Amira Hass reports on the many Gazans who hope to be killed by Israel at fence protests - by Elder of Ziyon

...She does mention that very few of the people who go to the protests are interested in protesting. They go to kill time. Some went for free food provided by Hamas for Ramadan. It is a social event, not a protest.

Elder of Ziyon..
13 August '18..

Haaretz' Amira Hass reports:

How many of the young people protesting Friday at the Gaza border fence hoped the soldiers facing them would pull the trigger and end their lives?

Many. Many more than is reported or than the Palestinians are prepared to or can admit publicly.

“A person who was shot in the leg and had his leg amputated weeps. Not because his leg is gone, but because the soldier didn’t kill him,” said someone who came out of the Gaza Strip for a few days. He told of a 30-year-old man who went up to the fence a few times, was wounded a few times, until he got lucky and the soldier on the other side finally killed him.

What is the ratio between the number of those seeking to continue protecting the principles of the Palestinian struggle – by protesting at the border fence – and the number of those using the patriotic-nationalistic mantle to commit suicide, knowing that Islam prohibits “ordinary” suicide?

Many of them are young people who go to the fence to be wounded, thinking that Hamas will pay them, and then they can pay their debts at the grocery store or pay their rent for two months. It’s true: Hamas pays the injured a one-time payment of $200, I’m told. But only if the injury was serious.

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Gaza Through Fresh Eyes Reveals Normality, Not Horror

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
13 June '10

The image of the Middle East in general and the Palestinian territories in particular is one of squalor and bloodshed. There has been plenty of the latter throughout the years, but anyone who visits the Palestinian areas knows how far from the truth is the commonly held assumption that the West Bank and Gaza in particular are awful places where the inhabitants are barely hanging on for dear life. There are plenty of poor Palestinians – and more than a few living in poverty across the border in Israel, too. But many of the towns and cities on the West Bank are bustling, prosperous, and largely middle-class. And while no one will mistake Gaza for the Cote d’Azure, the reality of even that unhappy place does not conform to the image of Israeli-imposed horror.

But don’t take my word for it; just read this week’s Sunday New York Times Week in Review section for a glimpse of “Gaza Through Fresh Eyes,” a photo essay by Katie Orlinsky with text by Ethan Bronner. What did Orlinsky find in Gaza? As Bronner writes:

For some, it’s the relative modernity — the jazzy cellphone stores and pricey restaurants. For others, it’s the endless beaches with children whooping it up. But for nearly everyone who visits Gaza, often with worry of danger and hostility, what’s surprising is the fact that daily life, while troubled, often has the staggering quality of the very ordinary.

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The Food Crisis In Gaza: Testimony From 'Palestine Today', A Gaza Publication

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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