The Gaza They Don't Want You to See - by Bassam Tawil

How can Hamas and its supporters around the world continue to complain about poverty and misery when new shopping malls and supermarkets filled with clothes, and various types of luxury goods are being opened every few weeks in the Gaza Strip?

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
10 June '20..

The Palestinian terror group Hamas has warned Palestinians in the Gaza Strip not to publish photos from the Gaza Strip on social media platforms.

In a June 9 statement, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior claimed that "Israeli intelligence agencies have been asking residents of the Gaza Strip -- through social media -- to use their mobile phones to take pictures of various places in the Gaza Strip."

Hamas warned Palestinians against complying with the alleged Israeli request and claimed that Israel was using social media accounts to "recruit collaborators and obtain information."

Hamas added that its security forces were monitoring Israeli and Palestinian social media accounts and would take "legal measures" against Palestinians who interacted with the purported Israeli intelligence agencies.

Is Hamas actually worried that the Israeli security authorities would use the photos to "recruit" informants or that Palestinians might take pictures of its tunnels and rockets? Not exactly.

Hamas is worried that the photos and videos taken by Palestinians would reveal to the world a different reality of the situation in the Gaza Strip -- a reality that runs contrary to all the stories and images of "poverty," "misery" and "suffering" of Palestinians there.

What Hamas seeks to conceal from the world are the shopping malls, supermarkets, fancy restaurants, sleek coffee shops and modern clothing stores that have sprung up in the Gaza Strip in recent years.

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The Real Humanitarian Travesty in Gaza - by Evelyn Gordon

That so many “human-rights organizations” now devote themselves to propaganda rather than exposing real human-rights violations is a tragedy for the many victims worldwide who have consequently been left voiceless. But as long as it remains the case, there’s absolutely no justification for continuing to endow them with money, attention, and above all, credibility.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
14 June '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/humanitarian-travesty-gaza/

Gaza’s worsening electricity crisis provides a textbook example of why many so-called human-rights organizations no longer deserve to be taken seriously. The crisis stems entirely from an internal dispute between the Palestinians’ two rival governments, and since it can’t be blamed on Israel, most major rights groups have ignored it, preferring to focus instead on such truly pressing issues as—this is not a joke—playing soccer in the settlements. But the exceptions to this rule are even worse: They’re the ones so untroubled by facts that they’ve actually found a way to blame Israel for a problem entirely of the Palestinians’ own making.

A brief recap: Back in April, Gaza ran out of fuel for its only power plant because neither the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority nor Gaza’s Hamas-run government—both of which have plenty of money to spend on fomenting anti-Israel terror—would agree to pay for it. The argument focuses specifically on a tax the PA imposed on the fuel, which Hamas won’t pay but the PA won’t lower. The fuel shortage slashed Gaza’s power supply to about four hours a day.

That same month, the PA announced it would stop paying for 40 percent of the electricity Israel sends Gaza via high-voltage wires, and Hamas naturally refused to take over the payments. Israel continued providing the power anyway for about six weeks, but this week, it finally decided to stop giving Hamas free electricity. That will reduce Gaza’s power supply to three hours a day or less.

The power shortage is creating a worse humanitarian crisis in Gaza than Israel’s partial blockade ever did, yet neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch—both of which issued countless statements about the blockade—has published a single press release about the electricity crisis. Astoundingly, however, HRW did find time to issue no fewer than three press statements in May blasting the international soccer association’s refusal to take action against Israel over six soccer teams in the settlements. Apparently, playing soccer in a settlement is a much more serious humanitarian problem than being without power 20 hours a day.

Cold cash and medicals permits. Apparently some Palestinians are more equal than others.

...The medical permit scandal is yet further proof that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority shamelessly exploit their people for political and financial purposes. The PA leverages its power to issue medical permits in order to pressure Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to turn against Hamas. Its officials sell the permits for cold hard cash. Hamas, which continues to hold the entire Gaza Strip hostage, has its own ideas about how money is well spent. Gaza's hospitals would be rather better equipped if Hamas used the money it has to build medical centers instead of tunnels for smuggling weapons from Egypt to attack Israel. While medical permits are sold to the highest Palestinian bidder, we ask: What is the going rate for a permit for clarity concerning the behavior of Palestinian leaders?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
21 September '16..

Question: How do Palestinian patients obtain permits to receive medical treatment in Israeli and other hospitals around the world? Answer: By paying bribes to senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those who cannot afford to pay the bribes are left to die in under-equipped and understaffed hospitals, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Yet, apparently some Palestinians are more equal than others: Palestinians whose lives are not in danger, but who pretend that they are. These include businessmen, merchants, university students and relatives of senior Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas officials, who receive permits to travel to Israel and other countries under the pretext of medical emergency.

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Two Tales of One Gaza

...The situation in Gaza is indeed complex and there are many sources for the problems there. But the media have an obligation to try and show all facets of life lest readers believe that the images they are seeing represent the entire area.

Yarden Frankl..
Honest Reporting..
24 August '15..

One year after the end of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, both the New York Times and the Washington Post published articles describing the current situation in Gaza. While neither account is factually incorrect, it is revealing to see what each paper chose to highlight.

For the New York Times, the main theme of the article is that Palestinians are living in the ruins of houses that were destroyed during the conflict. There is little work, little money, and very little reconstruction. As the headline clearly states:

There is no doubt that with the scale of destruction, the corruption of Hamas, and the continuing need to prevent Hamas from rearming and rebuilding tunnels, there are serious impediments to reconstruction.

But are ALL the people of Gaza still “sitting among the ruins?”

Here is the headline from the Washington Post:

The article describes how Gaza’s small middle class is enjoying what many would call a life of luxury. Sushi bars, day spas, luxury cars, and seaside villas are fixtures of this small segment of the Gaza population. And while the scenes of privileged Palestinians working out in a high-tech gym or dining in a rooftop restaurant should not be interpreted as widespread, the fact that they exist is something worth noting.

Can You Imagine? Gaza is Broke But Still Preparing for War

...As broke and as isolated as they may be, Hamas still thinks it won the war for international public opinion because so many Palestinians died or were made homeless by Israeli efforts to stop the firing of thousands of rockets on its cities and towns. Moreover, the message they have gotten since last summer from the United States is that the Obama administration is doing its best to put daylight between Washington and Jerusalem. That’s a standing invitation for Israel’s foes to attack because they assume the Israelis will be left to face them alone.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 June '15..

If you believe the reporting of the New York Times, some people in Gaza are fed up with what passes for a government in the strip. The decision of the Hamas terrorists who run Gaza as an independent Palestinian state in all but name to impose new taxes on their beleaguered subjects was not received with much pleasure. It turns out the levies are required for the Islamist group to pay their 40,000 employees. Though food, medicine and other supplies are shipped into Gaza every day by Israel, a fact that debunks claims of a humanitarian crisis, there’s no question that times are hard for the people who live there. But the cash shortage in Gaza hasn’t changed Hamas’s priorities. One of their main complaints is that a shortage of construction materials caused by Israel has made reconstruction of homes destroyed in last summer’s war impossible. But that hasn’t stopped Hamas from building a new road near the border with Israel in order to facilitate future terror attacks.

The construction is going on directly across the border from Nahal Oz, the Israeli kibbutz that was the target of Hamas terror tunnels during last summer’s war. While there have been steady reports of Iran helping to fund Hamas efforts to rebuild both the tunnels and the Islamists’ fortified strongholds inside the strip, a Hamas official actually said over the weekend that the purpose of the work being done on the Palestinian side of the border was “to create for ourselves convenient opportunities to attack the Zionist enemy.”

Who cares about rebuilding Gazan lives?

...A strange form of warfare, no? But it tells a reasonable person something about the relative values of the human societies on the two sides.

Kerem Shalom crossing seen from the Israeli
side, August 2014 More than an ordinary
stream of trucks; a lifeline [Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 November '14..

If you have not already seen our post from earlier today (including video) of Hamas trumpeting the tunnels they are busy digging and/or repairing in order to murder more Jews ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"], please do that before reading on. It's at the top of the list of messages Hamas is delivering to its captive population and the larger Arabic-speaking world.

Back? OK, so if it's not the thugs of Hamas (and it is surely not), who is taking seriously the need of the Palestinian Arab Gazans for repaired houses and a better life? From the Jerusalem Post:

Under an arrangement reached last month to ensure that building materials needed to rebuild the thousands of homes destroyed in the seven-week Operation Protective Edge are not diverted to build terror tunnels or manufacture rockets, the UN is to present Israeli engineers with construction plans, and the engineers will determine how much cement is needed. That cement then will be allowed into Gaza in stages, to enable inspection to ensure that it is being used for the designated purpose. If it is determined that the cement is being stolen and used for other purposes, the supply will stop. A recent assessment conducted by the UN found that more than 100,000 homes in Gaza remained damaged or destroyed. The first batch of construction materials since the Gaza military operation in the summer entered the Strip from Israel in September... ["25,000 Gazans to get access to construction materials to rebuild homes", jpost.com, November 22, 2014]

Keep in mind the mentality of the parties concerned.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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When Hamas puts on a victory show

...Arthur leaves, but not before the amputated knight calls after him, "Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!" I also recalled an Arab proverb that Professor Moshe Sharon taught me: "Get off me! My neck is red from the beating I gave you."

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
27 August '14..

Watching the blood festivities in ravaged Gaza, I was reminded of what I wrote three weeks ago about the image of victory: even if Gaza were completely razed and a single half-dead Hamas fighter remained, he would crawl out of the ruins and make a victory sign. For Hamas, the very war against us is a victory for them, what they live for.

In the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," King Arthur encounters the Black Knight, who doesn't allow him to cross a bridge. During their struggle, Arthur cuts off the knight's arms, but the knight won't admit defeat. Armless, he continues to leap about and declare his certain triumph. When his legs are cut off, too, and his torso is lying on the ground, he mutters, "All right, we'll call it a draw."

Arthur leaves, but not before the amputated knight calls after him, "Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!"

The Limits of Anti-Israel Activists’ Compassion

Jonathan Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
27 May '10

For those who wish to end the continued existence of a sovereign Jewish state on the shores of the Mediterranean, there is only one cause worth caring about: breaking the limited blockade that both Israel and Egypt have placed on Hamas-ruled Gaza. No one in Gaza is starving. All are fed by a United Nations Agency — UNRWA — specifically set up to ensure the continued existence of a Palestinian refugee problem. Gaza is poor, but the region, which Israel evacuated in 2005, is now an independent entity ruled by the Hamas terrorist group.

For years, it served as a launching pad for missile attacks on Israeli civilians in southern Israel. But after Israel’s counteroffensive in December 2008, the Islamists who run Gaza have mostly held their fire. This is done partly out of fear of more Israeli counterterror operations and partly because the blockade imposed on the area — a blockade that allows in food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies but not construction materials that could aid Hamas’s homegrown weapons industry — has made it difficult for them to replenish their arsenal.

Thus, efforts to break this blockade and the international isolation imposed on this Hamasistan, created to force Gaza’s rulers to renounce their allegiance to a program pledged to the violent destruction of Israel, have little to do with sympathy for Gazans and everything to do with fueling anti-Israel propaganda. Though European sympathy for the “plight” of besieged Gaza is commonplace, support for breaking the blockade means freedom for Hamas, not the people who must live under the rule of Islamist tyrants.

But that hasn’t stopped anti-Israel activists from attempting to stage propaganda incidents highlighting their opposition to the blockade against Hamas. The latest is a so-called Freedom Flotilla of eight ships that left Istanbul, Turkey, this week.

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GPO advises foreign journalists on luxurious Gaza restaurant

Yaakov Lappin
Middle East/JPost
27 May '10

In a bid to stir awareness of anti-Israeli slants in foreign media coverage of Gaza, the Government Press Office sent an e-mail on Wednesday to members of the Foreign Press Association in Israel containing a guide to a luxurious restaurant in the Strip and a recently opened Olympic-sized pool.

The e-mail was based on a recent dispatch by journalist and commentator Tom Gross, in which he highlighted what he described as “the manipulative agenda of the BBC and other foreign media agencies.”

In the dispatch, sent on Tuesday, Gross added that much of the foreign media coverage was “deliberately misleading global audiences and systematically creating the false impression that people are somehow starving in Gaza, and that it is all Israel’s fault.”

Gross sent the dispatch ahead of the imminent arrival of a flotilla of boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists attempting to reach Gaza to deliver what they say is humanitarian aid to the Gazan people.

“In anticipation of foreign correspondents traveling to Gaza to cover reports of alleged humanitarian difficulties in the Hamas-run territory, and as part of efforts to facilitate the work of journalists in the region, the Government Press Office is pleased to bring to your attention the attached menu and information for the Roots Club and Restaurant in Gaza,” the GPO missive read.

“We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended. You may wish to enquire of a possible discount upon presentation of a valid press card. There is also the possibility of an enjoyable evening on the Greens Terrace Garden Cafe, which serves ‘eclectic food and fresh cocktails,’” it continued.

“Correspondents may also wish to enjoy a swim at the new Olympic size swimming pool as reported in the Palestinian media to have been opened last week,” the e-mail said.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, Seaman said he not surprised to receive several outraged responses from foreign journalists.

“Those who act as spokespeople for Palestinian propaganda were furious with self-righteous indignation and were angry,” Seaman said. “This was to be expected.”

“There is much hypocrisy in the coverage by international media of Gaza, and unfortunately, to some extent, the Israeli media plays a part in it. We are receiving political, slanted coverage. This message could help them wake up and do a better job,” he added.

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IDF: The Humanitarian Condition in Gaza Strip - facts and figures

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
25 May '10

Special Overview
The Humanitarian Condition in Gaza Strip
IDF Spokesperson May 2010

I. Introduction:

1. Since Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip, it has politically institutionalized radical Islam in Gaza. Hamas, supported and funded by Iran, denies Israel's right to exist and continues to build up its weapons stockpiles so as to continue attacking the Israeli civilian population. Since 2010, 140 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip.

2. Hamas uses all means available to smuggle weaponry into Gaza. Whether they are using smuggling tunnels or fisherman boats, Hamas is constantly trying to smuggle in missiles, launchers, guns, explosives and materials for building weapons.

3. IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, including the maritime closure and crossing restrictions, arise from the need to maintain the safety of the citizens of Israel from the terrorist threat in the Gaza Strip and to prevent weapons smuggling.

4. The Ministry of Defense and the IDF allow the crossing of goods and equipment in a routine and frequent manner, and enables the transfer of people for medical, religious, welfare, business or diplomatic reasons.

5. This summary provides facts and figures, which contravene the claim of a "humanitarian crisis" in the Gaza Strip.

II. Food Products and Clothing:

1. Most types of food are allowed into the Strip, and are transferred by the private sector or by international organizations.

2. During 2009, 30,920 trucks containing 800,000 tons of supplies were transferred into Gaza. This included fruits and vegetables, meat products, poultry and fish, dairy products, sugar, rice and legumes, flour and yeast, oil, and more. Furthermore, 10,871 heads of cattle were transferred for the Muslim holidays of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha.

Related article: Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size pools: What the media won’t report about Gaza

3. In the first quarter of 2010 (January-March), 94,500 tons of supplies were transferred in 3,676 trucks to the Strip: 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; 553 tons of milk powder and baby food.

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