From the Reuters article "Israel eases Gaza embargo to allow snack food":
Israel is easing its Gaza embargo to allow snack food and drinks into the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian officials said Wednesday, following an international outcry over Israel's raid on an aid flotilla.
Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, said the territory needs cement -- banned by Israel and essential for reconstruction after a December 2008-January 2009 war -- not soft drinks.
An Israeli official said the new product list, announced hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, was unrelated to Israel's May 31 takeover of the convoy that challenged its Gaza blockade.
The talks between Obama and Abbas are expected to focus on ways to ease the embargo, which has drawn mounting international criticism since Israeli commandos, who met violent resistance on a Turkish-flagged ship, killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.
The Palestinian officials, based in the West Bank, said that as of next week, Israel will allow a wider variety of food, such as potato crisps, biscuits, canned fruit and packaged humous, as well as soft drinks and juice, into the Gaza Strip.
The irony is that every Israeli "concession" to allow more into Gaza only raises the question of why the blockade exists in the first place.
Heh, Adam you are on a roll with titles.
A Southparkian variation: “Let them eat snacky cakes!”
Really, this is just an insult – to Gazans, and to the men who died for Gazan freedom.
It reminds me of the x-ray machine for luggage for people coming out of Gaza — which doesn’t have a shelf to catch the baggage on the other side, so that your baggage just falls directly on the ground.
It seems sometimes that they will do anything to grind people’s faces into the ground any way they can. It’s like they have cruelty tourettes.
That’s Zionism for you. Take everything that’s good and pure and honorable about Judaism — precepts of moral code, of justice, of stewardship — and grind it under the heel of a jack boot until it’s no more. Israeli culture in a nutshell.
“Cruelty Tourettes” Good one Pamela!
Adam, your final line sums it up. When the Israelis allowed in clothes and shoes for the first time in years a few months ago, it brought attention (or should have) to the fact that these items had been prohibited. Ditto for when John Kerry complained about pasta being denied entry and the Israelis reversed themselves. With the Israelis presently attempting to recast the blockade as one that purely was designed to keep weapons out, these “concessions” are a welcome reminder that it was always a matter of collective punishment against a civilian population.
I would not be surprised to see an switch as the usual happen for the chips and sodas, What I mean is that expired goods which aparthied has on their selves end up being the stuff they send to gaza as usual. They take expired goods which are not exactly a suitible thing to consume and give it to them instead.
Israel’s ‘red lines’ policy, in place for at least a year.
Patrick Clawson, WINEP’s go to guy when DC runs out of ways demonize Iran, prepared similar analyses of US sanctions on Iraq, when Clawson did contract work for US Defense university.
who’s teaching whom?
Jesus! Did they pass a Sanctions package against Iran today? The global Elites are insane. What is the end game here? Treading on dangeous ground. I hear the dogs of war growling.
Sorry for the hyperbole.
For whatever reason the Huffington Post just removed what I think is a better headline to the story, “Israel Allows Junk Food into Gaza.”
Folks, there is no nutritional value in all this junk food.
None of this is going to solve the high levels of anemia and malnutrition. What Gazans need is healthy food, vitamin rich food.
All these canned fruits and snacks and sugar-rich juice and soda are going to make them obese and weak, prone to heart attacks and high cholesterol.
This is nothing but the same collective and barbaric punishment of 1.5 million human-beings cloaked by Israel with the “easing the siege” label.
Truly the Gazans are being experimented on in vicious ways.