Starvation in war-stricken Sudan "is almost everywhere", the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has told the BBC's Today programme after visiting the country."Imagine: destruction, displacement, diseases everywhere, and now famine," Dr Tedros [Adhanom Ghebreyesus] told the BBC.He said he had recently visited a camp for the internally displaced people and a hospital in Sudan."You see there many children skin and bone, emaciated."Close to 25 million people - half of Sudan's population - "need support", Dr Tedros said.He stressed that Sudan "is not getting the attention it deserves", and that was the case with other recent conflicts in Africa."I think race is in the play here. That's what I feel now. We see the pattern now."Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dr Tedros said the world did not give “equal attention to black and white lives".At the time, he elaborated by saying only a fraction of the aid given to Ukraine was given to other humanitarian crises, with Tigray in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria not receiving the same treatment.
He brings pretty good evidence that race is a major factor in both the amount of media coverage and the amount of humanitarian aid being given. And he isn't only referring to Africa but also non-white people in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
But there is a glaring exception: Gaza.
No one can credibly claim that there isn't a great deal of media coverage on Gaza, or that nations and NGOs are not sending massive amounts of aid to Gaza, or that the UN has spent far more time issuing statements about Gaza than about Sudan which is also suffering the effects of a major war.
If Palestinians in Gaza are the same non-white race as Syrians or Yemenis, then why does Gaza get so much more attention than crises in other Middle East countries?
If the race of the victims is the major factor behind the amount of attention a place suffering from a humanitarian crisis receives, why is there more attention on the nonexistent famine in Gaza where every photo shows kids who look healthy than for the real famine in Sudan where you see hundreds of emaciated children?
In fact, since the Gaza war started, there is far more coverage of Gaza civilian suffering than even that of white Ukrainians. If the color of the victims is the major factor behind the amount of attention given how can that be explained?
It isn't that Dr.Tedros' observations about race are incorrect. It is that there is another, much bigger factor behind the attention on Gaza: the hate of Jews.
The only reason the world is focused on Gaza is because the supposed oppressors are Jews. The suffering of the victims isn't the major factor behind the coverage - it is the religion of the people being blamed for it.
World attention to Gaza is as disproportionately large as its attention on Sudan is disproportionately minuscule. But bigotry is the reason for both. No one is talking about Sudan because the world is told to keep "all eyes on Gaza." Indeed, the much higher coverage of Gaza than even Ukraine for the past year shows that antisemitism is a far more powerful driver of how much coverage a crisis receives than race is.
Antisemitism and racism are two sides of the same coin. The same "progressive" media and humanitarians who claim to care so much about bigotry are the ones who are propagating it, both by ignoring people of color in Africa and inciting hate against Jews in Israel.
(Note: I dislike using the word "race" because the entire concept has no scientific basis. Palestinians are the same "race" as Jews and using racial terms to describe the Arab Israeli conflict is just another manifestation of antisemitism. In my opinion, using the word "race" today validates Nazi ideology that there are inherent physical differences between people of different group ancestries. The term "race" obscures more than it illuminates. But bigotry is real, both against people of different colored skin and against Jews. I strongly object to treating race as a real concept, whether from racists or self-described anti-racists: any use of the term propagates the false idea that people are biologically different. But when a WHO official uses the word, it is easier to cover the story the way he means it.)
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