This is my new theme. The center of apartheid is here, where Americans persist in denial enforced by the Israel lobby. While everywhere else, even in Israel, there is some awareness. The Independent in London has seen a shocking new report by the Red Cross blaming chronic malnutrition in Gaza on Israel:
It chronicles the "devastating" effect of the siege that Israel imposed after Hamas seized control in June 2007 and notes that the dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.
The 46-page report from the International Committee of the Red Cross… says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40 per cent, is causing "progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza's population".
My friend James North, a world traveler, says you would be hard-pressed to find a greater difference in standard of living across any border in the world as the one that exists between Israel and Gaza. Even the U.S. and Mexico cannot match it, he says.
Related posts:
- while the Obama administration worries about the unfairness of the Goldstone report…
- 2/3 of members of Council on Foreign Relations say U.S. policy favors Israel too much
- Alterman: Let the Settlers Live in the New Palestinian State
- Jews Prefer to Live Among Gentiles (Says Haaretz)
- The war in Gaza: ‘the first ever war crime broadcast live on TV with the whole world watching’
{ 40 comments }
At the end, in Warsaw Ghetto they had approx. 150 calories per person per day. It didn't start that way, but as time progressed, the indifference and callousness of Germans increased, and they didn't really care:
My grandmother remembered that a common sentiment was that Jews had money and they are really not starving, and anyway there were enough holes in ghetto walls to prevent any problems.
It reminds me of people saying that Gaza people should get money from rich Arab countries and buy their food rather than rely on handouts, and and that there are enough tunnels to deliver everything but Leviev diamonds and Rolls-Royces.
The meme I run across is that Egypt could solve the problem if they really wanted to.
I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that a good portion of the civilized world blames the Palestinians of the WB and Gaza for their subjugation. Is there some secret set of rules for undoing a brutal military occupation?
Americans to a person would fight to the death the kind of tyranny Israel has imposed on the native inhabitants of the land. Why do we expect differently of Palestinians?
That's the inherent racism of this struggle: many Westerners unthinkingly expect the brown people to be satisfied with a half-life.
There are no words for this disgraceful racism, and for anyone to think that somehow "a chosen people" are entitled to do this to another — for whatever cockamamie reason — is even viler.
Shame on every Jew who thinks this is acceptable.
Judy: That's the inherent racism of this struggle: many Westerners unthinkingly expect the brown people to be satisfied with a half-life.
Colin: I agree with your assessment. Also, I think, consistent with your statement that "Americans to a person would fight to the death the kind of tyranny Israel has imposed", that Palestinian violence has been incredibly pacific. The wonder is not that there have been suicide bombers, but there have been so few coming out of a traumatized society of so many. The notion that Palestinians are mindlessly violent, hate life, and love terrorism is beyond ridiculous.
Eva: It's terrible to think we allowed a few Jews to survive, especially since some of them might have gone to later discriminate against Palestinians.
Colin: I hope that was just poorly worded. That is a horrible thing to say Eva.
"The center of apartheid is here, where Americans persist in denial enforced by the Israel lobby."
American TV crew interviews 3 people:
Cue typical American, over 60% of population: "Serves them brown ni**ers right! Go Israel, am waiting for the rupture!"
Cue typical aware of the world American, centrist (called left wing liberal in Yoo Ess of Ey): "It is all the Arabs fault. If only they would move away from their land and go to Egypt, or something, it would be OK. It is Israel which is suffering here."
Cue an American politician, any level, from president on down: "Israel can do no wrong. Apartheid is the wrong word to use – Israel cannot be racist, because of Holocaust. Plus, you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. I am a proud Zionist. Can you hold on, my cell is ringing and it is AIPAC calling – hope I did all right in this interview with you… hold on… Yes, yes, hello rabbi… yes, thank you, thank you, I tried to do my best… OK, I have to go now, thank you for asking me my views."
"I disagreed with her, but now I think she may have been right. It's terrible to think we allowed a few Jews to survive, especially since some of them might have gone to later discriminate against Palestinians."
F***s sake, Eva.
This is a standard reaction of a bullied, beaten, abused child – the bullied, the victim, learns what's what and becomes a bully himself.
This happens all the time in every school and in every country, and this is what Israel has become after the Holocaust.
By the way, to get my "suffering street cred" with the Holocaust industry folks, my grandma's best friend was an inmate at a concentration camp.
Not a nazi slave labor camp which took in millions of poles, russians, french, and many others.
No, an honest to goodness, actual death camp (dislike the term concentration – a death camp seems more apt and truthful).
She still has the tatoo…
Witty? SOG? Where are you guys? Cleaning your big Israeli weapons?
Eva, I think what you wrote is horrible.
But I do suspect that ambivalent feelings vis-a-vis the lack of resistance in WWII among Jews contributes to the utter intolerance of Palestinian resistance today.
Shabbos, people.
Colin: The limitation on the suicide bombings was mainly the number of bombs that could be built and smuggled. Rallies would draw tens of thousands of volunteers, all of them claiming to be willing to die THAT DAY. Palestinians are certainly ideologically mobilized for total war, they only lack the resources to prosecute it. So the question remains whether those tens of thousands are hangers-on or sincere.
The commitment to savagery is best seen in the freelancers, like the woman who placed personal ads in order to lure Israeli men to their doom.
From Eva Smagacz:
To Colin Murray,
Americangoy
Judy
and others…
The SECOND comment:
It also reminds me of something else my Grandma said. (…). It's terrible to think we allowed a few Jews to survive, especially since some of them might have gone to later discriminate against Palestinians.
HAS NOT BEEN WRITTEN BY ME.
These outrageous comments appear in my name on the regular basis and Phil Weiss kindly and with patience removes them from this blog.
Whenever this sort of character-assasination-comment like that appears, I like to think that I have written something right in the comment immediately above it.
Eva
Eurosabra, I hadn't heard about the personal ads, though it sounds strangely reminiscent of a Shin Bet tactic. I suppose Palestinians are learning from the masters.
Eva,
The idea that the Arab world is not doing enough to help, is real.
For what its worth, I've seen poverty as bad as described and presented in Cairo and Calcutta with my own eyes, and photo albums even in free South Africa.
Under what conditions would the Gazans fair better? How can those conditions be achieved?
On the comment re: US and Mexico.
THAT should be our outrage. Why are we content to be the beneficiaries of a disproportion so abusive?
Why aren't we boycotted products made in the US? (a satire, not a proposal).
The standard cycle of abuse continues. The old cartoons showing how Dagwood, home from the bitchy corporate atmosphere, takes it out on his wife Blondi & his kids.. How long will literally poor Americans pay for this injustice regarding the PALESTINIANS–not
to mention, it almost might help the view of goy Americans in the
World…
cry me a river………
Richard,
Under what conditions would the Gazans fair better? How can those conditions be achieved?
Did you just ask these questions with the straight face?
How about: Gazans would fare better if they could BUY things. You know, like food and building materials, and medical supplies, and fuel.
Gazans would fare better if they could GET things that they BOUGHT, as in actually lay their hands on the food so that their kids could eat.
Gazans would fare better if they could have FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. You know this quaint right that allows you to leave Washington DC to see the Calcutta and Cairo and Jerusalem. And allows you friends from outside of your district to come and visit you.
Do you know what, it was such a stupid question I am not going to bother to try to answer it, after all. If you don't KNOW what to do when people starve, I don't think my writing it for you to read will make a blind bit of difference. Just read the IVth Geneva Convention, and the Wikipedia definition of "concentration camp".
Richard, after reading the Independent article, I am more impressed than ever at the noble sacrifice that your son is making. Leaving his comfortable home in the states to go over there and aid the powerless and afflicted. You must be very proud.
Young men like him put the lie to the old canard of tribal selfishness. Please keep us posted on his work.
You should answer with a straight face (rather than anger), so you can ACCOMPLISH their improvement.
Palestinians (refugees and others) have been poster children for ideological movements, rather than individuals requiring health in their own right.
Its been for a LONG time.
The question was sincere.
A better question to actually answer, than to just rant.
Eva, I'm relieved that wasn't your comment. It did seem sharply incongruous with what I have seen you write before. I'll know better next time. Don't let it get you down. Cheers
What will your son be doing, Richard?
Sorry Richard,
I should have written more politely. I just feel sometimes that you ask questions for a sake of asking, almost as if it was an intellectual game, and majority of them are, imho, very insensitive to real and concrete human suffering that Phil highlights in his blog.
It would also help if Gazans could SELL things.
It's not just a matter of hunger. It's a matter of an entire society being shut down… for the crime of daring to resist violently in the 4th decade of facing a brutal, violent military occupation on their own.
What my in-laws who live in Gaza fear most is for the generation of kids who are growing up in these horrific conditions.
Richard, I've seen that poverty in places like Cairo as well, where entire communities live in trash dumps. I grew up near Camden, NJ.
Poverty as a punitive measure is something altogether different, don't you think?
'HAS NOT BEEN WRITTEN BY ME.'
This has happened to me too, and lots of others. We don't hear from Charles Keating and Jim Haygood so often any more and I wonder if the relentless application of this childish nastiness is one reason for that. Eva seems to strike a particular chord with SOG and anyone else here who indulges in this pathetic practice, her nationality provoking in the less evolved the same sort of visceral reaction genuine anti-semites feel upon seeing a yarmulke.
She is owed an apology from anyone who fell for it, even though they too are victims of such desperate spitefulness. It's continued employment is an index of how badly the war fares for the Zionists. There is a sense of tired resignation in some of Bill's abuse nowadays; gone is the cocksure arrogance and in it's place is a half-hearted going thru the motions (hmmm, I'll call Phil a Hitler lover again I guess; err, let's pretend to be Eva again..)
It's an ugly denouement, and it promises to be a long one, but it is preferable to the alternative.
'The idea that the Arab world is not doing enough to help, is real.'
Standing on the throat of the Palestinians, the Zionist huffily demands that the Arabs do more to free their brethren. That would be a GOOD, but the idea that the Zionist should simply step off the throat, well, that is POLEMICAL!
Richard, your innate incapacity to blame Israel first for anything is the fatal flaw in your carefully tended progressive self-image, and it colours your judgement across the spectrum, with darker hues than you can yourself perceive. This automatic, and increasingly frantic changing of the subject does not fool anyone here, and you are living in a nation full of people who are less likely to fall for it with every passing day.
I'm not in the blaming game.
What do you PROPOSE practically? For it to be practical, Israel would have to live with it.
Right now, Israel perceives that Hamas couldn't maintain its non-aggressive discipline for six months.
Richard,
You wrote:
Right now, Israel perceives that Hamas couldn't maintain its non-aggressive discipline for six months.
Despite Hamas truce, the medieval, brutal and ongoing siege of Gaza has not eased.
Should we conclude:
Right now, Hamas perceives that Israel couldn't discipline themselves for six months to postpone the ongoing strangulation of the Gaza Strip, and delay the project of reducing its happless population into stone age existance?
Because the stark truth is that despite truce, Israel didn't fulfil ANY of its own promises, isn't it?
What should Israel do? Make a fair settlement, that's what. What it should have done 40 years ago. We all know what that settelemetn needs to look like: '67 borders, East Jersusalem, right of return or negotiated compromise.
Let's be clear about one thing. As little as Israel trusts Hamas now, how will it be when the children raised in these feral conditions come of age?
But really, hasn't that been the plan all along: to ensure that there are no "partners for peace?"
Israel's "stranglehold" has been variable, ranging from complete and forced isolation (only for a few days at any one time), to allowing unhindered transportation of humanitarian aid delivered by reliably non-terrorist international aid organizations, to a border managed similarly to the US-Mexico border.
So long as Hamas was not initiating violence directly, or recreating the infrastructure of future violence, the US-Mexico border model was the best option.
There are MANY ways that communities get isolated economically. If you read the health report, they stated that primary nutrients are accessible within Gaza, that the people are in danger of nutrient deficiencies in micro-nutrients (solvable by growing vegetables for example).
Its real, and not unimportant, but also not as headlined.
It isn't actually Hamas that breaks the rocket pauses, it's Islamic Jihad, or occasionally a PFLP related group. These are deliberate wrecking actions to break the truces, which Hamas usually wants to preserve, and the mystery is that, once it has happened, Hamas always goes along with it.
Nice to live in an environment literally protected by strangers, eh Witty? We can all imagine how Witty's mask of reason would fall if
his own son was born Palestinian. Or even born as a typical American, going off to war for God and country–not to mention a job with more attraction than McDonald's.
We all know Bill Pearlman aka SOG is the one who posts here in other regular poster's real names. SOG is like a pimple on Goebbels's
pinky toe.
Anon,
You could have been born a sabra, similarly.
Wear that a little.
Hence the proposal for what constitutes peace, rather than vengeful "justice".
Richard,
We are not, here, discussing MANY ways that the communities get isolated economically. We, here, are discussing only ONE way and a single community: Lack of food in Gaza as of Friday for 80% of the people, caused by deliberate policy of Israel in direct contravention of Geneva Convention.
Switzerland, which considers itself a guardian of the convention, just issued a formal diplomatic protest note to Israel, demanding immediate stop into the siege.
I can see that you are seeking comfort in the phrase "primary neutrients" being available to Gazans.
Well, my father in law, who survived Ravensbruck concentration camp, lived on turnip soup, bread made with straw and clay, and swede marmalade. He had access to "primary neutrients".
So are you implying that this made his diet OK?
Come to think of it, by father-in-law's lack of microneutrients was solvable by growing vegetables in Ravensbruck . Stupid man, he didn't think of it. Seeds and fertiliser were a bit hard to come by in concentration camps, but it was really his problem, not Germans…..This is coming loud and clear from your post, Richard: Germans were NOT to blame.
Eva,
If you read my comments to conclude that the condition of the Gazans is "OK", then you misread.
I stated that the condition is not unimportant, just NOT as headlined.
The inquiry into cause is important. If the cause of Gazans suffering is not solely Israel's blockade, then to ONLY act to remove the blockade would NOT be an action of assistance to Gazans (as it would not result in their life improvement), but more of a political act solely, a jockeying for power.
As I said, the Israel/Gaza border has been managed in three ways during the cease-fire (and degradation of it):
1. Totally closed border (never for more than a week)
2. Emergency aid allowed by reputable aid organizations
3. US/Mexico type border restrictions
It IS a border between warring communities/states. To conclude that an open border should be the norm (US/Canada as model), is unrealistic and frankly lawless.
The cease-fire consistently and comprehensively applied is what enables the border to be US/Mexico like rather than further restricted.
Richard,
You are trying to re-write Geneva Conventions. Enquiry into the cause of occupation is mute. Occupier is responsible for the occupied conditions. You can go through several keyboards trying to obscure the fact of occupation, but it is not less real and unambiguous.
Witty: "I stated that the condition is not unimportant, just NOT as headlined."
Hey, nice–Phil's blog says the same thing about Israel as portrayed
by American political leaders and key staff, and, the MSM. So, Witty,
now do your understand better your boyhood pal's sense of concern and outrage as an American seeking justice and long-term peace?
Gaza is not under effective occupation if rockets keep flying out of it and hitting Sderot, and IDF soldiers keep disappearing into it as hostages.
It's a bit hard to discuss the modalities of Israeli self-defense with people who hold that it has none a priori, and no right to exist as a Jewish state.
So excuse me if I skip to the conclusion and point out that Halacha as such does not allow the extremes to which GOI/IDF have gone.
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