this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Isn't humanitarian aid exempt from such an embargo? This is why the Sumud Flotilla was legal, under international law (obviously won't stop the ICEraeli regime will seize the vessels anyway every time)
The question was from the US citizen perspective so it's still practically illegal.
In the case of this embargo, humanitarian aid is not illegal, but needs to be authorized by the respective US federal government authority. Which they are not gonna do in this case obviously.
With embargos in general, it depends on the case - unilateral sanctions by the US are particularly bad at causing civilian deaths due to being specifically aimed at worsening living conditions under the pretense of facilitating regime change. This is why the sanctions against Iraq killed about as many people as the invasion under Bush jr. The same kind of massive excess mortality could never been shown for multilateral UN sanctions, which are much, much more limited in scope. Basically, the US (and to some degree the EU) treats sanctions as a means of geopolitical social murder, whereas the rest of the world doesn't.