There are a lot. This is just one of them.
In an editorial that has been well-linked and criticized elsewhere, the NY Times said yesterday:
Here's a catalog of humanitarian aid transferred to Gaza through Israel. But that's only while the actual war was going on. Here's the rest, since then. It's damn hard to spin this as an effort to "keep the people of Gaza miserable." The fact is that it's Hamas that's keeping the people of Gaza miserable. Do "Israeli officials" regularly take pains to point that out? You bet they do. That's not exactly the same as making their misery a "goal." But the distinction may be lost on some.
So I'll keep this short and simple:
Israel is at war with Hamas. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and has vowed to stop at nothing less (that's a stated goal). So Israel has no choice but to try to prevent Hamas from doing that.
One of the main objectives of Operation Cast Lead was to deplete the stocks of weapons, ammunition and fortifications that Hamas had amassed in the Gaza Strip. Having accomplished that in large part, it was then incumbent upon Israel to see that those stocks were not replenished, or at least to minimize the extent to which they were.
Hence, the embargo. Hence, the blockade.
The problem is that Hamas has already busted the blockade. They've acquired extremely potent weapons that aren't being brought in by boat or truck or tunnel. Those weapons are lies -- many, many lies. And they're being effectively deployed with the credulous complicity of the Western media.
This is just one of them.
In an editorial that has been well-linked and criticized elsewhere, the NY Times said yesterday:
After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel -- with Egypt's help -- imposed a blockade on many goods and most people going into and out of the territory. The goal was to quickly turn residents against their new government.No. Sorry. This total distortion of the truth has been repeated so incessantly of late that it's taken as fact without question. Here's Peter Beinart echoing one of more popular refrains:
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported, the Israeli officials in charge of the embargo adhere to what they call a policy of "no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis." In other words, the embargo must be tight enough to keep the people of Gaza miserable, but not so tight that they starve.You can find various versions of this mantra all over the lot. But they're all attributed to anonymous, unnamed "Israeli officials" (in the singular or plural). Here's another.
And small wonder. It hasn't exactly gone viral (after being in circulation for about a year now, Google reports only 265 hits for that particular phrase, most of them self-referential), and up to now has lived mainly in the fever swamps of anti-Israel rage. But it's catching on. Meanwhile, back in the reality-based world ...When the blockade was tightened in June 2007, an Israeli official described the policy in off-the-record comments as "no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis", Michael Bailey of Oxfam told the BBC.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahyu, said he had never heard this phrase.
Here's a catalog of humanitarian aid transferred to Gaza through Israel. But that's only while the actual war was going on. Here's the rest, since then. It's damn hard to spin this as an effort to "keep the people of Gaza miserable." The fact is that it's Hamas that's keeping the people of Gaza miserable. Do "Israeli officials" regularly take pains to point that out? You bet they do. That's not exactly the same as making their misery a "goal." But the distinction may be lost on some.
So I'll keep this short and simple:
Israel is at war with Hamas. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and has vowed to stop at nothing less (that's a stated goal). So Israel has no choice but to try to prevent Hamas from doing that.
One of the main objectives of Operation Cast Lead was to deplete the stocks of weapons, ammunition and fortifications that Hamas had amassed in the Gaza Strip. Having accomplished that in large part, it was then incumbent upon Israel to see that those stocks were not replenished, or at least to minimize the extent to which they were.
Hence, the embargo. Hence, the blockade.
The problem is that Hamas has already busted the blockade. They've acquired extremely potent weapons that aren't being brought in by boat or truck or tunnel. Those weapons are lies -- many, many lies. And they're being effectively deployed with the credulous complicity of the Western media.
This is just one of them.
