By Dr Farhin Delawala
In an attempt to discredit the truth presented in the Mail & Guardian (25 February 2025), Adi Cohen-Hazanov distorts facts to shield the genocidal state from accountability. It comes as no surprise that defending war crimes and justifying oppression remain rooted to the core of the Zionist propaganda machine. Independent and international agencies have extensively highlighted Gaza’s intentional water restrictions.
Despite the overwhelming evidence from the United Nations, Amnesty International, and the World Health Organisation that Israel is routinely using water as a weapon of collective punishment, Cohen-Hazanov attempts to present Israel as a humanitarian actor. The restricted access to clean water is a blatant breach of international law and a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Cohen-Hazanov’s work contains falsified facts in a desperate effort to disguise reality. According to UNICEF, 97% of Gaza’s water is unfit for human consumption, putting millions of people at risk of dehydration and waterborne diseases, including cholera, from Israel’s bombing of sewage treatment plants, desalination facilities, and pipelines.
Even before the present genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Israel imposed fuel blockades, undermining sanitation and water pumping facilities and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. It is patently dishonest to suggest that Israel provides adequate water when it deliberately inhibits humanitarian help, limits access to life-sustaining materials and prohibits water infrastructure repairs. Why then would it allow clean water when it hinders other resources from reaching the Palestinians? If Israel were truly devoted to humanitarian assistance, would it then not terminate its occupation and relieve the land, sea, and air barrier, which are the underlying causes of Gaza’s suffering?
No amount of hyperbole can change the fact that millions of Palestinians continue to be denied their most fundamental rights as a result of a harsh apartheid and oppressive regime. The assertion that “Israel’s conflict is not with the civilian population of Gaza” is an insult to the hundreds of slain children, starved families, and displaced people. Here, occupation is the crime and so, resistance is the answer.
Dr Farhin Delawala
Associate Researcher,
Media Review Network
Johannesburg
South Africa
Dr Farhin Delawala holds a PhD in Health Sciences and is a published author of several academic articles. Dr Delawala is deeply committed to global health and social justice. She has drafted advocacy memos and presented at forums on disability rights in humanitarian crises.
- Justice cannot be built on segregation: A call for a one-state solution - August 21, 2025
- Apartheid in Palestine and South Africa: The Case for a One-State Solution - August 20, 2025
- Response to Adi Cohen-Hazanov’s misinformed claim about Gaza’s water supply - March 11, 2025