Say, remember last year, when the news media took pictures of Hamas members sitting around a table in the dark, without telling us that the picture was shot in the daytime, with the curtains drawn, to make it seem like the Israeli refusal to ship more fuel to Hamas was actually affecting them?
Well, they’re doing it again.
“There’s no shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip and the Electricity Company is continuing to function normally,” said a PA official. “Our people in the Gaza Strip have told us that the blackouts are all staged as part of the Hamas propaganda.”
Another PA official noted that Hamas’s lies reached their peak last January when its legislators held a meeting in a darkened hall of the Palestinian Legislative Council – while light could be seen coming in through the curtained windows.
If that’s not enough, Elder of Zion has more. These shots of Palestinians shopping in the Rafah bazaar—at the same time the UN is screaming to Israel that the poor, poor, pitiful Pals are starving—don’t get any public airing by the news services. Only shots of empty shelves and sad stories.
Elder of Zion also notes that the Palestinian press is reporting that Israel is allowing in food aid, including aid for UNRWA. So what do we see in the news today? UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon calling Ehud Olmert and telling him he needs to open the Gaza border crossings. Why?
“The secretary-general today telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to express his deep concern over the consequences of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza,” the UN press office said in a statement.
“He strongly urged the prime minister to facilitate the freer movement of urgently needed humanitarian supplies and of concerned United Nations personnel into Gaza,” it said.
Olmert’s response:
Olmert denounced the continuing rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, but “agreed to look seriously into the urgent matter” raised by Ban, the statement said.
The prime minister made it clear to the UN chief that Hamas was responsible for the violations of the truce deal. According to Olmert, Hamas is attempting to present an extreme picture of the Gaza crisis in order to renounce its responsibility.
“Israel has prevented and continues to prevent a humanitarian crisis, but as long as Israeli lives are threatened on a daily basis, Gaza’s residents can only address their complaints to the Hamas government,” he added.
Let ’em smuggle goods from Egypt. Shut the crossings from Israel entirely. They’re doing just fine on their own.
Pictures posted on a Hebrew website specializing in Arab news showed a bustling market in Rafiah (Rafah) filled with goods of all kinds, from food to electronics, apparently belying the claims of dire shortages. Rafiah is located in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt.
Not that the world and Ban are going to let facts get in the way of their certainty that Gazans are sitting in the dark. Starving.