The liberal end of the Israel lobby was on fine display yesterday when the Israel Policy Forum hosted Israeli Minister Isaac Herzog to discuss "Gaza Challenges: Overseeing humanitarian assistance to Gaza." Herzog is from the Labor party and serves as the minister who coordinates humanitarian aid to Gaza. Here is how Herzog responded a question from Christian Science Monitor writer Howard LaFranchi on the conference call:
Howard LaFranchi: How do you respond to the criticism of the international community that Israel is not letting basic reconstruction materials into Gaza?"Isaac Herzog: Now, with respect to humanitarian aid, since the beginning of the operation and ever since, all international humanitarian aid that has come here has been flown in, shipped in smoothly. There is no backlog or no congestion of any humanitarian aid that needs to get into Gaza. We are monitoring it closely. The passages, the crossings are open for this purpose. There's a special emergency coordinating unit that works with all of the international agencies.
There are comments of bureaucracy. There are complaints. And there were issues that were raised with respect to certain products that were requested to go in. And, yesterday, it was decided to alleviate fully any issue pertaining to food supplies into Gaza of any kind.
But the big issue, of course, is what we call dual use. Even, for example, sugar. Sugar, for example, can be used in a certain chemical process for explosives. We — the missile — the heavy missile that landed on Ashkelon just a few days ago, in a school in Ashkelon, was homemade. It's a product of local chemical industry that may be have been using fertilizers for agriculture or anything else. And that is why there's a strict policy as to some of the products that can be used for dual use.
Listening
to Minister Herzog one would think everything is fine except for a few bureaucratic snafus that have since been fixed. A recent report from the
UN would seems to indicate differently. From the March 3, 2009 UN article "Gaza: after
donor conference, aid inflow still restricted, UN says":
Key crossings remain closed or partially closed, reconstruction materials are still prohibited, and restrictions on food types, clothing and schoolbooks have been maintained, the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update on the situation in Gaza today.
“More than 80 percent of all goods currently allowed into Gaza are basic foods,” OCHA said, adding that materials for home rebuilding and repair of water, sanitation and power infrastructure were urgently needed.
As of 2 March, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), Gaza’s water utility, reported that 50,000 people still do not have access to piped water and an additional 100,000 receive water approximately every 7-10 days.
According to GEDCO, Gaza’s power utility, the power deficit throughout the Gaza Strip as of yesterday remained at 19 per cent, with 90 per cent of the Gaza population receiving intermittent electricity and 10 per cent completely off the grid.
Those conditions will not improve until the necessary pipes, generators and other basic supplies are allowed into Gaza, OCHA said.
Now, there could be an argument that it is an Israeli minister's job is to disseminate propaganda (i.e. lie) to international audiences about the practices of their government. But is it the job of non governmental organizations in the US, let alone ones allegedly working for "peace and security",to give this a platform? Does the IPF agree with the Israeli prohibition on sugar entering Gaza as a defensive measure? I wasn't sure listening to the presentation. Instead of challenging Herzog, the the moderator from IPF , Professor Steven Spiegel, only lamented the fact the Herzog would not be serving in the next Israeli government. After referring to Herzog as an "old friend" of IPF, Spiegel said, "several people on this call wish that you could be in the
government."
The Israel Policy Forum says it is "committed to a strong and enduring U.S.-Israel relationship and to advancing the shared interests of the United States and the State of Israel." In this case the IPF simply came off as an apologist for Israeli policies that even the US government has criticized. How exactly do they imagine that helping the work for peace?
