UNRWA keeps pushing Pallywood

This is the pinned photo that has been on the top of the Twitter feed of Raquel Marti, UNRWA's executive director in Spain, for months. She captioned it "Bath time in Gaza:"

The original photo was taken by Emad Nassar, with this description:

June 26, 2015 . Salem Saoody, 30, is getting his daughter Layan (L) and his niece Shaymaa 5 (R) in the only remaining piece from their damaged house, which is the bathing tub. They now live in a caravan near the rubble.

One minor question: Where did the water come from?

There is no rain in Gaza in June. The house does not appear to have running water. There is no hose visible in the picture.

What are the chances that Salem Saoody takes his daughters out of their mobile home and they carry over 100 liters of clean water with them to their former home to take a bath?

Emad Nassar saw the chance for a dramatic photo, so he staged it to win awards. And the girls were happy to play in a mini-pool on a summer day. So, it appears, Nassar and Saoody spent a morning carrying water to the old bathtub for the perfect photo.

The idea that the Saoodys are forced to give their girls a bath in their old bathtub does not pass any sanity test.

Last June, when this photo was taken, I noted that Hamas had turned the Shujaiyeh neighborhood into a showpiece to bring foreign reporters to show Israel's evil - even though thousands of Gaza homes were being repaired, Hamas left Shujaiyeh untouched. There were a series of such obviously staged photos published by Hamas-leaning and duped photojournalists. And while the terror group kept the neighborhood as a zoo for gaping Westerners, it was building tunnels underneath the very same area.

UNRWA has something in common with Hamas. Both groups wanted to keep families in Shujaiyeh homeless, and the rubble uncleared, for as long as possible so they could maximize its propaganda value and get more funds from credulous Westerners. UNRWA actually made an entire film of such staged scenes in the neighborhood last year,

Of course, if you want to paint Gazans as eternal victims and implicitly blame Israel at every opportunity, this staged photo and inaccurate caption is perfect for you - and perfect for UNRWA and its lackeys. UNRWA created an entire film of such staged scenes in this neighborhood and told kids there to act in ludicrous scenes such as creating a makeshift see-saw in the middle of rubble.

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UNRWA releases new Gaza Pallywood propaganda film

Here is a brand new propaganda film from UNRWA:

Why is it propaganda? Because every scene is staged not to reflect reality but to maximize fundraising.

Gaza kids don't meet in the middle of the artificially maintained rubble of Shujaiyeh to create makeshift see-saws. 

Gaza kids don't spontaneously gather to dance to a kid who created makeshift drums. Pre-teens don't say "I want to see my society progress, and I want to have a hand in that progress." Boys and girls generally don't play together anywhere, let alone in a Muslim sector like Gaza. They certainly don't put their hands together to celebrate the wonderful idea of throwing a hard-to-find bottle into the sea with their hopes and dreams written in a note.

There is at least one bottling plant in Gaza. I don't think that bottles are that valuable a commodity that they have to wonder where to find one. (Where they found a cork in alcohol-free Gaza is an entirely different issue.)

The words are scripted. The scenes are rehearsed. The subjects are acting. And the camerawork, from the first shot to the last, is expensive. (The film  theme seems to have been chosen to tie the Police song "Message in a Bottle" to the UNRWA "#SOS4Gaza" campaign.)

This film was written and directed to show the world that Gaza kids are just like Westerners. Because the last thing UNRWA wants you to know is that it teaches hate and antisemitism and extols the virtues of martyrdom, or that its "human rights" curriculum teaches hate,  or that its teachers support terror.

This video is not meant to tell the truth. On the contrary - UNRWA spent tens of thousands of dollars on this film to hide the truth.

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This week's Shujaiyeh rubble photos

I wrote earlier this week that Gaza's Shujaiyeh neighborhood is being kept filled with rubble - and its residents kept homeless - because of the propaganda value of having foreign dignitaries and journalists go through the neighborhood and seeing the destruction. even though tens of thousands of families have been fully supplied with construction materials to rebuild, seemingly no one in Shujaiyeh is rebuilding, and nine months after the war the rubble is still in place - despite the fact that rubble is worth money for entrepreneurs who can recycle it.

It is clear that this neighborhood is being kept as a monument to supposed Israeli crimes.

This is not the first time Arabs have made people homeless for propaganda points. The Syrian town of Quneitra is described by Wikipedia:

The city remains in a destroyed condition. Syria has left the ruins in place and built a museum to memorialize its destruction. It maintains billboards at the ruins of many buildings and effectively preserves it in the condition that the Israeli army left it in. The former residents of the town have not returned and Syria discourages the re-population of the area.

All that is missing from Shujaiyeh is the museum.

Here are this week's photos of a neighborhood that could have started clearing rubble and rebuilding last September:

Staged pictures in a large stage.

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Turns out parts of Gaza's Shujaiyeh ARE being rebuilt - underground

From AFP:

A member of the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas died Friday when a smuggling tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip near the Israeli border, Hamas and medical sources said.

The sources did not say why the tunnel, located in eastern Shejaiya in northern Gaza, collapsed.

A statement from Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of de facto Gaza rulers Hamas, said a member was killed in the collapse of "a resistance tunnel".

Hamas has created a network of underground tunnels that enable the movement of arms and fighters throughout the coastal Palestinian territory. Some extend into Israel, and were used to carry out attacks during the July-August 2014 war with the Jewish state.

Shujaiyeh? Isn't that the place that Gaza leaders parade reporters and diplomats around to prove that Gazans haven't rebuilt their homes?

Clearly there is some rebuilding going on!

Now, if you want to build underground bunkers and tunnels, wouldn't it be so much easier to do it before the reconstruction takes place above ground?

It is obvious that Hamas uses the neighborhood as a hub of operations, which is the entire reason it was a major target for the IDF. But now it serves an additional purpose of being a propaganda tool.

This is yet another one of those connections that reporters are paid to notice, but instead they go out of their way to ignore them. Hamas building terror bunkers and kidnap tunnels directly beneath the rubble-strewn neighborhood that they love to photograph as evidence of Israeli atrocities just doesn't register as relevant to their lazy "narrative."

Notice how AFP calls these "smuggling tunnels." Even Hamas doesn't claim it is used for smuggling, but for terror. (No one is smuggling any items from Israel.)

The Al Qassam Brigades website says that he was working in "tunnels of pride and dignity to be stationed at the mouths of the homeland" - which sure sounds like this tunnel was meant to go to Israel.

Anyway...time to hand out the candy.

(More in my next post.)

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Gaza's Shujaiyeh will not be rebuilt anytime soon - because of its propaganda value

DW reveals something interesting about Gaza:

Scenes of destruction in this neighborhood are a constant reminder of the 52-day war in 2014. Nearly a year later, some of the rubble has been cleared, but damaged and bombed-out homes across vast fields of grey rubble still dominate the landscape. The neighborhood is clearly far from being rebuilt. Residents often see convoys of armored cars passing through; a tour through the neighborhood has become a must for foreign dignitaries and politicians visiting the Gaza Strip, which remains isolated from the world as Israel and Egypt tightly control their borders with it.

Issam Alewa has seen many of those convoys passing through in the past months. He said it is important that foreigners come to Gaza and see the damage first hand.

"We welcome them. Let them all come and see it," said the father of 13 children. But expectations are low that the situation will improve any time soon. Alewa's home is barely inhabitable. Most of the outer walls of the three-story house are gone. The ceilings are riddled with holes. The family lives on the first floor with a sitting room that doesn't have any walls.

"Everybody tells me that it is not safe to stay here, and that I should tear it down," the 52-year-old said. "But I don't know where else to go."

The article later admits that tens of thousands of Gazans have reconstructed their damaged homes:

Almost 60 000 families have so far received aid to repair their damaged homes through the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), which was brokered by the UN with Israel and the Palestinian Authority last October. However, financial pressure and strict controls over importing building materials from Israel make the GRM a very complicated process.

Yet for some reason the reporter didn't go to any neighborhoods to witness the repair of tens of thousands of homes. (And if the process is so complicated ,how have 60,000 families managed to navigate it successfully?)

It seems likely that Hamas, and to an extent NGOs like UNRWA, want to keep Shujaiyeh as a zoo to show the world how evil Israel is.

To put it simply, there is no excuse for not clearing rubble nine months after the war. There are bulldozers in Gaza, and indeed entrepreneurs recycle rubble to create new concrete and aggregate. Gaza's 40% unemployment rate means that there are plenty of people around willing to recover and sell this rubble.

Yet Shujaiyeh remains almost the same as it was in August, except perhaps for clearing the streets for the constant convoys filled with gawking Europeans.

This photo was taken in April by AFP.



The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism says that 58,000 families have received 100% of the materials they need to rebuild.  Another 30,000 have purchased part of their needs, and they can buy the rest whenever they want to. (The reason that no completely destroyed houses have been rebuilt is because of bureaucracy, not a shortage of materials or restrictions from Israel. And very possibly that bureaucracy is also meant to keep Shujaiyeh in the shape it is in today.)

Given these facts, it seems likely that the very PR-conscious Gaza leaders (and NGOs) are purposefully keeping Shujaiyeh in ruins, and keeping its residents in misery, in order to use it for propaganda. Reporters, happily complicit with a story that hands them such great visuals, won't ask the hard questions and will not be allowed to visit the areas of Gaza where people have rebuilt - or sold their cement to Hamas on the black market.

Gazans are kept homeless so that reporters can take photos such as these and write articles such as this one.

(h/t American Guy)

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