the UN General Assembly, he warned that famine and disease were “killing more people than bombs and bullets”, describing the hunger crisis as the most rapid and deliberate in modern history. Between May 19 and 23, only 107 aid trucks entered Gaza after more than three months of blockade. During the temporary ceasefire, 500 to 600 trucks were needed each day to meet basic humanitarian needs. By that measure, over 40,000 trucks would be required to meaningfully address the crisis. At least 300 people, including many children, have already died of starvation.

Occupation is not complex. Oppression is not complex. Apartheid is not complex. Genocide is not complex. It is cruel. It is wrong. It must yield to decency.Writing about Palestinians in this blunt, uncompromising way invites all sorts of replies from all sorts of quarters.

Some readers praise your “courage”. Some thank you for “speaking” for them, for not flinching, for naming names. Some readers urge you to continue to write, despite the risks and recriminations.Much less charitably, some readers call you ugly names. Some wish you and your family misfortune and harm. Some readers try, and fail, to get you fired.All you can do as a writer is to keep writing, regardless of the reaction – whether kind or unkind, thoughtful or thoughtless – or the consequences, intended or not.

Still, one of the casualties of writing about Palestinians can be the loss of the reassuring constancy and tender pleasure of valued friendships.I suppose I am not alone on this sad score.

Students, teachers, academics, artists, and so many others have been exiled, charged, or even jailed for refusing to ignore or sanitise the horror we see day after dreadful day.

In this context, my travails, while stinging and disconcerting, are modest in comparison. Departed friends, however dear, are, it seems, the price for candour that unsettles.However, using a web of companies and patronage from some of Zimbabwe’s most powerful individuals, smugglers have turned those constraints on trade into an opportunity to launder billions of dollars and help the government in Harare get around some of the consequences of sanctions.

The process is as simple as it is cunning: Criminals from around the world with large volumes of unaccounted cash can give that money to the Zimbabwean government, directly or through smugglers. The Zimbabwean government desperately needs US dollars since the county’s own currency has little international value following years of hyperinflation.In exchange, launderers get clean, legitimate cash — from the sale of Zimbabwean gold — transferred to their bank accounts.

‘Good washing machine’One of the smuggling operations the I-Unit encountered was led by Uebert Angel, Zimbabwe’s ambassador-at-large to Europe and the Americas. Angel was appointed personally by Mnangagwa with the responsibility of securing global investments for Zimbabwe, and is one of the country’s most influential diplomats.