THE SPINE DECEMBER 24, 2009
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I don't mean to seem hardhearted. But I am frankly completely jaded--and made disbelieving--with the on-schedule, almost once-a-week story about the crisis in Gaza. Around Christmas, they are simply de rigeur.
Here's a predictable one in the viciously anti-Israel, truly viciously anti-Israel, Financial Times. It is by Tobias Buck, who, while he can write these in his sleep, wrote this one just for Christmas. (Never mind that there are only about 2,500 Christians still living in Gaza, some having been killed by peaceful Muslims, the others simply being scared the b'Jesus out of the Strip by them. Please forgive my timely reference to the prince of peace.)
No, I am not claiming that life in Gaza is sweet. But life in Gaza has never been sweet. (And, please, no allusions to Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza, which is about upper-class Brits in Mexico.) Also not when Gaza was under the Turks or the British Mandate or the Egyptians. Now that Gaza is under the boot of Hamas, you can imagine--and, in fact, deep inside you know--what goes for governing. I am also sure that Israeli restrictions at the combustible frontier do not make things easier. Of course, there is the border with Egypt, which nothing and no one crosses legally. Why doesn't the F.T. bitch about Cairo's cruelty to its ex-subjects?
As it happens, there is an uncannily timely testimony to the Gaza misery in Palestine Today, a Gaza publication. Surprise!
Read these next:
- Eight Pieces, Really One: Iran, Israel's Military Doctrine, The President And One Dumb Jewish Woman, The Wages of Copenhagen, The Christmas Terrorist, We Should All Stop Talking About The Middle East
- Ovadia Curses; In the Meantime Hamas Shoots Four Israelis Dead, One Pregnant
- Abbas Does Not Want to Negotiate with Israel; He Demands That Israel Concede
2 comments
Nothing changes when it comes to how the media portrays things: "In the Middle East, there would be no high explosive, no concentration camps, but the imagined, expected scene was bad enough; lice and rickets and tuberculosis, bodies rotting in the heat, the apathy of despair. Why, in 1961, did I have such a picture of the Palestinian refugees? Obviously from what I had read, as one of the average absorbent reading public; notions float in the air exactly as dust does. Nothing that I had read or heard prepared me for what I found." http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196110/gellhorn
- noga1
December 24, 2009 at 11:13pm
Actually there are only about 1500 Christians left in Gaza, at least according to the TV news last night. Many of them were permitted to exit Gaza to visit relatives in Bethlehem, in honor of Xmas. Hamas & co. have been doing a job on the Gazan Chrisitians. At best insisting that their women wear headscarfs like Moslem women & at worst.... But of course it's all Israel's fault. Why if we weren't here Moslems & Christians would live in absolute harmony, like they do in Egypt or Iraq or Saudi Arabia. It's the presence of the Jews that causes all of the problems. Now if the Jews could only understand that their role in life is to be dhimmi... For more on the plight of Christians in Gaza & Bethlehem see here. For an interesting piece on the status of Christians in the greater Middle East as a whole see here. Hershel Ginsburg Efrata / Jerusalem
- ginzy
December 25, 2009 at 4:36am