Marty Peretz
The New Republic
24 December 09
I don't mean to seem hardhearted. But I am frankly completely jaded--and made disbelieving--with the on-schedule, almost once-a-week story about the crisis in Gaza. Around Christmas, they are simply de rigeur.
Here's a predictable one in the viciously anti-Israel, truly viciously anti-Israel, Financial Times. It is by Tobias Buck, who, while he can write these in his sleep, wrote this one just for Christmas. (Never mind that there are only about 2,500 Christians still living in Gaza, some having been killed by peaceful Muslims, the others simply being scared the b'Jesus out of the Strip by them. Please forgive my timely reference to the prince of peace.)
No, I am not claiming that life in Gaza is sweet. But life in Gaza has never been sweet. (And, please, no allusions to Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza, which is about upper-class Brits in Mexico.) Also not when Gaza was under the Turks or the British Mandate or the Egyptians. Now that Gaza is under the boot of Hamas, you can imagine--and, in fact, deep inside you know--what goes for governing. I am also sure that Israeli restrictions at the combustible frontier do not make things easier. Of course, there is the border with Egypt, which nothing and no one crosses legally. Why doesn't the F.T. bitch about Cairo's cruelty to its ex-subjects?
As it happens, there is an uncannily timely testimony to the Gaza misery in Palestine Today, a Gaza publication. Surprise!
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