The financial media discovers Gaza

6

Michael Horesh
Afternoon Tea in Jerusalem
29 October '10

Writing 2 weeks ago in the UK newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens summarised an extensive visit to Gaza, which he described as “world’s most misrepresented location“.

Hitchens coverage was the first amongst several similar stories in the international, all with a similar theme.

I don’t think it (Gaza) is a paradise, or remotely normal………..There are dispiriting slums that should have been cleared decades ago, people living on the edge of subsistence. There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out. But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that………

But if you think Israel is the only problem, or that Israelis are the only oppressors hereabouts, think again. Realise, for a start, that Israel no longer rules Gaza. Its (former) settlements are ruins.

Even when, as in Gaza, there is no way out, morality patrols sweep through restaurants in search of illicit beer and women smoking in public, affronting the 14th Century values of Hamas.

Hitchens is going against a decade or so of politically correct wisdom. Two years ago, Time Magazine pleaded: “Please spare a thought for the starving Palestinians of Gaza. There are 1.5 million of them”. In parallel, and industry of NGOs has arisen, although they seem content to criticise Israel but never the excesses of Palestinian rule.

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