{"id":61537,"date":"2018-05-17T17:05:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T15:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61537"},"modified":"2018-05-17T15:36:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T13:36:11","slug":"24-05-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61537","title":{"rendered":"Gaza\u2019s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Gaza\u2019s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Bret Stephens<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Palestinians protesting at the Gaza border on Sunday. The large wooden key the boy is holding symbolizes the Palestinians\u2019 belief in their right of return.CreditMahmud Hams\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For the third time in two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have set fire to the\u00a0Kerem Shalom border crossing<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, through which they get medicine, fuel and other humanitarian essentials from Israel. Soon we\u2019ll surely hear a great deal about the misery of Gaza. Try not to forget that the authors of that misery are also the presumptive victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a pattern here \u2014 harm yourself, blame the other \u2014 and it deserves to be highlighted amid the torrent of morally blind, historically illiterate criticism to which Israelis are subjected every time they defend themselves against violent Palestinian attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1970, Israel set up an industrial zone along the border with Gaza to promote economic cooperation and provide Palestinians with jobs. It had to be shut down in 2004 amid multiple terrorist attacks\u00a0that left 11 Israelis dead<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2005, Jewish-American donors forked over $14 million dollars to pay for greenhouses that had been used by Israeli settlers until the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Strip. Palestinians\u00a0looted dozens of the greenhouses<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0almost immediately upon Israel\u2019s exit.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2007, Hamas took control of Gaza in a bloody coup against its rivals in the Fatah faction. Since then, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in the Strip have fired nearly 10,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel \u2014 all the while denouncing an economic \u201cblockade\u201d that is Israel\u2019s refusal to feed the mouth that bites it. (Egypt and the Palestinian Authority also participate in the same blockade, to zero international censure.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014 Israel discovered that Hamas had built 32 tunnels under the Gaza border to kidnap or kill Israelis. \u201cThe average tunnel requires 350 truckloads of construction supplies,\u201d\u00a0The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, \u201cenough to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools or 19 medical clinics.\u201d Estimated cost of tunnels: $90 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Want to understand why Gaza is so poor? See above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings us to the grotesque spectacle along Gaza\u2019s border over the past several weeks, in which thousands of Palestinians have tried to breach the fence and force their way into Israel, often at the cost of their lives. What is the ostensible purpose of what Palestinians call \u201cthe Great Return March\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s no mystery. This week, The Times published\u00a0an op-ed by Ahmed Abu Artema<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, one of the organizers of the march. \u201cWe are intent on continuing our struggle until Israel recognizes our right to return to our homes and land from which we were expelled,\u201d he writes, referring to homes and land within Israel\u2019s original borders.<\/span><\/p>\n

His objection isn\u2019t to the \u201coccupation\u201d as usually defined by Western liberals, namely Israel\u2019s acquisition of territories following the 1967 Six Day War. It\u2019s to the existence of Israel itself. Sympathize with him all you like, but at least notice that his politics demand the elimination of the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notice, also, the old pattern at work: Avow and pursue Israel\u2019s destruction, then plead for pity and aid when your plans lead to ruin.<\/span><\/p>\n

The world now demands that Jerusalem account for every bullet fired at the demonstrators, without offering a single practical alternative for dealing with the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

But where is the outrage that Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence,\u00a0having been amply forewarned<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>by Israel of the mortal risk? Or that protest organizers encouraged women to lead the charges on the fence because,\u00a0as The Times\u2019s Declan Walsh reported<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> \u201cIsraeli soldiers might be less likely to fire on women\u201d? Or that\u00a0Palestinian children as young as 7<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0were dispatched to try to breach the fence? Or that the protests ended after Israel warned Hamas\u2019s leaders, whose\u00a0preferred hide-outs<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0include Gaza\u2019s hospital, that\u00a0their own lives were at risk<\/a><\/strong><\/span>?<\/span><\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment. It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly and almost bottomlessly cynical.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mystery of Middle East politics is why Palestinians have so long been exempted from these ordinary moral judgments. How do so many so-called progressives now find themselves in objective sympathy with the\u00a0murderers<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,\u00a0misogynists<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0homophobes<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0of Hamas? Why don\u2019t they note that,\u00a0by Hamas\u2019s own admission<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, some 50 of the 62 protesters killed on Monday were\u00a0members of\u00a0<\/em>Hamas? Why do they begrudge Israel the right to defend itself behind the very borders they\u2019ve been clamoring for years for Israelis to get behind?<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is nothing expected of Palestinians, and everything forgiven, while everything is expected of Israelis, and nothing forgiven?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a question to which one can easily guess the answer. In the meantime, it\u2019s worth considering the harm Western indulgence has done to Palestinian aspirations.<\/span><\/p>\n

No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests. No worthy Palestinian government can emerge if the international community continues to indulge the corrupt,\u00a0anti-Semitic<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0autocrats of the Palestinian Authority or fails to condemn and sanction the despotic killers of Hamas. And no Palestinian economy will ever flourish through repeated acts of self-harm and destructive provocation.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Palestinians want to build a worthy, proud and prosperous nation, they could do worse than try to learn from the one next door. That begins by forswearing forever their attempts to destroy it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Gaza\u2019s Miseries Have Palestinian Authors Bret Stephens Palestinians protesting at the Gaza border on Sunday. The large wooden key the boy is holding symbolizes the Palestinians\u2019 belief in their right of return.CreditMahmud Hams\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images For the third time in two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have set fire to the\u00a0Kerem Shalom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61544,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61537\/revisions\/61544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}