Water shortages in Gaza were severe even before Israel threatened to cut the electricity supply. Photo: Ahmed Zaqout/Anadolu/Getty Images
On 9 March 2025 Israel announced it will cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip. On 10 March, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned: “Severe water shortages in Gaza have reached critical levels, with only one in 10 people able to access safe drinking water.”
In response to the Israeli announcement, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Gaza, has urged international action with the following message: “Genocide alert! Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water.
“Still no sanction/no arms embargo against Israel means, among others, aiding and assisting Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history.”
It is in this context that we, as members of South African Jews for a Free Palestine, note the article by Adi Cohen-Hazanof, the deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in South Africa. In a piece published on 8 March she purports to “correct” what she terms a “misinformed” article by Sõzarn Barday on Israel’s usage of water as a weapon of war published in the Mail & Guardian on 25 February.
Cohen-Hazanov’s key assertion is that the Israel Defence Forces respects the principle of distinction — that it is committed to “minimising harm to uninvolved civilians”. Nothing could illustrate the absurdity of this claim better than the picture accompanying the piece. It is the kind of image of Gaza that we are now used to: a wasteland of ruins filled with the destroyed remnants of buildings. The entire region has been devastated — including residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques and all life-sustaining infrastructure.
Amnesty International’s report, concluding that Israel is committing genocide, documents this well. So does South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice.
These and other documents also reveal the absurdity of Cohen-Hazanov’s more specific claim — that water is not being used as a weapon of war. She writes: “Evidence indicates that Israel maintains the World Health Organisation’s minimum daily water requirement for individuals in conflict zones, which is 15 litres …”
Please, we beg her to tell us, what evidence?
Human Rights Watch (HRW) puts it, more specifically at two to nine litres a day. Lack of water, according to the HRW report, has contributed to thousands of deaths. The conclusive research from the HRW is based on interviews with a range of actors: Palestinians in Gaza, workers at Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, healthcare professionals and people working with UN agencies and international aid organisations in Gaza.
While Cohen-Hazanov insists on presenting Israel as a benefactor, the HRW finds that during the time investigated, “Israeli authorities and forces undertook a wide range of deliberate actions to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of access to water and sanitation”. These actions in their summation “amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination as well as acts of genocide”.
On 6 March 2025, the UNs’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report by a panel of experts. In it, they express alarm at “Israel’s decision to suspend once again all goods and supplies, including life-saving humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip”. They mention the cruelty of this during Ramadan. They also denounce Israel’s unilateral decision to “break the Gaza ceasefire agreement and calls by ministers to re-open the ‘gates of hell’ in the besieged enclave”.
This statement also puts these actions into a larger context: “Creating unlivable conditions for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation appears to be Israel’s determination across the entire occupied Palestinian territory, from the decimated Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
“The annexation of territory by force is advancing at full speed in the West Bank, where refugee camps and cities are being bombed, depopulated and looted, and other areas are attacked by armed settlers with complicity of Israeli forces.”
These various findings have not been written by Hamas, or a body that could be regarded as an enemy of Israel, but independent institutions that are widely respected. It follows from this that Cohen-Hazanov’s article amounts to little more than cheap propaganda — what Israel itself refers to as Hasbara.
We denounce such attempts to mislead the public and to conceal ongoing atrocities. We join in a growing Jewish movement, globally, that calls for an end to ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine. Neither atrocities can be reconciled with foundational Jewish values such as justice and compassion.
The struggle continues for a free Palestine in our lifetime.
Merlynn Edelstein, who has an LLB and teaches English, is a member of South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and has published a volume of poetry called Bearing Witness: Beloved Maryam and Other Poems after the 2014 attack on Gaza.
Jared Sacks is a member of SAJFP and has a PhD from Columbia University in the City of New York.
Mervyn Bennun was an advocate till 1965 when he went into exile. He was a member of the Congress of Democrats and then joined the ANC. After graduating with an LLM, he lectured at Exeter University. He returned to South Africa in 2000, and resigned his ANC membership at the age of 86 in June 2022. He is a member of SAJFP.
