[slowturtle]

UK surgeon Nick Maynard, a volunteer at Nasser Hospital, tells Good Morning Britain that he and other doctors tried to bring baby formula into Gaza and the Israelis confiscated it from them with no justification. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipJEROtHOs

[basisword]

I think we all know what their 'justification' was unfortunately.

[tboyd47]

Would it be acceptable even with a justification?

[munk-a]

If a justification was given we'd be able to evaluate the worthiness of that decision - if there were technical notes about, for instance, food safety concerns, we could evaluate the justification against other standards in different areas of the world around proper formula storage.

Without a justification the decision is arbitrary and silences any ability to push back against it within the normal bounds of dialog. A justification would potentially allow aid groups to remedy whatever the specific deficiency is if it is a reasonable deficiency to remedy.

If there was a justification it might be acceptable - depending on the justification - without a justification it is unacceptable when there is such a clear need. The aid is blocked and there is no recourse to unblock it outside the current attempts to just smuggle it in.

[falconroar]

Starving infants is justifiable sometimes? When?

[munk-a]

It is justifiable to stop a shipment of baby formula if that baby formula is known to be unsafe and carry bacteria that will kill infants.

I think in this particular case it's quite safe to say that those blocking the shipments aren't acting in good faith, however.

[falconroar]

Does the food carry bacteria in reality? Why are we talking about bizarre hypotheticals?

[kergonath]

No, but the callousness of an arbitrary decision without even spending 10 seconds to make up a pretend reason is a pure display of power. They do what they want and they don’t care one bit about even looking like the good guys.

[tboyd47]

Every con has an expiration date.

[margalabargala]

Potentially.

The main ingredient in Hamas' rocket fuel is sugar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_candy

That would be an acceptable justification for confiscating sugar. If Hamas were making rocket fuel somehow out of baby formula, then yes, that would be an acceptable justification.

That said baby formula cannot in fact be meaningfully used to make explosives, so this is not acceptable.

[falconroar]

Starving infants is morally justifiable if it's possible to make a rocket from their food?

[gsinclair]

Preventing the entry of something that can be made into a weapon is justified, yes. If you want to call that “starving children”, that’s up to you.

[falconroar]

Withholding food from children results in children starving. It’s not semantics.

[margalabargala]

Only in the same way that pointing at a starving infant as a prop is a moral justification for using food meant for the infant instead to manufacture weapons.

[wat10000]

That rather depends on the justification. "We think you might be planning to use that to feed babies," no. "There's a small canister of nerve gas concealed in the middle," yes.

[bjoli]

The reason for that is apparently that you can use baby formula to make rocket candy. Because apparently extracting the lactose from 40kg baby formula is all it takes to make a quassam rocket.

If you can get your hand om 20kg of oxidiser that is. It is all more than ridiculous.

Edit: and Nick Maynard is a national treasure.

[mothballed]

Same for water. I've heard they could electrolyze drinking water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then they could explode the hydrogen using the oxygen as an oxidizer.

Only solution is to cut off all wells and water supplies.

[amelius]

https://www.dhmo.org/

[cma]

Though different from the rocket fuel, I've read Israel has dumped so much ordinance on Gaza that the Hamas weapons primarily use material from unexploded ordinance as their warheads.