Abbas loves the false "starving Palestinians" meme - until it is directed at him

For many years, we have been reading that the Palestinians are starving.

News Line (socialist), 2006: "Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian people has created refugees, death squads, and now starvation in Gaza, and hunger throughout the occupied territories."

The UN, 2007:  "The forced starvation diet of Palestinians"

Richard Falk, 2007: " Israel ...has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation and desolation."

Business Insider, 2011: "The Israeli Campaign To Starve Palestinians Into Submission Is A Crime"

WRMEA, 2019: "The Scenario of a Million Palestinians Going Hungry in Gaza"

Guardian, 2019: "One million face hunger in Gaza after US cut to Palestine aid"

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas never complained about these stories - on the contrary, they encouraged them, because they blamed Israel and the US for "starving" Palestinians and the result could be more money for them.

Something interesting happened in the past week, though.

Mohammed Dahlan, the exiled Fatah Gaza leader who is now trying to get involved in the planned Palestinian elections, said in an interview with Al Arabiya that “The Palestinian people have suffered from poverty, oppression and hunger for 15 years,” exactly what Israel's critics have claimed - but Dahlan blamed the Palestinian leadership for this, not Israel.

Pro-Abbas Palestinian media responded dismissively: "We have never heard of a single Palestinian who died of starvation."

Oh wow. It seems the Palestinians really weren't starving for 15 years as we've been told.   (They were literally starving to death - in Syria - but no one talks about that.)

The article also reveals a lot about Palestinian corruption without intending to. It says that Dahlan entered Yasir Arafat’s council one day, protesting the financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority, and Arafat replied to him mockingly: “Oh Mohammad, let other people talk about corruption, not you. By the way, tell me. From where did you get the money to buy your Al Shawa villa, from your father's account? ”  

If the story is true, it means that Arafat knew about the amount of corruption at every level of his Fatah cronies, and didn't do anything about it. Corruption was how he kept everyone in line. 

Nothing has changed - we know that Abbas' family has become rich from their business ventures funded by the Palestinian Authority's decisions.

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