No, really – think about it for a minute. What would you do with $320 million? You can only buy so many cars, take so many exotic vacations, pay off so many credit cards. What would you do with the rest? Especially if you are a person of faith, how would you use that money to be a blessing?
House the unhoused in your city?
Provide job training for one hundred young men and women?
Fund an underperforming public school in your area?
Upgrade a neighborhood of dilapidated public housing?
Provide clean water for a region in Africa?
Subsidize the fight for a cure to cancer?
There are probably 320 million great ways to spend that much money for the benefit of personkind and our planet.
Let me tell you about one way to waste $320 million – and this is a true story.
The main character of this story is our own United States government.
Very hungry people
For many months now, the Palestinians of Gaza have been on the brink of famine, at times even over the brink. If you’ve been following the news (or Grace-Colored Glasses), you know these conditions were not brought on by a drought or pestilence, but by the conscious choice of the prime minister of Israel – and with acquiescence from the US.
It’s not that there’s no food available – hundreds, possibly thousands of humanitarian aid trucks have been waiting just outside Gaza with food, medicine, and other things that the people of Gaza desperately need. The Israeli government and military have made it extremely difficult for goods to pass the border, employing complicated and arbitrary inspection procedures (watch this CNN video if you don’t believe me).
The withholding of food is not surprising, as Israeli leaders expressed the desire to cut off all supplies to Gaza in the first days after the October 7th attack.
President Biden would have none of this malarky, so he did the right thing: he called Netanyahu and said, “Open the borders and let Gaza have food, or else I will stop sending Israel $10 million in military aid.”
I’m kidding. He said no such thing. Rather, he sent massive quantities of bombs and other weapons to Israel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken helplessly wrung his hands over the starvation in Gaza. He and his spokespeople have declared on a daily basis, “We’ve expressed to Israel our disappointment about the lack of humanitarian aid, and urged Israel to try harder to allow aid into Gaza.”
Similarly, they repeat the mantra, “We’re encouraging Israel to try harder to avoid hitting civilians with the bombs that we’re sending.”
President Biden, an avid Zionist, would not use the leverage at his disposal – as the purported most powerful country in the world and Israel’s most generous benefactor – to make demands like, “stop the war and bring in the aid or else.”
And that’s why Biden announced his $320 million road apple.
What could possibly go wrong?
On March 7th, 2024, in his State of the Union address, President Biden announced the brilliant idea:
Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.
This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.
Seventy-one days later, on May 17, the pier was finished and the first humanitarian aid trucks brought aid ashore.
And it had only cost about $320 million (roughly twice the original estimate) of US taxpayer money.
AND THEN…
The U.S. was forced to halt operations four times due to weather events. In fact, in the two months since the pier was up and running, it has been operational for only nineteen days. Repairing the damage cost millions.
In those nineteen days, about nineteen million pounds of food were brought ashore. If that sounds like a lot, it’s not – it’s about 9,700 tons (8,800 metric tons). That translates to about 646 truckloads, an average of less than fourteen trucks per day.
(Mind you, this pier was supposed to handle ninety to one hundred fifty trucks per day – even the most optimistic numbers were still a far cry from the five hundred trucks per day that Gaza used to receive before the war, and before Israel destroyed farmland and food processing facilities.)
Oh, and most of that aid only made it to the beach, not to the starving people. Israel had killed so many Palestinian police that there was no one to guard convoys; killed so many aid truck drivers that there was no one to drive. And Palestinians had grown so desperate that gangs had begun to disrupt deliveries, often violently, in order to steal food and then sell it – when it should have been distributed for free.
So after more than $320 million spent, the US project did next to nothing to help the people of Gaza.
Hang on for the spin
As this fiasco crashed and burned, our military spun it into a brilliant victory:
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy commander at US Central Command, told reporters on Wednesday that the pier had achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation.”
“The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there’s no more need to use the pier,” he added.
MEANWHILE…
Food in the trucks still waiting just outside the border has begun to spoil and pass expiration dates. Starving Gazans who eventually got ahold of some of this food have gotten violently ill.
Of course, hospitals are also undersupplied (aid trucks also contain medical necessities) so they can do little to help people with food poisoning or malnutrition – never mind the thousands of Palestinians in need of treatment for injuries caused by American-made bombs.
A waste on so many levels
This is, importantly, a story of tremendous waste of American taxpayer dollars. $320 million for nineteen days of meager service? This was a pathetic project.
This is also, for the Palestinian people, another example of American promises unkept, American subservience to Israel’s desires (first to keep the borders closed, then to keep the food out of Palestinian hands), and American neglect of Palestinians’ legitimate needs.
If – and this is a big IF – the US had any credibility at all with the Palestinian people, it has no more.
The pier is an embarrassment to all Americans, a waste of our money, and a disgrace before God.
I’m here for anyone who cares to have an intelligent conversation about reality, instead of living in a silo of confirmation bias.
I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter. I write about the Palestine-Israel issue regularly, and other issues relevant to progressives or those considering becoming progressive. If you would like to comment on this post, please pop over to my Facebook page. All of my posts are there and open to constructive comment. I welcome your thoughts.
I also commend to you If Americans Knew (full disclosure: I am a writer and editor there), where you can get factual reporting on the Palestine-Israel issue. I can personally vouch for its accuracy.
If you are interested, here are some of my earlier posts on the Palestine issue:
Further reading on the Palestine-Israel issue:
- True story, guaranteed to break your heart…if you have one
- Persecution of Christians in the Holy Land is surging
- A multiple-choice question: Who is Israel’s greatest enemy?
- This is the truth about “there is no famine in Gaza”
- Why as a Christian, I won’t be condemning Hamas anytime soon
- No surprise: US leaders have forgotten all about Gaza
- Introducing the Global Hall of Shame, Deflection & Denialism
- The Palestinians’ ironclad, inalienable right to resist
- Netanyahu exposes his profound racism in one glorious tweet
- Rafah attack: Netanyahu’s lies expose the truth about Israel
- A waking nightmare – what just happened in Gaza?
- Israel, the ICC, and the disintegration of our species
- The truth about Gazans as human shields –you’ll be surprised
- THIS RIGHT HERE is happening RIGHT NOW. This is Israel.
- Unlock the global and historic significance of this moment
- What to say when you’ve run out of words
- A 3-minute challenge to see whether you are alive
- Did you know the US is complicit in genocide RIGHT NOW?
- 5 tips for finding the best news reporting on Palestine
- You need to meet this little girl named Hind
- Does Israel really have “the most moral army in the world”?
- Western “civilization” exposed for its colossal ruthlessness
- To Biden, Palestinian genocide is already complete
- The lies we believe about Gazan Christians are killing them
- Can followers of the Prince of Peace support a group that uses violence?
- Why support for Palestinian resistance is the right response for Christians
- A Palestinian Pastor’s powerful message to us: “it’s time to stop praying”
- Christians: Why do we skimp on compassion when it comes to Palestinians?
- Don’t compromise truth on Israel and Palestine
- What People Of Faith Need To Know About Gaza And Israel Right Now
Posts about my family in Gaza (in chronological order):
- Follow this refugee family’s quest for survival in Gaza
- The hardest decision our family in Gaza has ever made
- The unexpected one-word message coming out of Gaza today
- The new normal: eating during a famine in Gaza
- The truth about Gaza: “I swear, we don’t mind death”
- The reality of survival in Gaza, on Spiritual Brewpub
- 3 funerals and a wedding in Gaza
- “We’re surrounded. Israelis are everywhere. We are dying.”
- “We were surrounded by tanks. It’s a miracle we got out.”
- “If I Should Die Before I Wake”
FEATURED IMAGE: by Michael Fousert, via Unsplash