I AM A JEW (PART XIII - The Death of Klinghoffer & The Israeli Propaganda Machine)

As the title shows this is the 13th part (actually the 14^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI and Part XII.

I have chosen to continue to address the Klinghoffer controversy because it so well illustrates the Israeli propaganda machine.

As I illustrated in my last post this is an invented controversy that exploits the children of the slain Klinghoffer, who would have issued a statement when they first saw the opera in 1991 if they had found it offensive. They issue it now because they have been asked to. The propaganda machine has decided to go into action now, because following Gaza, there is increasing outrage, with the British Parliament (House of Commons) voting 274-12 in favor of a motion for UK recognition of a Palestinian state, and Sweden announcing that it will recognize a Palestinian state.

But it isn’t only the demonstrators; the politicians jump on the bandwagon. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Gov. George Pataki and two U.S. congressmen are among hundreds expected outside the Metropolitan Opera. Did any of them see the opera or is it politically expedient to be there?

Interestingly enough the “The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group, said the play (Opera) is not anti-Semitic …”  

And this is what the editor of The Jewish Week had to say about it: 

Well, I saw it.

 And I’m not sure which was more of a letdown, the hubbub over the show or the show itself.

 Let’s start with the critics and protesters, since they are responsible ultimately for turning the show into the most buzzed about cultural happening in New York (at least since the close of the Jeff Koons retrospective on Sunday at the Whitney Museum).

 By the time I settled into my seat on Monday night — after months of cries of “anti-Semitism” and “glorification/humanization of terrorists” filling my email box — I was expecting Shylock meets “Natural Born Killers.”

 Not even close. Whatever the original intentions of composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman when they created the opera about 25 years ago, the latest production casts the killers as not particularly likable, violent thugs and puts Leon Klinghoffer at the moral center. So much so that the show’s effort to provide a measure of absolution for the terrorists near the end comes off as contrived and heavy handed, and is immediately trumped by the final monologue from Klinghoffer’s wife, Marilyn….

 But after actually seeing the production, this seems wrong-headed: Compared to the anti-Semitic fare widely available on the Internet and Arabic television, this show could pass as an anti-terrorism public service announcement.

But while these distractions from what Israel is doing are being orchestrated in New York, the International community is increasingly concerned about continuing, and even increasing building activity on the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

As I have stated above the UK and Sweden have started to react.

Haaretz reports here and here:

The EU’s ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, is set to relay the message to Israel…

The two-page document defines several of the EU’s “red lines” regarding Israeli actions in the West Bank:

 1. Construction in the Givat Hamatos neighborhood, beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem: The document said that construction in that area would jeopardize the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The EU “cautions the Israeli government not to move ahead with tenders and construction. Such a development would constitute one more grave “fact on the ground” which would be liable to crucially prejudge the outcome of peace negotiations,” the document reads.

 2. Construction in the E1 area between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem: The document said construction in that area would also jeopardize the possibility of contiguous Palestinian state, and added that it has already publicly and strongly opposed plans for E1’s development.

 3. Further construction in the Har Homa neighborhood in Jerusalem, beyond the Green Line.

 4. Israeli plans to relocate 12,000 Bedouin without their consent in a new town in the Jordan Valley, expelling them from lands in the West Bank, including E1: “The EU strongly urges Israel to put these plans on hold and search for other solutions together with the concerned populations and the Palestinian Authority. The EU underlines that implementing those plans may amount to a serious breach of International Humanitarian Law (IV Geneva Convention),” the document reads.

In the meantime Economy Minister Naftali Bennett told Army Radio that:

...more housing for Jews in the predominantly Arab eastern half of the city as well as a more forceful response from police and security services is the formula for neutralizing the unrest.

 “It’s quite acceptable to think that what motivates our enemies is despair,” he said. “On the contrary, they are driven by the hope and aspiration to evict us from here. And they think that if they commit more terrorist atrocities then we will throw our hands up in despair and flee.”

 “What we need to do is to say, ‘We are staying here, we’re building in our capital,’ and I call on the prime minister to expedite the approval of construction permits,” Bennett said. “Without sovereignty, there can be no security. There’s no need to wait for a terrorist attack in order to put down the iron fist, and we have the means to do so.”

But what is the true nature of Jerusalem? What constitutes Jerusalem?

Jerusalem Online helps us to understand. Israel’s definition of Jerusalem is invented. As the article explains:

Forty-seven years ago… a decision was made that would dubiously be accepted quietly today: to annex the Arab areas of the city that were under Jordanian sovereignty, and several villages nearby along with it… From 6 square miles it has become a city of 70 square miles... since 1967, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty have a special status of residents without full citizenship. (Emphasis added)

And even while the Israeli government’s Economics minister talks about more oppression, more confiscation, Gazans can‘t even get drinking water.

From the Times of Israel:

There is a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza and water is at its center. Holding water issues hostage to the conflict will have dire consequences for Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis and Egyptians. Directly due to the hostilities, an estimated 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza have no running water. There exists insufficient electricity in Gaza to treat or pump out sewage. This will no doubt result in even higher than present levels of drinking water contamination that risk the outbreak of pandemic disease, such as cholera and typhoid. The health risk is compounded by the present inability to even chlorinate drinking water

 This situation requires an urgent response if the outbreak of pandemic disease is to be avoided. Pandemics risk Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian populations.

And what’s ahead! More building on Arab land; more confiscation of Arab land; more oppression.

And an unending attempt to distract Americans of all faiths and creeds and political orientations from the crimes being committed by the Israeli government, by having a fabricated controversy over an Opera that will be seen by less than 28,000 people, if its seven performances are sold out to include standing room.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XII - The Death of Klinghoffer)

As the title shows this is the 11th part (actually the 12^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)," "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)," "I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)," "I AM A JEW (PART VII - A Defense of Israel’s Policies and a Rebuttal)", "I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud)" ,"I AM A JEW (PART IX- The Palestinian Diaspora & The Right of Return)", "I AM A JEW (PART X - The Abject Poverty of the Palestinians)" and "I AM A JEW (PART XI) The Israeli Propaganda Machine."

In my last post I said: “I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.”

However, I cannot resist publishing a comment from Bruce Weintraub
who exclaimed: 

“You are the greatest.  You should be the President.”

On October 20, 2014 the opera “The Death of Klinghoffer“ opened at the Metropolitan Opera in Mew York City. It was met by picketing following a barrage of criticism that preceded its opening.

The Met synopsis shows little that one can find objectionable. I wonder how many of the picketers have seen the opera, or have much, if any, knowledge of its story line. The opera’s premiere was in 1991 in Brussels, Belgium and its American and New York premiere was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991. None of these earlier renditions drew protests or were controversial. It is difficult to understand why it has become so controversial now, 23 years after its premiere. 

The children of the murdered Klinghoffer have issued a statement of condemnation now, even though they saw it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991. Why not then? Why now? One cannot help but wonder! Have they been asked to do this by the propaganda organizations referred to in my last post “I AM A JEW (PART XI - The Israeli Propaganda Machine)” to distract attention from the wanton murder of thousands of Gazan Palestinians.

That is not to minimize, or worse, to justify the murder of Leon Klinghoffer. Murder is murder and it can’t be justified. But I come back to my question what about the murder of thousands of Gazans.

Does the comment attributed to Joseph Stalin “A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic” apply? Or is it that Jewish lives have so much more value than Palestinian ones.

Since Israel was founded there have been many massacres. Some I have referred to. Others I have not. There were just too many.  I have written extensively about Deir Yassin in my posts I AM A Jew (Part II) and I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud) but there were so many more. Many, many, by the Palestinians with their roadside bombs and other means. But these have all been well publicized. The Israeli ones not so well.

Wikipedia covers both very well under the title “Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war." 

I quote from the article:

Yishuv (or later Israeli) soldiers killed roughly 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war. Most of these killings occurred as villages were overrun and captured during the Second phase of the Civil War, Operation Dani, Operation Hiram and Operation Yoav.

… the "worst cases" were the Saliha massacre with 60 to 70 killed, the Deir Yassin massacre with around 100, Lydda massacre with around 250 and the Abu Shusha massacre with 60-70. In Al-Dawayima, accounts of the death toll vary. Saleh Abd al-Jawad reports 100-200 casualties^] Morris has estimated "hundreds" and also reports the IDF investigation which concluded 100 villagers had been killed David Ben-Gurion gave the figure of 70-80. Saleh Abd al-Jawad reports the village's mukhtar account that 455 people were missing following the al-Dawayima massacre, including 170 women and children.

Did it end in 1948? Are my readers aware of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites were murdered in cold blood? See here. 

No Israelis were directly responsible, but:

In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission, appointed to investigate the incident, found that Israeli military personnel, aware that a massacre was in progress, had failed to take serious steps to stop it. The commission deemed Israel indirectly responsible, and Ariel Sharon, then Defense Minister, bore personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge", forcing him to resign. (Ibid)

One might have thought that this was the end of Sharon’s political career, but on “February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister." See here. 

But all this is just statistics, as Stalin might have said.

How about the murder of an individual? Does the name Folke Bernadotte ring a bell? I quote from the Jewish Virtual Library:

During the fight for Jewish statehood, extremist military groups sometimes resorted to the use of terrorist tactics. One such instance occurred in 1948 when members of the Jewish underground organization LEHI killed UN Peace Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to protest his diplomatic efforts to modify the Palestine partition plan.

Bernadotte, a Swede with family ties to the Swedish King, gained international recognition through his work as head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II. Bernadotte used his position to negotiate with Heinrich Himmler and saved thousands of Jews from concentration camps, although many argue that he could have done more had he been less cautious in negotiations.

Well, the reader might say, there are always rogue elements, who do outrageous things but surely Israel and its leaders can’t be held responsible.

Allow me to quote the last paragraph from the last paragraph from the Jewish Virtual Library post:

Yitzhak Shamir reputedly played a role in planning the assassination; however, he was never tried and years later was elected as Israel's eighth Prime Minister.

Israeli propaganda has made much of Hamas hiding weapons in Houses of Worship and in schools etc.

Again allow me to quote from Haaretz: See here or here.

Can you believe it? Groups hiding arms in places of worship, schools, even kindergartens. Welcome to pre-state Israel, where comparisons with Gaza are not welcome.

… the British, who were the rulers of the land, prohibited the possession of weapons. They were therefore concealed in a hiding place under the foundations of the first public building. In that building was a grocery, a clinic and a kindergarten. The entrance to the secret weapons storage was underneath the kindergarten toilet.

…The British, by the way, searched Rishpon and found nothing. They did not consider the possibility of blowing up the kindergarten because it might be used to store weapons.

…There was no Jewish settlement in the country that did not have a “slik” – as these storage sites were known – all in the heart of “civilian population concentrations,” of course. At Ein Ganim there was a slik in a synagogue… 

…Schools served as training installations, even as weapons production workshops.

But all we hear is the Palestinians this, the Palestinians that and the slogan "Israel Has the Right to Defend itself."

But maybe, just maybe, it is time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete. 

I AM A JEW (PART XI - The Israeli Propaganda Machine)

As the title shows this is the 11th part (actually the 12^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)," "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)," "I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)," "I AM A JEW (PART VII - A Defense of Israel’s Policies and a Rebuttal)", "I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud)" ,"I AM A JEW (PART IX- The Palestinian Diaspora & The Right of Return)" and "I AM A JEW (PART X - The Abject Poverty of the Palestinians)."

As I write these articles I become increasingly aware of how uninformed and misinformed we are about the nature of the Israeli government, its aims and its crimes.

This was brought home to me when in response to my post "I AM A JEW (PART IX - The Palestinian Diaspora & The Right of Return)" one of my subscribers, Ernest Hauser of the Bronx, NY, wrote:

The Arab refugee problem is indeed sad and difficult.

In 1948 the Arab neighbors Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan] urged the Arabs to flee and return after the Jews were driven into the sea. Well, that did not happen.  

Israel took in about a half million Jews who were persecuted in the Arab world, but none of the Arab lands gave citizenship to any of the Palestinian refugees.

They prefer to keep then in camps as a thorn to Israel.

This brought home to me just how effective Israeli propaganda has been and continues to be.

The vast majority of Americans and particularly American Jews probably believe the statement by Ernest Hauser, yet it is demonstrably false. I myself may have believed it, until I did the extensive research required for this series. Yet, even in the face of facts contradicting Hauser’s assertion, the myth lives on.

My response to Hauser is set forth below:

You are simply repeating the standard line from Israeli propaganda sources. Before you mindlessly repeat things you ought to take the time to research the matter to determine the facts.

Or at least read my posts.

In "I AM A JEW (Part II)” I wrote and I quote:

There has long been a debate about whether Arabs left Israel out of their own free will, at the urgings of their leaders or were driven out by Israeli forces conducting ethnic cleansing. After extensive research I have concluded that both are true. What has come to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre is instructive.

I quote from Wikipedia:

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.

Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary. Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured. The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.

The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab–Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences. The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other—by the Palestinians against Israel; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair; and by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms, thus blackening Israel's name around the world. News of the killings sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. (Emphasis added)

And in an article by David Remick in The New Yorker, entitled: "Blood and Sand - A revisionist Israeli historian revisits his country’s origins” published on May 5, 2008, he writes:

"In 1988, Morris published “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949,” which revolutionized Israeli historiography and, to a great extent, a nation’s understanding of its own birth. Relying less on testimony than on the newly available documents, Morris described how and why sixty per cent of the Palestinians were uprooted and their society destroyed. It was a far more complex picture than many Israelis were prepared to accept. The book features a map that shows three hundred and eighty-nine Arab villages, from upper Galilee to the Negev Desert. Morris revealed that in forty-nine of these villages the indigenous Arabs were expelled by the Haganah and other Jewish military forces; in sixty-two villages, the Arabs fled out of fear, having heard rumors of attacks and even massacres; in six, the villagers left at the instruction of Palestinian local leaders. The refugees, who probably expected to return to their homes in a matter of weeks or months, went to Gaza and the West Bank, and also to surrounding Arab countries—Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria—where, to this day, they have never been fully absorbed."

You can also take a look here and I quote, e.g.

Various quotes have been attributed to Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, such as “The Arabs were urged to flee by their own leaders" and "The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two”. Childers investigated this claim:

"Another stock quotation down the years has been that, supposedly, of the Greek-Catholic Archbishop of Galilee. For example, Israel's Abba Eban told the U.N. Special Political Committee in 1957 that the Archbishop had "fully confirmed" that the Arabs were urged to flee by their own leaders. I wrote to His Grace, asking for his evidence of such orders. I hold signed letters from him, with permission to publish, in which he has categorically denied ever alleging Arab evacuation orders; he states that no such orders were ever given. He says that his name has been abused for years; and that the Arabs fled through panic and forcible eviction by Jewish troops. 

As for the comment: "but none of the Arab lands gave citizenship to any of the Palestinian refugees. They prefer to keep then in camps as a thorn to Israel”, it is true that none of the Arab lands gave citizenship to any of the Palestinian refugees, but it is not true that they did it so to keep the camps as a thorn to Israel.

Unlike the myth that Arabs are “one people” they consist of very diverse tribes, with many different forms of Islamic religions and ethnicities. The Arab countries are poor and struggling to survive themselves. The refugee camps are an enormous burden, and trying to assimilate, a foreign poverty-stricken group into their society, is very difficult. In fact in Jordan, they are considered a threat to the monarchy.  In Lebanon the Christians don’t want more Muslims. Egypt today is more attuned to Israel than to Hamas.

There is zero evidence that it is a plot against Israel.

So before you make glib statement without doing your homework, you should make it a point to truly ascertain the facts.

But why is there such universality of misconceptions? There can be little doubt that the Israeli propaganda machine in the US is extremely powerful. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations lists 51 organizations. Most of these are charitable and have no political agenda.

But the most prominent among them, are at the forefront of the defense of Israel, the shaping of public opinion and the lobbying of our government. They defend and advocate Israeli government policy as faithfully as the Communist party did in days of yore and its most faithful adherents believe and propagate these views as faithfully as members of the Communist party once did.

Wikipedia describes “The Israeli lobby” as

...the diverse coalition of those who, as individuals and as groups, seek to influence the foreign policy of the United States in support of Zionism, Israel or the specific policies of its government. The lobby consists of Jewish-American secular and religious groups. The most famous and visible group within the Israel lobby is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC and other groups within the Israel lobby influence American public policy in a variety of ways such as through education, responding to criticism of Israel, and putting forth arguments in support of Israel. The Israel lobby is known for its success in encouraging U.S. lawmakers to support the policies that it supports.

AIPAC is probably the second-most powerful lobby in the US, second only to the NRA. 

October 19, 2014 – NBC News headline: “Obama speaks at AIPAC conference”

March 2012 (during the primary campaign for the Republican nomination for President) The Washington Post headline “GOP hopefuls blast Obama at AIPAC” and to quote from the article: “Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich on Tuesday dismissed Obama’s promises and accused the White House of weakness in trying to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.”

How many other organization, and particularly lobbies for foreign governments get such overwhelming attention form the country’s leaders and aspiring leaders?

But AIPAC is not alone among the Israeli lobby. There are the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Friends of Likud. Any media criticism of Israel will quickly bring a response from any of these by column if possible, by Letter to the Editor if needed. They influence public opinion and they influence our government.

To a large extent this explains the extensive misconceptions and misinformation of the American public that I am, in my small way, trying to correct.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete. 

I AM A JEW (PART X - The Abject Poverty of the Palestinians)

As the title shows this is the 10th part (actually the 11^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)," "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)," "I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)," "I AM A JEW (PART VII - A Defense of Israel’s Policies and a Rebuttal)", "I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud)" and "I AM A JEW (PART IX- The Palestinian Diaspora & The Right of Return)."

I am forever struck by how American Jewish liberals are at the forefront of the fight against poverty in the United States. They are at the forefront in fighting for the right of minorities from discrimination, be they African-Americans or Hispanics, and yet they seem to be tone deaf to the plight of the Palestinians, the discrimination practiced against them, their permanent status as refugees without permanent homes, rights of citizenship, and dire poverty.

Right now the focus is on Gaza, for a temporary end to hostilities there has brought about once again an International effort to raise money to rebuild that which Israeli bombs, shells, and other explosives destroyed. We keep hearing the same old mantra, that all that Israel did was defend itself, but in fact it was the Gazans, (and it matters not at all, whether we call them Gazans or Palestinians) who erupted after years of blockade, entry and exit permits, and once again the mass arrest and incarceration of many of its members, in response to the murder of three Israelis.  Israel has far from abandoned its policy of collective punishment.

What is the arrest and incarceration of 500, without trial because they belong to an organization some of whose members committed a heinous crime, except collective punishment?

Some rockets are lobbed at Israel in bitter retaliation and the whole of the Gaza population is punished, thousands killed, many more wounded, old men, young men trying to support their families, women, children. Israel tell us they were just collateral damage and Hamas is to blame - they put them in harm's way. But where were they to go? Israel propaganda, which is too often echoed by the American apologists for Israel, tell us they dropped warning leaflets. What a joke! Rockets were falling everywhere and leaflets told them to go somewhere else when bombs where dropping everywhere. Children killed on the beach. Were there bombs hidden under the sand?

Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas of the world. See this Washington Post article. According to Info Please it is the fifth-densest population area in the world, but, of course, in the others the people are not trying to escape bombardment.

According to the BBC this is what Gaza looks like:

The BBC reports “International donors have pledged $5.4bn (£3.4bn) for the Palestinians at a conference in Cairo.”

Will that bring back the thousands of lives lost? Will that end the poverty?

Here is another photo from the BBC:

It’s all rubble. And how long before another incident, or plain desperation will start the cycle all over again?

Does anybody have any idea what kind of suffering has been imposed on the Palestinians? What kind of abject poverty they have been reduced to? Here is an article in Haaretz, or try here.

Allow me to quote from its beginning:

Life has never seemed so grim for the Mustafas, a family of seven cramped into a shabby two-room hovel in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp.

 Seven years into an Israeli blockade and ten months into a crippling Egyptian one, Gaza's economic growth has evaporated and unemployment soared to almost 40 percent by the end of 2013.

Opposition to the Hamas militant group which runs the Gaza Strip has led its neighbors to quarantine the enclave, shutting residents out of the struggling Mideast peace process and leaving them with plenty of parties to blame.

 Living on U.N. handouts of rice, flour, canned meat and sunflower oil, with limited access to proper health care or clean water, families like the Mustafas - seemingly permanent refugees from ancestral lands now part of Israel - have no money, no jobs and no hope.

 "We're drowning... We feel like the whole world is on top of us. I turn on the television and I see the lifestyles on there, and I think, God help me leave this place," said Tareq, 22.

The Mustafas often must pick up and move when rain floods their low-lying home - even on a sunny day, it's lined with slick, smelly mildew. They stand in the dark, as 12-hour power cuts are now the norm throughout Gaza due to scant fuel.

 "There's no money for university or to get married. There's not even enough to spend outside the house so we can escape a little. What kind of life is this?" Tareq asks.

Well over half of Gaza residents receive food from the United Nations, and the number is on the rise.

What about the West Bank?

Reuters reported in September of 2012:

(Israeli) restrictions on movement, faltering aid flows, a paralyzed private sector and a chronic fiscal crisis cloud the horizons," UNCTAD declared. Amid persistent high unemployment, it added, "one in two Palestinians is classified as poor."

 The report, for an UNCTAD meeting in Geneva later this month, said the impact of the Israeli occupation since 1968 on the productive base of the Palestinian economy, and especially its once-flourishing agriculture, "has been devastating."

 The economy has lost access to 40 per cent of West Bank land, 82 percent of its ground water, and more than two thirds of its grazing land.

A Beirut Lebanon newspaper reports: 

BEIRUT (Ma'an) -- Around 160,000 Palestinians are living below the poverty line in refugee camps in Lebanon, the ambassador to Beirut says.

 Nearly 13,000 Palestinian refugees are living in extreme poverty in Lebanon, Ashraf Dabour told Ma'an.

 Palestinian refugees are banned from entering 75 professions in Lebanon. "Practicing any of these careers is considered a breach of Lebanese law," Dabour said.

 The Lebanese parliament amended a law restricting Palestinian refugees' access to work. "However, the Lebanese cabinet has not put that amendment into effect," the Palestinian ambassador said.

 "We hear sweet talk from Lebanese officials about the Palestinian refugees' right to work and live in dignity, but in reality nothing is translated into action."

I could go on country by country, because the story is the same everywhere.

But what about in Israel proper?

From The New Yorker of June 4, 2013

… in May, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a report showing that, of the world’s thirty-four economically developed countries, Israel is the most impoverished. With a poverty rate of twenty-one per cent, Israel has a higher percentage of poor people than Mexico, Turkey, or debt-ridden Spain and Greece. The report’s findings made front-page headlines in Israel, and officials there scrambled to sound both indignant and unconcerned. They had some explaining to do: How does a nation with double the average growth rate of other countries in the developed world have a fifth of its population living in poverty?

 … twenty-eight percent of Arab Israeli(s) (are) children receiving an education that is below that of many third-world countries, …

And finally from the British newspaper The Guardian:

Aid alone won't help the desperate Palestinians A UN reports links all of the Palestinian economy's dire problems to the Israeli occupation and associated constraints. Aid from the EU and others is merely a sop for political failure.

And referring to a report released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) the paper goes on to say:

A quick look at the report's section headings gives an immediate picture of how desperate the situation is: aid-driven, jobless economic growth, with an eroded productive base; erosion of manufacturing capacity; broad economic divergence between Gaza and the West Bank; high levels of poverty and food insecurity; high and persistent unemployment undermines the quality of human capital; separation barrier deepens isolation from global markets; heavy dependence on trade with Israel, and a worsening trade deficit; fiscal vulnerability remains high, despite austerity measures; withholding [Palestinian Authority] customs clearance revenue aggravates fiscal instability; indirect imports from Israel and lost Palestinian revenue.

 An idea of the desperation facing the Palestinians is given by a 2010 survey conducted by the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, which says: "Palestinian people have used various strategies to cope with poverty and food insecurity under prolonged Israeli occupation. These strategies have included – in addition to borrowing – receiving food support from family and friends, restricting food to adults in order to feed children, reducing health and education spending, running down savings, and selling off jewellery, furniture and productive assets. The top three coping strategies used are deferring payment of utility bills, lowering the quality and quantity of food intake, and borrowing."

 The litany of problems appears endless. While it is tempting to reel off the plethora of depressing statistics provided in this report, it is perhaps better to reflect on the salient theme – Israel and the occupation. No attempt is made to describe the problems facing the Palestinian economy without reference to the continued occupation and associated constraints.

 Unemployment (at 30%, and 43% for under-30s), manufacturing and agricultural decline (despite a recent upturn), large-scale revenue losses, "dire" humanitarian conditions, worsening socioeconomic indicators – all these issues and more are linked explicitly and repeatedly to the political situation.

How much longer will the liberal American Jewish community make excuses and defend the indefensible? Where is Christian charity?

I ask no more of my Jewish and Christian brethren but that they live by the words of the Bible, Isaiah 49:6. and to demand that Israel be a “light unto the nations” instead of one that leads us into darkness.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.