This Ongoing War: A Blog: 7-Oct-13: Two conflicts

Monday, October 07, 2013

7-Oct-13: Two conflicts

How you interpret the news of the past few days will be influenced to a degree by where you stand on such issues as man's inhumanity to man and the constant obligation to try to improve the world. Also, on how safe and remote from the conflicts you see yourself being.

Consider two news snapshots, both from this past week.

A Palestinian Press Agency report, in Arabic (tweeted by the indispensable Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh) today (Monday) says some 440 trucks laden with commercial and agricultural goods, among them cement, gravel, gasoline, diesel, cooking gas and assorted construction materials, are due to enter the Gaza Strip from Israel today (yes, the Arabic-language report says "from Israel" according to the Google Translate translation).

The data for deliveries into Hamas-controlled Gaza during the month of September were published yesterday (hat tip: Israel National News). Close to six thousand truck-loads were admitted by Israel via the Kerem Shalom Crossing. These brought more than 150,000 tons of goods for the Palestinian Arabs living in that alleged "concentration camp" called the Gaza Strip and were made up of

Food products: 1,519 truckloads
Construction materials: 1,244 truckloads
Medical equipment: 64 truckloads
Livestock: 258 truckloads
Other items: 2,464 truckloads

The tally so far this year: 46,130 truck-loads, bearing 1,285,946 tons of goods via Israel's militarily-controlled gateway into Gaza, much of it intended for the hundreds of humanitarian projects currently underway there.

(Note that Hamas keeps calling for Egypt's sole gateway to Gaza to be reopened, with little to show for it. See this September 20, 2013 English-language article ["Government appeals to Egypt to open Rafah to avoid a disaster"] that appears on the news site of Hamas' absurdly-named "military wing". Hamas is of course a terrorist/military organization right down to its bootstraps.)

A quick search of the past week's Hamas news reports provides a small but unsurprising insight into the impact the ongoing Israeli policy of cautious humanitarianism has on the terrorist regime that rules the Gazans with a heavy boot to the back of the neck:

Hamas urges PNA to pull out of peace talks with Israel [Kuwait News Agency, October 5, 2013]
Al-Zahar: “Resistance Is The Only Path” [Al-Qassam, October 5, 2013]
Hamas: No Agreement that Includes Israel's Right to Exist [CBN News, September 30, 2013]

Meanwhile in a nearby 100% Arab-on-Arab conflict, one of the many that have evolved out of the catastrophically misunderstood "Arab Spring", the very crimes that Hamas and its fellow jihadist/terrorist entities attribute to Israel continue to be done Arab on Arab with a ferocity and cruelty that defy comprehension:

Syria: Agony of victims of 'napalm-like' school bombing [BBC World, September 30, 2013]
‘We have no food’: Mass starvation feared in Syria [TODAY Online, September 25, 2013]
Syrian suffering just getting worse, aid group says [Toronto Star, September 24, 2013]
Ban says Geneva deal must end "appalling" Syria suffering [Daily Star, Lebanon, September 14, 2013]
Why Syria’s images of suffering haven’t moved us [by the art critic of the Washington Post, September 13, 2013]
Syria's crisis: The extent of the suffering [The Economist, April 2, 2013 - in case anyone ever suggests that the extreme agony of this past summer was not foreseen]

Bottom line question: How quickly do you think most Syrians would trade places with the Gazan Palestinian Arabs if they could?

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