GAZA, WAR, and ISRAEL

AT THE MARKET IN GAZA

“The Palestinians of Gaza descended from refugees of the 1948 war that created Israel.”  That’s a stretch. Now any high school student should know the Jews were given a homeland by by the U.N. in a Partition Plan, not by war.  Who is so uninformed (or biased ?) that they would print such nonsense. The New York Times, that’s who.

The war of 1948 was a war against the Jews declared by Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq in an attempt to nullify the U.N. ruling and drive the Jews from the area. It is true that Israel did not declare their independence until the conclusion of the fighting, but the inference that Israel obtained its independence by going to war against its neighbors is simply false.

In the article, the Times points out,

“Today Hamas has no rival here. It runs the schools, hospitals, courts, security services and — through smuggler tunnels from Egypt — the economy.”

and,

Young men [in Gaza] carried posters of a man with vampire teeth biting into a bloodied baby.

The vampire was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank

and,

[The Palestinian people] have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one here [in Gaza]. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating.

Its latest victim is electricity for Gaza, part of which is supplied by Israel and paid for by the West Bank government, which is partly reimbursed by Hamas. But the West Bank says that Hamas is not paying enough so it has held off paying Israel, which has halted delivery.

“They [Fatah] are lining their pockets and they are part of the siege,” asserted Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader and a surgeon, speaking of the West Bank government. “There will be no reconciliation.”

Nevertheless, the tone of the NYT article puts the onus of Gaza’s problems on Israel and headlines their piece Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair.

Bob B