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.