June 10, 9:42 AM
Courtesy Of The NY Israel Conflict Examiner
“Four months after Israel waged a war here to stop Hamas rocket fire and two years after Hamas took full control of this coastal strip, Gaza is like an island adrift. Squeezed from without by an Israeli and Egyptian boycott and from within by their Islamist rulers, the 1.5 million people here are cut off from any productivity or hope.” “Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt.” “Dozens of families still live in tents…” Young people are traumatized. Many residents are taking an anti-depressant.
[My comments are in elipses.] [It would have been fairer to put it as “Israel sent a retaliatory expedition” rather than “Israel waged a war.” Otherwise, readers remember Israel opening an assault rather than Arabs committing aggression.]
Gaza “…is better off than nearly all of Africa as well as parts of Asia. There is no acute malnutrition, and infant mortality rates compare with those in Egypt and Jordan, according to Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization here.” One reason is that Israel allows in 100 trucks a day, bearing necessities.
[This puts the lie to accusations by the UN and other critics of Israel that Israel’s blockade caused a humanitarian crisis including starvation and death. It also exposes as exaggerated the international sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs at the expense of the far needier Africans.]
Smugglers bring the rest of what the people want, including arms. “Israel periodically bombs those in hopes of weakening Hamas, which says it will never recognize Israel and will reserve the right to use violence against it until it leaves all the land it won in the 1967 war. After that, there would be a 10-year truce while the next steps were contemplated, although the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel in any borders.”
[Islamic ideology uses truces as periods for rearming, after which they try again to conquer the enemy. Therefore, Hamas will never make peace with Israel. Why should Israel allow a truce in which the enemy prepares another war?]
Israel believes that its expedition into Gaza caused the current lull in rocket fire “For many Israelis, Gaza is a symbol of all that is wrong with Palestinian sovereignty, which they view increasingly as an opportunity for anti-Israeli forces, notably Iran, to get within rocket range.” They believe that if they let Gaza import construction materials, as the U.S. and UN are pressing them to, Hamas would use them to rebuild bunkers (Ethan Bronner, NY Times, 5/29, A1).
Of course the IDF incursion caused a lull in rocket fire. Hamas has to lay low while it brings in more war materiel. The incursion, however, does not deter Hamas from making new assaults when it is ready and Iran finds it opportune.
Sure Israel anticipates that Hamas would use steel and cement to build bunkers. That is what it did the last time. The question is, why do the U.S. and UN demand that Israel let through that war materiel? I think they don’t care about Israelis casualties or want them.
Of course Arab sovereignty would be an opportunity for war! That is expressed in the PLO Covenant and by Arafat in his phased plan for the conquest of Israel.
Mr. Bronner reports that dozens of Arab families live in temporary quarters, and many take anti-depressants. Why didn’t he mention that hundreds of Jewish families live in temporary quarters, as the result of their uncaring and incompetent government which ousted them from Gaza? Thousands of others are traumatized from the bombardment of their towns in Israel by Arabs using vacated Jewish towns in Gaza for launching rockets. NY Times sympathy is one-sided and misplaced.
The people of Gaza boast of their “democratic election.” They chose Hamas. They favor terrorism. Then why the sympathy for them as if they are innocent people caught in the middle? Why aren’t they held responsible for the recurrent wars they generate?
For an earlier piece showing NY Times sympathy for Hamas: click here
For more on why sympathy for Gazans is misplaced, click here:
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