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THE SILENCE BEFORE THE STORM – A CHARGE TO THE WORLD

By Dr Paul Alexander Wolf 🇦🇺 – October 2025

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There is a calm now in Gaza that tastes of warning. Trucks queue at the crossings – engines idling, food on pallets – and a promise of relief waits for permission that does not come. This is not the sound of peace. It is the hush of hunger.

This week, Israel told the United Nations it would allow only three hundred aid trucks into Gaza each day – half the agreed minimum that humanitarian agencies say is essential to prevent famine. Aid convoys stand curtailed while whole communities go without bread, medicine and fuel.

Four coffins of hostages were returned – a relief for some families – and yet the process remains chaotic and incomplete. One of the returned bodies may not be that of a known hostage, and many remains are still unaccounted for. The Red Cross warns that returning the dead and preserving evidence will be Herculean amid the rubble.

And the journalists who record these facts continue to die. Saleh Aljafarawi – a young man who carried a camera and a press vest – was killed as clashes continued in Gaza City after a ceasefire. He is one among hundreds of media workers who have been killed in this conflict – the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.

These are not isolated tragedies. They form a pattern. Borders sealed, supplies reduced, hospitals in the fire line, journalists and medics targeted – the sum of these acts points not to accident but to policy. The International Court of Justice has concluded there is a plausible risk of genocide and has issued provisional measures calling for protection of life and humanitarian access. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants tied to allegations arising from this campaign. These are not rhetorical flourishes – they are legal instruments that demand attention.

Name the reality plainly – when hunger is used as leverage and medical care is made a bargaining chip, the machinery of war is taking a new form. Starvation as policy, or starvation by calculated omission, is a crime under international law. Attacks on hospitals, seizures of staff, and the killing of those who witness these acts are crimes. Where the record shows a pattern, responsibility follows – at the level of policy, command and political authority.

So what must be done? Not slogans. Not fantasies. Concrete, lawful pressure – immediate and sustained.

First – protect life now. Aid corridors must be unconditional. Every truck carrying food, water, fuel and medicine must be allowed through without political calculus. Independent monitors must verify deliveries and distribution. The protection of hospitals and ambulances must be enforced with presence, not promises. Humanitarian access is not a bargaining chip – it is a legal and moral imperative.

Second – preserve and present the evidence. Forensic documentation of strikes, hospital attacks and detentions must be collected and protected. The Red Cross and UN agencies cannot be the only custodians of testimony. Independent forensic networks – satellites, medics, protected archival systems – must be funded now so the truth cannot be erased.

Third – pursue accountability through law. The ICJ’s provisional measures and the ICC’s orders exist for a reason. Where prosecutors find credible evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or actions that meet the threshold for genocide, cases must proceed in national courts and international courts alike. Command responsibility is not an abstraction – it links orders, policies and outcomes. Where evidence binds policy to effect, those responsible must answer in a court of law.

Fourth – protect truth-tellers and rebuild the capacity to report. Fund safety programs for journalists. Stand behind the reporters and photographers who risk everything to show us what is occurring. When cameras are silenced, injustice grows.

Fifth – mobilise nonviolent pressure that changes power calculations. Democratic governments must use diplomacy, conditional aid, and targeted measures aimed at those who design and benefit from policies of deprivation. Universities, pension funds and institutions must review ties to entities that materially enable military operations or settlement enterprises. Civil society must coordinate campaigns – legal, financial and cultural – that make impunity costly. Support Israeli civil society groups who oppose these policies. Back Palestinian-led organisations that will rebuild hospitals, schools and livelihoods. This is not charity – it is restitution and duty.

Now a warning – be precise, be unflinching. I will not cloak accusation in euphemism when lives are at stake. Where evidence shows leadership and command have overseen patterns of deprivation and destruction that meet thresholds described by major international bodies, those leaders must be held to account. The instruments are there – judiciaries, international courts, and enforcement mechanisms. Use them.

Do not ask whether any single action will turn the tide overnight. Ask instead whether we will do what is ours to do. Will we ensure aid reaches the hungry? Will we fund the archives of truth? Will we press our governments to act on the legal record instead of on convenience? Will we stand with those who risk everything to tell the truth?

There are many courageous people already doing this work – medics who stitch wounds by phone light, volunteers who carry water to tent camps, lawyers who compile evidence at risk to themselves. Let us be their allies, not their spectators.

We must also be honest about power. Realpolitik exists. The United States, other major governments, and structures of global influence shape outcomes. They can choose to exert pressure or to look away. They will make decisions based on interest and pressure. That is why organised civilian action matters – lobbying, coalition building, sustained media, legal initiatives and economic decisions tilt the scale. Democracies respond when citizens demand action with clarity and persistence.

Make no mistake – this is not a moral exercise for the comfortable. This is a test of whether international law is more than paper, and whether conscience can become policy. We will not win every battle. We will not end every injury tomorrow. But we can create consequences for those who treat civilian life as expendable, and we can protect those whom the law was written to defend.

So hear this final charge – not as rhetoric but as a plan of witness and work.

Let the global community refuse to kneel to silence or to fear.

Let every government, every court, and every citizen insist that no policy be beyond scrutiny or justice.

We will not accept a peace bought with hunger – we will demand justice until lives are safe again.

Because the measure of a civilisation is not the power it claims but the lives it protects.

The future will be decided by what we choose to do next.

And with “ we” , I mean obviously those in power or those with just the right level of influence.

Let’s put it this way: what Israel is doing is completely outside character of the Hebrew context of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had their flaws like everyone has, but they were justified in the way they dealt with circumstances and people. Netanyahu operates at the total opposite end of the moral spectrum, which we call deeply and disturbingly immoral. At some stage it will hit back.

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Key sources for the factual claims above

Reuters – Israel cuts agreed aid into Gaza over slow release of hostage bodies – Oct 14, 2025.  AP News – Israeli military says one of the 4 bodies handed over may not be that of a hostage; reporting on the returns – Oct 14, 2025.  Al Jazeera – Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi shot dead in Gaza City clashes – Oct 12, 2025.  International Court of Justice – Summary of Order of 26 January 2024 (South Africa v Israel) – provisional measures and findings on plausible risk.  International Criminal Court – Pre-Trial Chamber decisions and issuance of warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine – Nov 21, 2024.