Truth not lies about Gaza

Attention CAMERA E-Mail Team:

On a regular basis, The Huffington Post is a wasteland of biased and context-free reporting about Israel. Editors regularly publish articles and opinion columns based on falsehoods. Readers regularly post antisemitic rants. But during the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, The Huffington Post has hit a new low.

One recent piece in particular stands out. On November 15, Mehdi Hasan, political director of The Huffington Post UK published, “Ten Things You Need to Know About Gaza.” In the article, he got at least 13 things wrong. (Please see "In Detail" for more information.)

The real things you need to know about Gaza are:  

1.  Operation Pillar of Defense is in retaliation for the thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars fired into Gaza in recent years, over 1,100 in 2012 alone.

2.  There are no Israeli soldiers or civilians in Gaza and it has a boundary with Egypt not subject to Israeli control.

3.  Israel's last operation in Gaza had the lowest civilian casualty rate of any known conflict of its kind.

4.  Hamas was not elected to run Gaza on its own. The terrorist group won a plurality in the 2006 Palestinian legislative council elections, then ousted political rival, Fatah, from the territory in a bloody conflict.

5.  The United Nation's Palmer Commission affirmed the legality of Israel's blockade of Gaza. Richard Goldstone discounted the initial report of the U.N. commission that he led saying, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

6.  Israel trucks in tons of food and other supplies into Gaza on a weekly basis.

7.  Gaza children are healthier than their counterparts in Egypt.

8.  The unemployment rate in Gaza is not out of line with unemployment in other Arab countries, which have the highest unemployment in the world.

9.  Israeli children suffer from post traumatic stress disorder at twice the rate of Gaza children.

10. Ahmed Jabari, the Hamas leader killed by Israel on Nov. 14, helped plan the operation that resulted in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and the murder of two other Israeli soldiers. He participated in terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis during the second Intifada.

11. Gaza is far from "impoverished." According to news reports, its population of 1.5 million people includes more than 600 millionaires; in recent years shopping malls and private resorts have opened there.

12. Palestinian refugees are defined differently from refugees from any other conflict, including Iraqi or Syrian refugees. They maintain their status even if they are settled in another country and pass on refugee status to children and grandchildren so their numbers grow, not decline, over time. When Israel was established, approximately 850,000 Jews were driven out of their homes in Arab countries. This is greater than the number of original Arab refugees from Israel.

13. The war of 1948 was intended by Arab leaders to be an ethnic cleansing of the Jews and result in their annihilation. Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, on Oct. 11, 1947, declared to Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al-Yom, “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” 

That's 13 big mistakes in a "Ten Thing" column. Not only can’t Mehdi Hasan and The Huffington Post get anything right about Gaza, they also can’t count. 

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