Monday, June 26, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Haaretz reports that over the past two months, the number of vouchers issued by the PA to allow Gazans to travel outside the sector for medical treatment has plummeted from over 2000 a month to a few dozen. Some 90% of the requests are being ignored.
People with cancer and heart disease who had been treated in Israel cannot resume their treatments. Children who have been traveling regularly to hospitals in Israel are stuck and their parents are frantic.
And, as I previously reported, the PA has stopped shipments of anesthetic to Gaza, meaning that most operations cannot be performed in Gaza itself.
Between this and the PA's refusal to pay for electricity and fuel for Gaza, we see a total disregard by Mahmoud Abbas for the lives and well-being of his people.
The only political leader in the region who shows as little regard for his own people is Syria's Bashar Assad.
Yet Gisha, the NGO that monitors travel and goods through Gaza crossings, has been silent about the Palestinian Authority's responsibility for the electricity crisis, the banning of medicines and anesthetic and the decision to not allow Gazans to leave for medical treatment. In fact, Gisha essentially exonerates the PA in its "fact sheet" about the electricity crisis:
Isn’t it the PA’s decision to cut supply? What does Israel have to do with it?As always, if Israel cannot be blamed, then these things are just not of interest to the vast majority of the media nor to alleged "Palestinian activists" and "human rights organizations."
Even if the PA asks it to do so, Israel has its hand on the switch and would be complicit in and accountable for the certain devastation that would occur in the Strip as a result of further interruption in supply.
And Mahmoud Abbas cannot possibly be blamed for indirectly killing his own people, because the media has invested so much space into the idea that he is a man of peace and a moderate. It simply would make the journalists and analysts look bad if they would suddenly report that he is a despot who willingly lets his own people die and who collectively punishes millions for purely political reasons.
It means the news media have had him wrong for the past 15 years, and they are way too invested in the myth of moderate Abbas than the facts. Stories that support their anti-Israel bias are highlighted - and stories that contradict their pro-Palestinian bias are ignored or soft-pedaled.
