Secondary effects of Gaza chaos

Reuters' terror apologist, Nidal al-Mughrabi, has an interesting article on how people are staying away from Gaza because of the danger there. While he spins it in the patented Reuters way, there are some facts that he buries and whose implications he ignores completely.

Simon McGregor-Wood, chairman of the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel, said fewer foreign journalists have been going to Gaza due to the uncertain security situation.

This means that not too many people are reporting on how truly bad things are in Gaza. When an attack with multiple deaths occurs between Fatah and Hamas, it makes the news; when people get killed from gunfire at weddings or "work accidents" or clan clashes it never does. The hourly threats and rhetoric between Hamas and Fatah get ignored as well, not to mention the lower-level non-fatal attacks between them as well as between prominent families and the militias. The irony is that reporters are leaving Gaza because of the daily insecurity but they aren't reporting it!

This also means that in a strange kind of way, amateurs like me are better reporters about what is happening in Gaza than real reporters on the ground there. They are clearly afraid for their lives and of being kidnapped, and the terrorists do not care about a free press and routinely will go after anyone who happens to piss them off that day, including reporters. While most Palestinian Arab newspapers are mouthpieces for one movement or another, and there is certainly some self-censorship, they do more reporting that the foreign media does and it is easier to discern the truth of what is happening in Gaza from the original Arabic sources than from a foreign reporter in an armored car with a police escort who knows that if he reports something upsetting he may die.

Khalil Abu Shammala, director of Ad-Dameer Association for Human Rights, said foreign donors to some of his group's projects no longer visit Gaza to follow up on activities they finance.

This is the very last sentence in the story, and is probably the most important. Remember how all the donors from Europe were saying how careful they are now to make sure that there is transparency and accountability to ensure that their aid would make it to the people who need it? Well, throw all that out the window. Some or most of the aid ends up going to buy guns and RPGs and giant posters of whatever terror leader is popular in a specific area.

Gaza is run by thieves, thugs and murderers.

And Gaza is the model of what a Palestinian Arab state would look like.