You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Seth Freedman’ tag.
A guest post by AKUS
The third shot in the Guardian’s attempts to influence the OECD (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) has been fired in an article headed Can the OECD stand up to Israel? by Sam Bahour and Charles Shamas. The proximate reason for the article is the decision by the OECD to hold a “tourism summit” in Jerusalem.
(The previous attempts were: OECD is ushering Israel in too easily - by the Guardian’s economic expert, Seth Freedman – and Put conditions on Israel’s OECD entry. The latter was co-authored by none other than Avi Shlaim, arch anti-Israeli historian, and Simon Mohun, a supporter of anti-Israeli views as a signatory to a letter published by Independent Jewish Voices essentially demanding that the British PM support the Goldstone report and one headed What is Israel doing? put out by that impartial organization, “Jews for Justice for Palestinians”).
Sam Bahour is an American Arab born in Ohio in 1964 to a father who left El Bireh for the USA in 1957. One can only wonder Bahour Sr. did not remain among Raja Shehadeh’s “blue velvet hills” on the West Bank under the benign eyes of the Jordanian military rulers. Sam Bahour has moved to the West Bank (rather like the orthodox Jewish settlers, in fact, and for much the same reason). He has been involved in several high-profile business activities on the West Bank and overcame his dislike of Israel enough to earn “an MBA in a joint program between Northwestern University in Illinois and Tel Aviv University in Israel.” This is most likely the prestigious Kellogg – Recanati Executive MBA program funded by the Israeli Recanati family. He runs a blog called ePalestine, where, among other things, despite his hatred of Israel, he refers to TAU as his “Israeli alma mater, Tel Aviv University”. Notably, he has contributed to one of most virulent sources of anti-Israeli polemics and misinformation, “Counterpunch” – “Refugees are the Key”.
Charles Shamas is a different fish altogether. Shamas is a “Senior Partner and founder of the MATTIN Group” where he spends his time invoking international law and the Geneva conventions against Israel – though not, apparently, against Hamas in the case of Gilad Shalit. For example, he has written an article entitled Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Laws of War, in what appears to be a blog called Crimes of War, that lumps in the Gaza War (Operation Cast Lead) together with wars in Congo, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Never mind that those latter conflicts resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians, and that Israel’s response, to years of rocket attacks, resulted in 1400 deaths, mostly combatants.
Below the CiF essay by Seth Freedman, The Second Intifada: 10 years on, Oct. 1, there was this comment suggesting support of the Palestinian “right of return”:
Which produced this quite reasonable reply:
Yet, the Guardian moderators would have none of it:
Can someone please tell me what was even remotely offensive – or inappropriate – about epidermoid’s comment?
“Historically, there was an exchange of populations in the Middle East and the number of displaced Jews exceeds the number of Palestinian Arab refugees. Most of the Jews were expelled as a result of an open policy of anti-Semitic incitement and even ethnic cleansing. However, unlike the Arab refugees, the Jews who fled are a forgotten case because of a combination of international cynicism and domestic Israeli suppression of the subject. The Palestinians are the only group of refugees out of the more than one hundred million who were displaced after World War II who have a special UN agency that, according to its mandate, cannot but perpetuate their tragedy. An open debate about the exodus of the Jews is critical for countering the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” and will require a more objective scrutiny of the myths about the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” – Avi Becker
The Israelis are the worst ethnic cleansers on the planet. They have consistently, throughout their 62 year history – despite its dastardly desire (according to its critics) to cleanse the state of its non-Jewish citizens - allowed the Arab/Muslim community to grow exponentially throughout the years.
However, the insidious charge of ethnic cleansing against Israel at the Guardian is so frequent its become a banality. Ben White, Gideon Levy, Seth Freedman, Neve Gordon, Daphna Baram, Ken Livingstone and others casually employ such vitriol.
Most recently, a letter was published in CiF by serial Israel haters, again leveling the charge of ethnic cleansing, imploring Labor’s new leader, Ed Miliband, to break from tradition and withdraw his support for the Jewish National Fund. The open letter was signed by (among others) Tony Greenstein, Professor Moshe Machover, and Professor Mona Baker.
“Ethnic Cleansing” is typically described as the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation.
Indeed, such a definition perfectly describes the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries between 1948 and 1967.
In April 2008 a bipartisan resolution (H. Con. Res. 185) passed the U.S. Congress that recognized the forgotten exodus of nine hundred thousand Jews from Arab countries who “were forced to flee and in some cases brutally expelled amid coordinated violence and anti-Semitic incitement that amounted to ethnic cleansing.”
Between the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Six Day War in 1967, there was a mass Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands, Jews that either fled from persecution and anti-Semitism or were forcibly expelled. They were ethnically cleansed from their homeland. Most migrated to Israel, where today, they and their descendants constitute about 40% of Israel’s population.
In all, (approximately) there were 856,000 Jews living in Arab countries in 1948, while today the population is about 5100. That means that over 99% of Arab Jews have been cleansed from Arab lands.
A guest post by AKUS
The Guardian has become notorious for the dissemination of anti-Israeli articles. Many contain factual errors, some outright lies, but we never see significant attempts by the Guardian to correct its errors. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about the year that has passed, and the year ahead. We examine our souls and our conduct towards others, and ask forgiveness for our sins and faults. It is time for the Guardian to conduct a “cheshbon nefesh” – an accounting of one’s conscience – for the New Year. I will be even more specific – it is time for the Guardian’s Jewish writers to issue apologies for the attacks against Israel that they have largely led on the Guardian’s website.
This year, once again, we have had several egregious and inflammatory articles run by the Guardian. Perhaps the worst was a story about rape in Israel that that was picked up by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood on July 21st and repeated on July 25th in more detail as Saber Kushour: ‘My conviction for “rape by deception” has ruined my life’ . The articles built on extraordinary claims made largely by Israel’s home-grown hater, Gideon Levy, of Israeli racism when an Arab was apparently found to have committed “rape by deception”.
Rachel Shabi had no trouble using this issue on July 23rd as the “hook” for an article with the attention-grabbing headline Israel turns on its own. Shabi’s article played to all the tropes so beloved by the Guardian’s Israel haters (Israel as a racist, violent, European, Mizrachi- and Arab hating implant in the Islamic world). But it was her brief reference to the rape case (“and now a Palestinian man from Jerusalem has just been convicted of rape after pretending to be Jewish and having consensual sex. This verdict, in effect turning the obfuscation of race into a criminal offence, also reveals the extent to which Israelis consider Palestinians to be abhorrent”) that resulted in the extraordinarily large number of 591 comments below the line:
Arch Israel-hater JRuskin (formerly Moeran) was quick to pick up on the allusion to the rape case:
CiF’s Jewish Israel defamers
When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”
I soon learned that:
According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.
The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies - the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.
Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing - once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greenstein has ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”
While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.
This is a guest post by AKUS
In April, Israeli Nurse wrote of the impending changes at the Guardian, following the departure of Georgina Henry to the “Culture” section of the Guardian, which apparently was in need of extra clicks that can only be ensured by posting the anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian articles that are so successful in bringing out the Israel-bashers on CiF’s Middle East section.
Although Georgina Henry was a hard act to follow for sheer malice and double-talk, the Guardian appears to have scored a home-run with the idea of bringing in a feminist Jewish editor to replace Georgina – Katharina Viner (see also ‘She never hated men’ – “But the death at the age of 58 of ‘the most maligned feminist on the planet’ has deprived feminism of its last truly challenging voice, says Katharine Viner”).
We now have a female as-a-Jew leading the charge for endless articles intended to delegitimize and denigrate Israel. Viner sees herself as the torchbearer for Rachel Corrie, the American inadvertently killed as she tried to protect an arms-smuggling tunnel with her body in Gaza.
Viner has quickly equipped herself with a stable of equally biased, fringe female Jewish contributors. There is the deplorably uninformed Mizrachi Shabi. Viner introduced us to new face on the block (see the parrot on Viner’s shoulder), Florida native Guarnieri,(“a Tel Aviv based journalist”), an ultra-leftist new arrival in Israel thoroughly disgraced in her CiF debut by chortling CiFers when she revealed a total lack of understanding of the issue of global foreign worker regulations – and Israel’s adherence to widely accepted policies. A US native, and now, apparently, Israeli immigrant taking advantage of the right-of-return to condemn her new country, as-a-Jew Guernieri performed the remarkable feat of avoiding any mention of what is happening to Mexicans back home in Arizona in her eagerness to condemn Israel for proposing to implement the same rules applied across the Western world.
This is a guest post by Geary
Nobody’s perfect and every country has its dirty linen; Israel is no exception. But even the most distracted visitor to CiF won’t have failed to notice how the Guardian gets its rocks off by sniffing around – quite exceptionally – for Israel’s. If it can’t find any, it’ll employ one of its crew of “As-a-Jews” to wash some in public (if you’ve ever thought, for instance, “What is the point of Seth Freedman?”, now you know). But should you point out on CiF that many of Israel’s sworn enemies never ever wash their smalls and that the stench cries out to heaven, you will – as sure as paint dries – be accused of whataboutery.
We’ve recently been treated to the spectacle of one Mya Guarnieri (who?- quite) using Israel’s immigration policy – a carbon copy of that of most European countries, even though Israel inhabits a rather more dangerous part of the world – as proof of the unique “inhumanity” of the country. Come again? I hear you say. We’re talking about a region of the world where it’s common practise to sequester migrant’s passports, beat them, even keep them under lock and key, where expulsion without recourse is quite normal. But should you think to write this on CiF, you will be accused of whataboutery: “Don’t come up with ‘what about Saudi?’ or ‘what about Lebanon?’ – it’s Israel we’re currently (as ever) dumping on”.
FAQs
Q: I’m a new immigrant to Israel from an English-speaking country, with no transferable skills. What’s the best way for me to get ahead?
A: Welcome to Israel! The traditional way to make a new life in Israel is to first attend Ulpan for at least six months and learn the language. Then, as time goes by and your command of the language improves, it is possible to take the courses and exams necessary to convert foreign qualifications into those recognised in Israel, or alternatively to learn a new profession.
However, pioneers in the field have recently shown that there is actually no need to waste one’s time on such a lengthy and antiquated process: if you are capable of stringing a few words together in your native language, the world is your oyster. Unprecedented opportunities exist in the field of journalism and no previous experience is required. Inspiring examples such as Seth Freedman, Rachel Shabi and Mya Guarneiri have proved that it’s not how well you write, but the political narrative you advance, that really matters.
Q: Don’t I need to have some sort of qualifications or experience in order to become a journalist and isn’t there a lot of competition?
A: Absolutely not. If you take care to stick to the correct subject material, the market is virtually unlimited and constantly expanding. Outlets such as the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss and Richard Silverstein will be only too happy to print anything you can come up with, as long as it meets the basic condition of painting Israel in the worse possible light.
Of course if you happen to have studied creative writing at some non-exclusive academic establishment this can only help, as you will sometimes find it necessary to rely more upon fiction than the available hard facts. The key words to get into every article are ‘racist’, ‘apartheid’, ‘far-right settlers’ and ‘so-called democracy’. There is little to fear as far as a drying-up of the market is concerned; great care is being taken by a number of elements in the region, in collaboration with respected international bodies, to make sure that the present commercial climate is perpetuated for as long as possible.
This is a guest post by Joy Wolfe
Gradually, as the true facts about what happened when the Israeli commandos were dropped from a helicopter to board the Mavi Marmara in an attempt to halt the so-called Freedom Flotilla, a few more supportive media stories are starting to filter through.
And none is more welcome than Seth Freedman’s posting on “Comment is Free”.
It is one thing to get support from people who are known to be Israel’s friends who have consistently backed Israel in the past, but when that support comes from someone better known for his unrelenting criticism of the Jewish state, it carries so much more weight. Thus when Seth Freedman writes that Iisrael had no option other than to stop the flotilla it is music to my ears.
This week I have been on a roller coaster of emotions.
When the news first broke that there had been fatalities among those on board I was filled with horror and disbelief. How could Israel have been stupid enough to get drawn into this scenario I thought? As one by one countries throughout the world rushed to condemn Israel before any of the facts had a chance to filter through, the scale of the incompetence became clear.
Just Journalism released another one of their insightful media analyses yesterday comparing coverage of Iran’s acceptance into the UN Commission on the Status of Women with that of Israel’s acceptance into the OECD.
Last week, The UN Commission on the Status of Women accepted the membership of Iran, despite the Islamic regime’s poor record on women’s rights. Then, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) accepted Israel, a country with both a free-market economy and a stable, well-regulated financial services sector, into its ranks.
Importantly, Just Journalism observed that in the UK media, only Israel’s accession to the OECD was reported “including negative opinion pieces on the Guardian’s Comment is free website”. Commenting on the double standards at play, Just Journalism stated:
No other country’s political behaviour has been subject to such scrutiny, or been viewed as an impediment to joining an organisation that is primarily concerned with the development of economic policies. Indeed, when the OECD was formed in September 1961, one of the initial members was Turkey, which at that time was being ruled by a military junta following a coup earlier that year. While Turkey’s human and civil rights record remains a stumbling block to it joining the European Union, which is as much a political body as an economic one, it has never been raised in relation to its continued membership of the OECD.
I guess this is another fine example of the “fair and balanced” nature of “Comment is Free”.
Read the entire analysis here.
This is a guest post by Oliver Worth
It’s official: The rights of private enterprises to decide what to sell is now the antithesis of democracy – that is, of course, if one reads Seth Freedman’s latest CiF piece ‘Suppressing Book Bolsters Settlers’.
Freedman begins by making a peculiar comparison between those trying to boycott Israel from abroad and the choice of the Tzomet Sefarim bookstore to stop selling a left wing political pamphlet. What he doesn’t mention, or fails to see, is that these two occurrences couldn’t be further apart. Whilst the decision of the Tzomet Sefarim to stop stocking this particular piece was as a result of unpopularity and customer complaints (a regular occurrence in a democratic society), the tactics used by anti-Israeli boycotters in the UK such as BDS are about preventing people from teaching and speaking – surely the exact opposite of liberal democracy.
What Freedman admits is that there had been a storm of criticism of the pamphlet, though he uses this as his ‘proof’ that the decision was forced because of threats of violence, rather than as obvious reasons why the pamphlet was so unpopular. He refers to quotes in the book such as settlers being referred to as “messianic madmen” and their children as “brainwashed zombies”, yet sees this as a vindication of his belief that the book must have been withdrawn because of threats, rather than because the pamphlet is crass, poorly written and ultimately detrimental to the firm’s bottom line.
Having run out of ideas to justify how a bookstore deciding to stop stocking a book must be the first sign of a totalitarian regime, Freedman goes on to rant about his own experiences in the Israeli territories, writing in a way that would lead one to believe he’d been participating in a situation at home in an Indiana Jones film, before quietly admitting there was actually “no real impediment to our work or safety”.
Seth concludes that this whole event proves that “Israel’s claim to be a fully functional bastion of democracy” is a “facade”, despite the fact that the state did not ban the book, nor even bat an eyelid at the publication of anti-government propaganda in a nation where such rights are cherished. That Freedman sees the rights of businesses to stock what they wish to sell as a contradiction of democracy once again reminds us what can happen when rash politics clash with reason.
The good news is Mr Freedman has inspired me to concoct my own system of democracy detection. Simply go to a bookstore near you, and if the shelves are not laden with extreme political propaganda, you can be sure you’re living under a military junta.
This is a guest post by AKUS
Some people just cannot get a break.
Consider, for example, the Guardian’s one time golden boy, Seth Freedman.
For a couple or three years he reliably churned out one anti-Israeli article after another. There wasn’t a taxi-driver, pizza vendor or orthodox Jew, real or imaginary, he couldn’t or wouldn’t cite as examples of Israeli intransigence. Not a celebration could be held in Israel without him pointing out that the glass, apparently half-full to the Jewish Israelis, was really three quarters empty when viewed from the Guardian’s website. Not a charitable effort could be carried out (except by a Freedman-approved NGO) without demonstrating that this was, in fact, yet another example of Israel’s futile attempt to cover up its transgressions against its Arab minority or Arab neighbors.
For example, when Israel sent the best field hospital to Haiti, we got a charming piece from Freedman headlined Israel’s double standards over Haiti . The subeditors reliably added the necessary extra drop of poison: “The Israeli relief effort in Haiti is laudable, but it underlines the state’s indifference to those suffering on its own doorstep”.
In one paragraph in the article Freedman ignores almost 100 years of attacks by Arabs against their Jewish neighbors and the Jewish State including, recently, 8,000 rockets from Gaza, to make sure we understand that this and other humanitarian efforts do not let Israel off the hook:
However, for all that Israel’s sterling work overseas deserves to be praised, it highlights the lack of compassion shown by the country’s leaders to those suffering on its own doorstep. Israel’s insistence on doing next to nothing to alleviate the suffering in Gaza while rushing to Haiti’s aid exposes just how far they are prepared to stray from the religious teachings to which they claim to adhere. Likewise, when Zionist movements such as Bnei Akiva trumpet the achievements of Israel’s relief teams as representative of the entire Jewish people, they inadvertently tar all Jews with the same brush when Israel’s frequent violations of international law are brought to light.
This is the sort of red meat the Guardian is looking for, and why those supporting Israel find the Guardian (and Freedman) so biased and basically disgusting. This is the contract that Freedman is supposed to deliver against.
But sometimes something funny happens – Freedman seems to let slip that he actually sees a glimmer of goodness in the evil country he has, for reasons I cannot comprehend, decided to call his own. You have to also understand that although Freedman has, apparently, no background in economics, his “training” as a stockbroker in London in the Internet bubble has in his own mind qualified him to comment on economic matters. So, on April 12, 2010, we got: Israel’s peace dividend.
This is a guest post by AKUS
The Guardian seems to have developed a strange interest in sartorial affairs in Israel and Gaza.
First, we had a rather unusual article by a vegetarian contributor, Seth Freedman, who has decided to make a stand against a community with which we would normally expect him to align himself with – the ultra-orthodox.
The sin the (male) members of this community are committing, despite the points Freedman might normally give them for their opposition to the Jewish state in which they (and he) live, is to continue to purchase and wear shtreimals – traditional hats lined with fur. The British are well known as a nation with an almost fanatical love of animals (and increasingly, a strong dislike of Israel and Jews exhibited by readers of the Guardian) so this topic is well within the mainstream, some editor at the Guardian apparently thought, of matters that might enthuse their reading public.
Well, the first comments were somewhat disappointing, revealing an unusually accommodating view of another of Israel’s apparent transgressions – for example, from an old “friend” of ours:
It only went downhill (sorry … J) from there with a well-deserved crack at the author that somehow escaped moderation:
Roughly half the comments on this thread were deleted, so it’s really hard to know what got the readers worked up. It must have been a bit disappointing to have the usual efforts at bashing Israel brushed aside by a largely incredulous readership on this occasion.
But clearly, clothing seems to matter. So … What could be better than to pay a visit to the Guardian’s pet territory – Gaza? It was time for a hard-hitting article from there about … clothes. Rory McCarthy, who we all thought had typed his last for the Guardian, remains on the beat and provided a suitable article which appeared on April 6th about the clothing trade in Gaza.
The article, which did not permit comments, starts surprisingly optimistically with its first sentence:
“Israeli authorities have allowed shoes and clothes into the Gaza Strip for the first time in three years of the tight economic blockade of the Palestinian territory”.
The second sentence, however, reveals the real point of the article:
“But Gazan businessmen say much of the shipment is ruined and their spiralling costs will never be recovered”.
McCarthy reports that “goods have sat in storage for three years, costing their owners thousands of pounds in fees and in some cases arriving so riddled with damp that the items are unsellable.”
The reason is that according to McCarthy, Israel, incredibly, regards Gaza as a “hostile entity since the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas seized control in June 2007”. Somehow, McCarthy manages to avoid the entire issue of rocket fire that occurred daily into Israel during the first two of the last three years, stopped only and nearly completely by Operation Cast Lead. Clearly, he thinks that Israel should have catered to the sartorial requirements of the Gazans even as they terrorized Israelis living next door to them by firing rockets randomly into Israeli communities, including, not unimportantly, firing rockets at the very crossing points those goods would have had to use in order to reach their destination in Gaza.
But wait – that’s not all, as they like to say on late night TV, while trying to sell a variety of dubious goods to insomniacs. Two days later, on April 8th, McCarthy discovers that Hamas is – incredibly – taxing the residents of Gaza.
“Hamas”, McCarthy has discovered, “has begun to raise new taxes in Gaza in an apparent effort to shore up their coffers – as the economy of the small, overcrowded strip of land descends into a vast and often unfathomable parallel market”.
I have news for McCarthy – where I live in the US, local government has begun to raise taxes in an apparent effort to shore up its coffers as well. The point is, it appears, that it’s getting tough to maintain Hamas’ ability to fund its bureaucracy which no doubt includes thousands of “civilians” parading around with AK-47s:
“Taxes [are] even levied on smuggle [sic] goods as Gaza’s rulers unable to cover pay for 30,000 staff three years into Israeli blockade”.
Mind you, it looks like there’s a lot to tax:
Hamas is much more creative than we might think: “Hamas [has started imposing] a tax on smuggled goods, then charging administrative fees on tunnel operators and now importing goods itself to trade in the market in Gaza. But in recent months it began reviving old, long-forgotten tax codes. A 25% tax has been imposed on the cheap petrol smuggled in from Egypt.” A bit like the only recently rescinded 108 year-old 3% excise tax on telephone communications imposed in the USA in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American war.
This litany of attempts to paint life in Gaza as so bleak and heavily taxed despite rings a little hollow when a moment’s reflection would show most of us that we are faced with the same issues in our own communities. Moreover, the articles appeared about a week after an article in the Economist that opened by pointing out that some in Gaza are even prospering – a theme we see repeatedly in the media outside the pages of the Guardian and the screens of Press TV and the BBC. In fact, in a sort of back-handed swipe at Israel and the PA, the Economist even points out some benefits of living in Gaza:
“Israel’s siege still causes misery. Yet some economists say the strip is growing faster than the West Bank run by Hamas’s rival Palestinian Authority (PA), albeit from a far lower base. The petrol pumped into Gaza by underground pipes and hoses from Egypt costs a third of what it does in Ramallah, the Palestinians’ West Bank capital, where Israel supplies it. Free health care is more widely available in Gaza. Imports travel faster through the tunnels than via Israel’s thickets of bureaucracy. The web of Israeli checkpoints that still impedes Palestinian movements and commerce on the West Bank is absent in Gaza.”
Those tunnels seem to be able to allow cars to pass through, and those taxes used to pay Hamas’ bureaucrats seem to have a positive effect as well:
“As well as lower prices, Gazans benefit from civil-service payrolls. Several outfits pump cash into the strip’s economy: the local Hamas government; the UN, which employs 10,000 Gazans; and Salam Fayyad’s West Bank government, which is the largest employer of all. Payments to Hamas and its connected tunnel-operators boost the economy too. A car-dealer bringing in a new Hyundai saloon through the tunnels stands to make a profit of $13,000”.
So here are two views of the same situation – one, deploring the destruction of tee-shirts and imposition of taxes in Gaza, the other pointing out what seems like a situation reminiscent of any third-world country – or Greece. What both seem to miss, however, is how easily the whole situation could be normalized – all Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza have to do is renounce terror, end rocket fire into Israel, release Gilad Shalit, and demonstrate a willingness to live peacefully next to Israel . Then, if they are coping quite well now, they could be doing a great deal better in the future.
Perhaps it’s time for the Guardian, the Quartet, the “activists” of all stripes, the meddlers, the eitzes-gibbers, the Jimmy Carters, the Banki Moons, etc. etc. to pass that message to Hamas and the people in Gaza who just want a normal life. It’s really not that difficult to get it if they really want it. And then they can have all the tee-shirts and Hyundai saloons they want.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Large number of Guardian readers morally justify terrorist attack against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem
March 24, 2011 in Uncategorized | Tags: Comment is Free, Guardian, Seth Freedman, Terrorism | by Adam Levick | 16 comments
In response to Seth Freedman’s unusually sober, and largely unqualified, condemnation of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem yesterday (Jerusalem bus bomb will harm the Palestinian cause“, CiF March 24) Guardian readers, in relatively large numbers, offered their dissent, many explicitly justifying the intentional killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists.
Murder of Israeli civilians justifiable considering Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
Such terrorism is “understandable”. Some Palestinians, given their circumstances, will inevitably “just snap”.
We have no right to morally judge such terrorists acts.
Violence, and only violence, is the answer to Israeli “colonization”.
Such “resistance” is justified.
What other choice do Palestinians have other than violence against Israeli civilians?
Share this: