Of her visit to Gaza, Yvonne Green – an English visitor – reports (in part, read the whole article here) on how Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli response to continual rocket attacks by Hamas, accurately pinpointed its targets, and how little civilians were harmed by it. There is manifestly no ‘humanitarian disaster’ in Gaza, except for the forced condition of dependence on aid in which the people as a whole are forcibly kept as a political ploy by the Arab states and the Islamic world. The Palestinians have been cynically exploited since 1948 by their fellow Arabs, in deliberate disregard of any humanitarian considerations, in order to con compassion out of the more humane West, which has blindly and sentimentally responded with welfare aid, thus perpetuating the suffering and the lie.       

THE GAZA I saw was societally intact. There were no homeless, walking wounded, hungry or underdressed people. The streets were busy, shops were hung with embroidered dresses and gigantic cooking pots, the markets were full of fresh meat and beautiful produce – the red radishes were bigger than grapefruits. Mothers accompanied by a 13-year-old boy told me they were bored of leaving home to sit on rubble all day to tell the press how they’d survived. Women graduates I met in Shijaya spoke of education as power as old men watched over them.

No one praised their government as they showed me the sites of tunnels where fighters had melted away. No one declared Hamas victorious for creating a forced civilian front line as they showed me the remains of booby trapped homes and schools.

From what I saw and was told in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead pinpointed a totalitarian regime’s power bases and largely neutralized Hamas’s plans to make Israel its tool for the sacrifice of civilian life.

Corroboration of my account may be found in tardy and piecemeal retractions of claims concerning the UNWRA school at Al-Fakhora; an isolated acknowledgment that Gaza is substantially intact by The New York Times; Internet media watch corrections; and the unresolved discrepancy between the alleged wounded and their unreported whereabouts.

Yet at the Sharm el Sheikh summit in Egypt, $4.5 million has been pledged to  relieve the ‘disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza’.  It will of course go to the Hamas terrorists, who rule Gaza, and who will make more rockets  to bombard Israel. 

Among the donors are:

The European Commission $554m

Italy $100m

France $31.5m

Britain $45m

Australia $12.9m

Ireland $2.6 m

US $900m

And this in a time of severe recession in all those countries.

Why?

 Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian Muslim living in America, writes:

The Muslim world and the Europeans who support the demonstrations against Israel must stop the biased reaction that blindly and reflexively supports the Palestinians and villifies Israel. Those who demonstrate against the military campaign on Gaza must realize that if Hamas had stopped pounding Israel with its rockets, Israel would not have launched its attack. If the Palestinians focused on building their society rather than destroying those of others, the whole region would enjoy peace and flourish. Should Palestinians recognize the right of Israel to exist, end terrorism against Jews and nurture a sincere desire to live in peace, they would end their suffering. The solution now is simply in the hands of the Palestinians – not the Israelis.