Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: gisha

Showing posts with label gisha. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Blaming Israel alone for Gaza mental health problems is just another kind of Jew-hatred. Here's why.

The Israeli Gisha NGO concentrates on freedom of movement of people and goods between Israel and the territories, and it issues reports and statistics to that end.

It just released a graphics-heavy online report about the impact of Israel's closure of Gaza on the mental health of Gazans:

In Their Words: Mental Health Professionals in Gaza on Treating the Effects of Closure

“There’s a clear link between the Israeli closure and the grave state of mental health in Gaza. The closure is like a drop of ink in a pool of water, spreading everywhere, touching everything.”
Nedaa Murtaja, psychologist, Gaza

For decades, Israel has enforced restrictions on movement to and from the Gaza Strip, which it tightened to the point of closure in 2007.

....
In late 2021, Gisha and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) convened a group of mental health professionals and representatives of organizations working in the field in the Strip. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the effects of Israel’s closure on mental health, as well as the challenges therapists and care specialists face as residents living under closure in Gaza themselves.

What follows is a summary of the observations made by participants in the discussion.

The number of Palestinians in need of psychological care or assistance in Gaza has climbed dramatically in recent years. According to various studies, between 15% and 30% of individuals living in Gaza develop post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).

“This means there are at least 300,000 people in Gaza living with PTSD, and likely many more,” says Qusai Abuodah, director of resource development and public relations at GCMHP.

A central outcome of the closure enforced by Israel has been a high prevalence of poverty and unemployment in the Strip. Economic hardship elevates stress levels among the general population.

Khitam Abu Shwareb, a social worker at GCMHP, emphasizes the inextricable link between people’s economic reality and their mental health. “Restrictions imposed by Israel on entry of goods and raw materials into Gaza not only disrupt entire economic sectors, they also lead to price hikes inside the Strip, with direct impact on our mental stability.”

“Long-term mental stress leads to severe anxiety disorders and further undermines quality of life, which, in Gaza, is already far from meeting accepted international standards,” Osama Frina, a psychologist at GCMHP, explains. “Anxiety sometimes transforms into physical pain and suffering. The physical suffering, added to frustration and despair, often leads people to experience deep depression, which, unfortunately, also manifests in an increasing suicide rate.”

“The depression experienced by residents of Gaza is not depression in its classic, conventional sense,” says Hassan Zeyada, a psychologist at GCMHP.

“Palestinian depression is different. Gaza’s entire society is in a constant state of high level of chronic stress and ongoing trauma. The Israeli closure and travel restrictions on Gaza affect everyone, without exception. The prevailing feeling among Gaza’s population is one of helplessness and hopelessness. This situation did not appear out of thin air: It is the result of a deliberate process designed to induce a state of helplessness to weaken the resilience of both individuals and society in Gaza.”

Where is the bias in this report?

Everywhere.

The "research" was not meant to determine why Gazan mental health is poor. It determined at the outset, before a word was written, that it is all Israel's fault. Then the mental health professionals in Gaza were asked to confirm and support that lie.

Israel doesn't limit goods and travel in Gaza to "induce a state of helplessness to weaken the resilience of both individuals and society in Gaza." It does it to save the lives of Israeli citizens. In any other context, this is called human rights. Israel allows exports; it allows unlimited medicine and food and fuel; it allows thousands of workers to enter Israel every day and is trying to increase that amount.

I'm not saying that bombings and the restrictions on goods and travel do not affect Gazans - of course they do. But the story doesn't come close to ending there.

The Gisha report does not mention Egypt's own strict restrictions on Gazans being able to cross their border, or Egypt's own severe limitations on imports and exports - all of which have nothing to do with Israel.

But that is only a small part of the bias. This report, and hundreds like it, actually hurt Gazans far more than it helps them. And it does it for reasons that can only be described as antisemitic.

By blaming all of Gaza's woes on Israel alone, it gives a free pass to the many other factors that can and do cause severe mental health problems in Gaza - problems that have little or nothing to do with Israel.

By far, the biggest mental health risk in Gaza (and the West Bank) is from men who abuse their wives and children:

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, one in three women who have ever been married are subjected to physical violence by their husbands and one in seven of never married women by a household member.

UNICEF adds:

Domestic violence levels are also high in 2014 MICSs (PCBS) study, confirming that 93 per cent of children aged 2 to 14 years experienced violent disciplining at home, and 23 per cent of children experienced severe physical punishment. Pervasive and harmful social norms including child marriage, child labour, sexual violence and gender-based violence are issues of great concern.

The Israel-hating crowd loves to claim that the Gaza closure is the reason for these statistics, but the numbers are similar in the West Bank, where there is no closure.

Meaning that domestic violence is widespread among Palestinians and it has nothing to do with Israel. The only people responsible for beating their wives and children are the husbands. Women in Gaza fear for their lives - not from Israeli missiles but from their husbands. The victims have to live with this abuse, with fear and mistrust of the people who should unconditionally love them, every day of their lives.

It is interesting to note that there are lots of articles and academic papers about how the "patriarchy" damages the mental health of women and children in the West - and even about how it damages men's mental health as well.. Yet there are practically no scholarly reports about the psychological effects and dangers of living in the highly patriarchal Palestinian society.

Palestinian laws explicitly discriminate against women. Abortion is illegal except in extreme cases. A high percentage of women are pressured into marrying while still children. Polygamy is allowed. Access to contraception is limited by the husbands in Gaza, and Palestinian women are taught that the should never abort because having children is a form of "resistance."

Palestinian children are also scarred by Gaza social mores. They are indoctrinated at birth into a culture of violence and celebrating death. They are taught to cheer when Israeli civilians are killed - but also to celebrate the "ascension to Paradise" of terrorists killed by Israel. Tens of thousands attend summer camps where they are taught nothing but hate and militancy.

Children in Gaza in particular are taught in their classrooms to seek martyrdom - including in UNRWA schools. The adults in their lives are teaching them that their greatest value to the nation is is to be killed.

Do you think that being told that they are nothing more than cannon fodder might affect the mental health of children?

There are other factors that affect the Palestinian psyche. The registered UNRWA "refugees" have been taught for generations that they deserve to have have free housing and schooling paid for by the world, and even the Palestinian government relies on the EU and Arab world to do the work that they should have been doing in funding and building their own institutions. It is a welfare state and they have convinced themselves - and much of the world - that this is normal, that Palestinians do not have to compromise for peace, that they are eternal victims and should sit back and wait for the world to give them everything they demand.

Put it all together and you have a recipe for a society that is deeply dysfunctional.

But NGOs like Gisha don't want you to know this. They are part of the problem. They want to hide the real problems in Gaza and blame only Israel. This helps their bottom line - funders want them to blame Israel for everything - but these kinds of superficial, one-sided analyses end up hurting the Palestinians they pretend to care about because it solidifies the idea that they are not responsible for any of their own problems. .

In the end, blaming all of the mental health issues of Gazans on Israel alone is not serious analysis. It is whitewashing the real issue because of an overriding desire to blame Jews, and Jews alone, for any and every problem. It is a much more sophisticated form of antisemitism than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kampf or the medieval lie that Jews poison wells - but in the end, just like the classic cases, it is still using Jews as the scapegoat for every problem.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Opposition to Ramon Airport plan proves the hypocrisy of "pro-Palestinian" groups

Here's yet another way to know that the biggest self-described supporters of Palestinians really don't give a damn about them.

As we've been reporting, Israel is setting up a plan for Palestinians to be able to travel through Ramon Airport in the southern Negev.

This will make it easier for most Palestinians to travel internationally.

Assuming that the passengers are vetted for security, no one should oppose this. Human rights advocates should be celebrating. For years, they have been complaining about Palestinian "freedom of movement" - and here, Palestinians are about to be given an easier, heaper and more convenient option to escape their supposed prison.

Yet not one of the groups that claim to support Palestinians are happy. And because this makes no sense whatsoever, each one is making up their own reasons to oppose it (or to ignore it altogether.)

The Palestinian Authority is against the plan, threatening any Palestinian who takes advantage of Ramon Airport. Their stated reason? Because they insist they should have their own airports. Apparently, their people must suffer because they want something that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. (And for some reason, traveling through Jordan or Egypt to get to airports is fine, but traveling though Israel is a crime.)

The head of the Palestinian transportation ministry added that they feared that Palestinian criminals would be able to escape justice through Israel. That reason makes as little sense as the other one.

And the head of Human Rights Watch used an unfounded - and clearly false - rumor as an excuse for his opposition to the plan. Which shows that HRW doesn't care about Palestinian rights - instead, they subscribe to the old Arab idea that anything that benefits Israel in any way must be inherently bad.

Jordanians are also decrying the plan - and they are pretending that they are opposing it for the Palestinians' own good. A group called the National Forum to Support the Resistance and Protect the Homeland urged Palestinians to boycott Ramon Airport - because using it would be considered "normalization" with Israel!

They went on to say:

The National Forum affirms the popular position that normalization is treason that constitutes the greatest service for the Zionist entity to market itself as providing humanitarian facilities by facilitating movement and travel for Palestinians who suffer the scourge of the continuous Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and their sanctities. ...The occupation wants to cover up its crimes and whitewash its ugly image in front of the world...

Their twisted logic says that Israel only wants to treat Palestinians nicely in order to cover up the fact that Israel treats Palestinians poorly.

The real reason that Jordanians oppose the idea is because right now they have a captive customer base where West Bank Palestinians have no choice but to go through Jordan, which helps Jordan's economy - especially when they are forced to pay "VIP" fees to try to reduce their interminable wait times at the border crossing to Israel. They want to retain their right to treat Palestinians like dirt, and Palestinians know that the Israeli side of the crossing treats them far better than the Jordanian side does.

Closer to the truth is what a PA official said in July: “Israel failed to the turn Ramon Airport into an international terminal. Now, the Israelis are offering us something that didn’t work for them."

Yes, this would benefit Israel. But it would also benefit Palestinians. Why cut off your nose to spite your face?

What about B'Tselem, which has lots of articles on Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement? Shouldn't they support this plan?

They haven't said a word.

What about Gisha, an Israeli NGO whose entire goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians? Surely they must have written something positive about a plan that helps Palestinians travel internationally?

Actually, not only has Gisha ignored this story - they also said nothing about the huge delays at the Jordanian crossings that make travel for Palestinians a giant hassle. Not on their website, not on their Facebook page, and not on Twitter, as far as I can tell.

Palestinians can choose to use Ramon Airport if they want. They can choose to continue to use Jordan's airport if they want. This plan does not and cannot hurt a single Palestinian, and it has potential to help thousands of them save hours of time and hundreds of dollars. There is no rational reason to oppose it - if one really cares about Palestinians.

Which is the entire point.

People and organizations who swear that they support Palestinians really don't. The multiple and disparate reasons they give to oppose making Palestinian lives easier is proof that they have no good reason to oppose this plan.

The only consistent thread through this negative reaction, or non-reaction, to a plan that can only benefit Palestinians is that these groups aren't "pro-Palestinian." They are anti-Israel. And anything that benefits Israel in any way is to be strenuously opposed.

And indeed these groups oppose anything Israel does that helps Palestinians. They have built their quasi-governments and organizations on the falsehood that Israel is unparalleled evil. When Israel does anything to help Palestinians, this threatens their entire business model. Their funders don't want to read reports about how Palestinian lives have improved due to Israeli decisions. These organizations' existence is based on churning out papers and reports and articles and interviews that will be eagerly read and paid for by modern antisemites.

Ramon Airport is proof positive of the hypocrisy of so-called "pro-Palestinian" groups.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Gisha NGO: Even when Egypt blockades Gaza, it is Israel's responsibility

It's always Israel's fault.

For the third straight day, Egypt has closed the Rafah crossing, stranding thousands of people on both sides who want to cross the border. Egypt also closed the Salah a-Din Gate from where some truckloads of goods are sent.

Egypt's sudden closure is largely assumed to be an expression of anger over Hamas organizing violent protests at a time when Egypt has been putting its own reputation on the line to bring down tensions between Israel and Gaza.

Gisha, the Israeli NGO that monitors movement from and to Gaza, is upset over this - but they don't blame Egypt.

On the first day of the closure, they wrote, "The closure of Rafah compounds severe movement restrictions imposed by Israel, leaving Gaza residents with even fewer options to travel for medical, professional, educational, or personal needs."

And in its conclusion, they don't call on Egypt to lift the restrictions - but Israel: "Given its ongoing effective control over Gaza, which amounts to occupation, Israel is obligated to protect human rights and facilitate normal life in the Strip to the greatest extent possible. This includes facilitating access abroad, particularly given Egypt’s closing of Rafah Crossing."

This NGO doesn't even call for Egypt to lift the restrictions. Even though Israel cannot do anything to help people who want to go to or return from Egypt, Gisha is programmed to make everything Israel's fault and Israel's responsibility.

Moreover, Gisha doesn't even ask Hamas to stop its activities that are prompting Egypt to make this decision.

Arabs hurt Arabs and Israel gets blamed.

Gisha's obsession with castigating Israel is part of its DNA. For example, on August 17, it wrote that Israel was not allowing communications equipment into Gaza. However, since then Israel has lifted that restriction. You wouldn't know about it from Gisha, though - the article about the restriction is still on their front page, and there has been no update.

Israel has recently allowed over a thousand traders and businesspeople from Gaza to resume entering Israel to facilitate trade - but Gisha was silent. Israel recently resumes allowing construction material into Gaza for international organizations - but Gisha ws silent.

In fact, one can see more accurate information about imports and exports from Gaza from Islamic Jihad media than from an Israeli NGO. If you want reliable information on people and goods going in and out of Gaza, this Western-funded NGO is the worst place to look.

Gisha has 25 employees, a budget of $1.6 million and is funded from a variety of sources:

Action Against Hunger

Broederlijk Delen

Danish Representative Office

DROSOS FOUNDATION

Foundation for Middle East Peace

Irish Aid

Leonard Hill Charitable Trust

New Israel Fund

NGO Development Center

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Oxfam SDC-Danida

Oxfam Novib

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Salesforce.com Foundation (in kind donation)

Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

The Embassy of Finland in Tel Aviv

United Nations Development Programme

All of them are complicit in demonizing Israel, even for things not under Israel's control.

Amnesty and other NGOs actually want Palestinians to die - as long as Israel will be blamed. (And they consider Palestinians to be too stupid to make their own decisions.)

A couple of weeks ago, a series of NGOs including the Amnesty, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B'Tselem and even two Palestinian human rights organizations issued a press release demanding that Israel provide vaccines for Palestinians.

They use poor arguments, most of which I debunked in last night's webcast, but one of them deserves more attention - because it shows how bigoted these groups are against Palestinians.

We express grave concerns about media reports that the Russian-developed vaccine will be delivered to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA has not fully indicated which vaccines it aims to purchase and distribute, although it has made clear that it does not have sufficient funds and capabilities to purchase the necessary vaccinations. Israel cannot transfer a vaccine which is not approved for its own citizens. Such a step would violate the Paris Protocol on Economic Relations and the long-standing policy of the Israeli Ministry of Health to only allow the distribution of medicines in the OPT which have undergone the necessary scientific and regulatory procedures. Although the Paris Protocol has come under criticism in the past for, inter alia, obliging the PA to import medications that are beyond its financial reach, as long as it is binding, Israel cannot import a vaccine that it has not approved for its own population and send it to the occupied population. Israel must ensure that the vaccines delivered to Palestinians in the OPT, also meet the approvals of the Israeli health system, and that these vaccines be purchased and delivered as soon as possible.

What does the Paris Protocol say?

...Both sides will maintain the same import policy (various exceptions) and regulations including classification, valuation and other customs procedures, which are based on the principles governing international codes, and the same policies of import licensing and of standards for imported goods, all as applied by Israel with respect to its importation. Israel may from time to time introduce changes in any of the above, provided that changes in standard requirements will not constitute a non-tariff-barrier and will be based on considerations of health, safety and the protection of the environment in conformity with Article 2.2. of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to trade of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations.

So even if this paragraph applies to importing medicines (which is not at all obvious) Israel can change the policy for maintaining public health!

And what does the Agreement on Technical Barriers Article 2.2 say?

Members shall ensure that technical regulations are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to or with the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade. For this purpose, technical regulations shall not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment would create. Such legitimate objectives are, inter alia: national security requirements; the prevention of deceptive practices; protection of human health or safety, animal or plant life or health, or the environment. In assessing such risks, relevant elements of consideration are, inter alia: available scientific and technical information, related processing technology or intended end-uses of products.

These very regulations referred to in the Paris Protocols say that Israel should not place any barriers in place to stop Palestinians from getting the medicines they need!

Clearly, when the Palestinians don't have ultra-cold freezers needed to stockpile the Pfizer vaccine , the Russian Sputnik vaccine seems like a viable alternative to help millions of their citizens. The Palestinian Authority has scientists and doctors that can look at the literature and see whether it makes sense to accept the Russian vaccine. Other countries like India have decided that the Russian vaccine is safe enough to rely on. One can argue about the decision, but is hardly irresponsible for leaders to choose the Russian vaccine in the interests of protecting the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

But Amnesty and these other NGOs disagree with this. They want to take away Palestinian choice as to how to treat their own people!

If anyone else would say that Palestinians are too immature or too ignorant to decide on how their own health programs should work, they would be rightly considered to be bigots.

Beyond that, Amnesty and the other NGOs are saying that it is better for Palestinians to wait for Israel to build an entire infrastructure to distribute the Pfizer vaccine, or to wait to receive the Moderna vaccine, than to import the Sputnik vaccine today. Every day a couple of dozen Palestinians are dying of COVID-19 and Amnesty is saying that time is not of the essence to provide vaccines to them, even though the logistics of Israel providing the vaccines in Palestinian areas is enormously expensive and time consuming.

The NGOs even say it is Israel's responsibility to keep the medicines cold:

Ensuring smooth entry of vaccines and other medical equipment to the oPt, including preserving a 'cold chain’ to keep vaccines refrigerated during transit if necessary.

Ultra-cold freezers aren't exactly available at Best Buy. There are only a couple of manufacturers and they are swamped. It would take months to acquire an adequate supply of this equipment to bring into the territories, by which time there will be other vaccines available that do not require anything colder than a refrigerator.

This demand, by itself, shows how out of touch these NGOs are - and how willing they are to sacrifice Palestinians as long as they can blame Israel for their deaths.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn: Amnesty and the other NGOs hate Israel more than they care about Palestinian lives. This demand, by itself, proves how hateful they are both towards Israel and towards Palestinians themselves.

To call these "human rights "organizations is a sick joke.

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Gisha NGO blames Israel for Palestinian discrimination against women, its cofounder falsely claims Israel blocking vaccines to Palestinians

Gisha, an Israeli NGO ostensibly concerned with freedom of movement for Palestinians, proves again that its only purpose is to come up with new excuses to slander Israel, truth be damned.

This month it released a report that claims that Israel is discriminating against women in its policy on allowing Gazans to travel. Every single example of this supposed discrimination is fictional - they are all de facto consequences of Palestinian misogyny, not Israeli discrimination.

Here is every example of discrimination it mentions:

* Israel limits visits from Gazans to family members in the West Bank or Israel to specific events like funerals and weddings, spouses who are originally from the West Bank suffer. Nearly always, the spouse that moves away from home is the woman. So Gisha blames Israel for discriminating against women when Palestinian society forces women to be the spouse that moves away from home.

* The criteria for visits does not include visits for helping with difficult pregnancies' or childbirth. However, in a footnote Gisha admits that Israel amended that rule in response to a request from Gisha; it has not yet been implemented practically because of the pandemic.

* Gisha gives a few more technical examples, but then admits, that every example applies equally to both men and women but because women tend to move to be with their husbands' families they are the ones who are affected most.

* Israel makes it difficult for Gazans to travel abroad for education. Gaza women are less likely to seek to travel abroad. Therefore, somehow it is Israel's fault that so few women go to school abroad.

* The percentage of women who work in farms and fishing has plummeted from 36% before the Gaza closure to 4% now. Israel is blamed.

* Most women are employed in service professions like teaching and nursing. Israel doesn't give work permits for people in those jobs. So again, because Palestinian society imposes arbitrary rules on what jobs women can have, Israel is blamed.

* Israel allows Gazans with certain jobs to attend conferences outside Gaza. The professions allowed tend to be male-dominated, again because of Palestinian society misogyny. Israel is blamed.

Gisha refers to an Israeli document that outlines the criteria for travel between the territories and Israel. It only mentions women specifically in that context for one instance: "Authorization for entry of aging Palestinians (men over 55, women over 50) with no need for a printed permit." Which means that the only official discrimination in Israel's travel rules is towards helping women travel more easily than men!

Moreover, Gazans who are allowed to travel to Israel or the West Bank to accompany children who need medical attention are far more likely to be women than men. Gisha doesn't mention that "discrimination" in their examples.

This is just another example of how NGOs lie in order to portray Israel as a monster. But in the case of Gisha, it is worse.

The co-founder of Gisha, Sari Bashi, tweeted this completely absurd and false accusation:

This is the opposite of the truth. Israel has been working with Palestinian leaders to provide millions of doses of vaccine, and Israel's Hadassah Hospital has been working with the UAE to bring in Russian COVID-19 vaccines that Israel has not approved but the PA has. The article she links to says nothing about Israel limiting vaccine access.

She simply made it up.

This is how credible Gisha and most anti-Israel NGOs are. They simply decide to accuse Israel of any crime and then they cherry pick factoids to support it - or they just lie.

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Israel has been expediting allowances of "dual use" items into Gaza for weeks - and no one reports it

Reporters and anti-Israel activists, trying to prove that Israel is not allowing needed medical aid into Gaza, have been referencing the list of "dual use" items that Israel's COGAT publishes.

They misrepresent the list as a list of items banned from Gaza. But that was never true: it is a list of items that require special permission to enter Gaza (and, for many of them, the West Bank as well.) When the intended use of the items is clearly not for terrorists, they get approved fairly easily, if not automatically.

When I visited the Kerem Shalom crossing a few year ago, I was given an example of radiology equipment that uses radioactive materials. It certainly makes sense for Israel to restrict radioactive materials into Gaza, because no one doubts that Hamas would build a "dirty bomb" if they could, but when the intended use is obviously for medical needs the equipment gets approved.

Very few reporters bother to visit Kerem Shalom or Erez to find out the truth about what Israel allows into Gaza. Instead, they rely on the reporting of organizations that are hostile to Israel.

In March, when the coronavirus crisis was accelerating, The Forward published an article by Muhammad Shehada in March 24 that included these lies:

[D]ue to the blockade, health workers, cleaners and policemen working in quarantine zones lack protective clothing and N95 masks. They also have a shortage of the chemicals necessary to make disinfectants, including hydrogen peroxide and chlorine. Israel bans both from entering Gaza under the pretext of “dual-use” items — items they say can also be used for building weapons.

The closure of Gaza (not a blockade, which has a specific definition only for goods coming from the sea) never banned protective clothing or N95 masks. Israel does not ban chlorine at all, and neither does it ban hydrogen peroxide at the concentrations used by hospitals for disinfecting. Interestingly, Shehada linked to a March 14 Haaretz article for his assertions, but he changed what that report said:

Israel has not yet been asked to ease or temper its policy on importing goods, the official said. Israel may have to consider the entry of “dual-use” goods – civilian materials that can be used for military purposes. For example, Israel imposes limits on hydrogen peroxide, which in addition to its use as a medical disinfectant can at certain concentrations be used to manufacture explosives.

Haaretz was accurate, Shehada was not.

Perhaps even more egregious was this paragraph from Time published on April 3:

Israel says the restrictions it places on an exhaustive list of “dual-use” items—whose contents range from chemical fertilizers, to aluminum poles, to steel cables, to water skis—are necessary for maintaining security against a hostile military group that frequently launches missile barrages across its borders. But critics of the policy—which has at times restricted goods as quotidian as cilantro—insist it has transformed Gaza into “the world’s largest open-air prison.”

Ah, yes, the cilantro ban. I haven't heard that one for years. For a short time period around the time of intense Hamas rocket barrages in 2009, Israel changed its policy from restricting dangerous items into only allowing specific items into Gaza as needed for Gazans to live. Those items didn't include cilantro, which must have been a terrible burden. The policy was to encourage Gazans to rise up against Hamas, and it didn't work, so Israel ended it in 2010. It was not an application of the "dual use" restrictions.

Of course, anti-Israel activists calling Gaza an "open air prison" does not make it a charge that should be taken seriously.

But the worst part is that at the time this was written, Israel had already eliminated restrictions on dual-use items needed for fighting coronavirus.

As far as I can tell, no one has reported this, even though the policy is now four weeks old.

The UN's OCHA reported on March 31:

Movement of goods from Israel and Egypt has continued as previously, including the entry of restricted (“dual use”) items via the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom Crossing. The Government of Israel has offered to expedite approvals for items needed in relation to the COVID response.

And that policy has continued since then - before the Time article and possibly before the Forward article as well.

For a place as closely observed as Gaza, why has no one reported that Israel has essentially changed its policy and significantly eased its restrictions on dual use items? Not even Gisha, the NGO that obsessively tracks restrictions on movement and goods to and from Gaza, has said a word about it.

The hundreds of reporters and NGO employees in Israel and the territories, as always, only look for stories that fit their preconceived narrative - and that narrative simply does not include the idea that Israel is not a monster hell-bent on making the lives of Palestinians miserable for no reason.

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Unreported news: Israel reduced time for West Bank merchandise imports by 67%; lifts ban on tires into Gaza

When Israel makes life easier for Palestinians, it rarely makes the news.

COGAT announced last week when describing a tour of Qalandiya crossing to a group of international visitors:

The Civil Administration has advanced its “Door To Door” project throughout the West Bank this past year. Thanks to this unique project, Palestinian trucks can carry merchandise into Israel without long and exhaustive checking at the crossings, instead relying on modern technology. This project advancement has shortened the crossing time for merchandise by two thirds while saving money, resources, and precious time.

Also earlier this month the Gisha NGO sent a letter to Minister of Defense Naftali Bennett -widely regarded as an anti-Arab zealot - asking him to allow tires into Gaza, as tires have been banned by Israel since April 2018 in response to Gaza riots that burned hundreds or thousands of tires at the border. This is a humanitarian issue, Gisha emphasized.

Tomorrow morning, Israel will allow 6000 tires to enter Gaza.

Because the media ignores stories like these, the Arab and anti-Israel narrative that Israel wants to arbitrarily hurt Palestinians is the only one people can read and watch. But Israel is only concerned for its own security, and always has been - if there are ways to ease Palestinian suffering without affecting security, Israel has shown that it is willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.

(h/t Irene)

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News you won't read anywhere else: Israel issued another 1200 work permits for Gazans in October

Buried in the middle of this factsheet from OCHA-OPT:

We see:

Israel has now issued 4,811 permits for Gaza workers to go into Israel.

In September, the number was 3,592.

One would think that the NGOs that constantly say that Israel do more to help open up Gaza would be very happy. But for some reason, nobody has heard of these 3000 or so new work permits since December. Gisha, the NGO that specifically tracks movement into and out of Gaza has not written a word about this that I can find.

Israel Hayom wrote about this in October, saying that this seems to have been part of an Egyptian-brokered Gaza cease fire last year. But COGAT and Israeli officials aren't commenting.

So news that the world would seemingly consider good goes unreported.

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Anti-Israel NGO @Gisha_Access has "FAQ" on "Great Return March" without mentioning the word "Return"

The Israeli NGO Gisha, which is dedicated to helping Gazans have "freedom of movement," published a "Frequently Asked Questions" document about the weekly riots at the Gaza border.

Here's how they describe their seven page document:

What precipitated the current wave of protests in Gaza?

To promote a better understanding of the situation in Gaza, one that goes beyond the provocative, but reductive explanations making headlines in recent weeks, we have compiled key elements of Gisha’s research and professional analysis so as to provide answers to some frequently asked questions about the Gaza Strip.

The weekly demonstrations are called by their organizers the "Great Return March." They make it explicitly clear that the point of the riots is to storm the Gaza fence and enter Israel en masse, in an attempt to publicize the Palestinian "Right of Return" and flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, destroying the Jewish state.

Yet this joke of an NGO does not mention a word about this. Even the name of the riots, "Great Return March," is somehow missing in this "professional analysis.

No, the only reason that the "researchers" at Gisha can find for the riots is - Israeli restrictions on Gaza.

For more than 10 years, residents of Gaza have lived under excessively harsh restrictions on movement implemented through Israel’s closure of the Strip’s land, sea and air space.

Gisha answers the question of "What precipitated the current wave of protests in Gaza?" by taking pains not to mention what the protests are about. The explicit demands of the organizers, and of their Hamas sponsors, are not mentioned:

Regardless of the political affiliation of the protestors, who organized the protest, or the agenda they wish to promote, international law prohibits the use of lethal force against civilians unless they participate directly in acts of hostility or pose a concrete risk to life, and even then, only as a last resort and only to the extent necessary to alleviate the risk

This is not only deceptive - it is demeaning to Palestinians .The very group that claims to want to improve the lives of Gazans is telling their Western audience not to listen to what Gazans themselves say about the protests, but only listen to their own spin. The message being given is that Gazans cannot be trusted to define their own feelings and motivations. The good people at Gisha know Gazans better than Gazans know themselves, and letting Palestinians explain their own point of view would just muddy the crystal-clear anti-Israel waters that Gisha is trying to create.

It is NGO-splaining.

The rest of this document that blames Israel, and only Israel, descends into farce at times. In answer to the question "Why does Gisha place responsibility on Israel and not on Hamas?", after saying how horrible Israel is, it allows that

Hamas, as the de facto government and also as a party to conflict, is subject to international humanitarian and human rights law as well. Its violations of these do not relieve Israel of its obligations.

Which means that this is another question that Gisha raises and does not answer in its own FAQ. If they know that Hamas has the legal obligation towards its own people, then why doesn't Gisha write anything negative about Hamas (unless shamed into it?)

It also blames Israel, and only Israel, for the PLO's decision to block electricity and fuel to Gaza. Why should a FAQ actually mention any facts?

The FAQ goes on to reluctantly mention that Gaza has a border with Egypt that is almost always closed, but it doesn't demand that Egypt do anything, just as it doesn't demand anything of Hamas.

Only Israel is the blame for violent riots that are explicit calls to overrun Israeli territory. That's Gisha's position, and facts are inconvenient things to be swatted away.

I have a question for Gisha to answer in their next FAQ: Why are you afraid to mention the truth about Gaza? The answer, of course, is that their European funders aren't interested in facts or nuance, but in blaming Israel.

That's where the money is.

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Israeli NGO Gisha makes anti-Israel "Willy Wonka" cartoon

Gisha, the Israeli NGO that blames Israel for all of Gaza's problems, released last year a Palestinian version of the Willy Wonka story in which the child's dreams are almost crushed by the evil Israeli enemy.

The idea that Palestinian infighting, Egyptian closure of Rafah or Hamas terrorism has anything to do with the reality in Gaza today is not to be seen or heard. No, it is only Israel, for purely arbitrary and evil reasons, that decides to cruelly starve and destroy Gaza.

Gisha used to never mention anything about Hamas restricting movement in Gaza until I shamed them into reluctantly admitting that, yes, sometimes Palestinians hurt themselves. The NGO's anti-Israel propaganda has been consistent and grossly unfair for years. When their own statistics started contradicting their anti-Israel claims - they simply removed the statistics from their homepage.

Now they are brainwashing children to hate Israel as well.

And they get millions from the EU to do this anti-Israel incitement and propaganda aimed at kids.

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Palestinian Authority barring Gaza medical patients from treatment in Israel

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?

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.

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."

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.

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Gisha NGO takes graph that makes Israel look good off their homepage

Gisha is an NGO I've mentioned before that pretends to be supporting freedom of movement for people in Gaza, but which nearly always lets Hamas off the hook for blocking that same freedom of movement that they say Israel is stopping.

Yesterday, I happened to use a Gisha graph to illustrate the difference between how Israel has been improving freedom of movement to and from Gaza compared to Egypt.

Versions of this graph had been featured on Gisha's homepage for over two years.

Here's what their page looked like on Sunday:

The day that I used their own graph to show how Israel is helping Palestinian freedom of movement - something Gisha is loathe to admit - they changed their homepage to eliminate that chart:

As soon as I used their own chart to prove something contradicting their entire purpose - which is to demonize Israel - they removed it from their main page.

I'm sure it is just a coincidence.

Anti-Israel NGO stats show opposite of what they claim

Gisha is an anti-Israel NGO that is dedicated to denouncing Israel for its restrictions on movement an materials to Gaza. They claim to be non-partisan but they will almost always ignore Hamas violations on freedom of movement from Gaza, concentrating on Israel.

Gisha likes to gather statistics (although not from Israeli sources; they find Hamas and Arab sources more believable.) They created some nice interactive graphs showing the situation on various metrics that they care about, like people and goods allowed through crossings.

Their own graphs show pretty much the opposite of what they get a million dollars a year to prove. Israel is allowing more and more movement; Egypt is doing less and less.

"Not a single house has been rebuilt in Gaza"

From the far-left NGO Gisha, last week:

March 4, 2015: Gisha executive director, Eitan Diamond, was interviewed (Hebrew) yesterday on Guy Zohar’s program on Israeli radio station 103FM, where he talked about Gaza’s reconstruction: “Six months after the fighting, not a single house destroyed during the last round of hostilities has been rebuilt.

As of January, Israel had imported some 50,000 tons of construction material, and in February probably 20,000 tons more - and they were delivered to residents directly under the protocol that Israel and UNRWA worked out:

So where is all the construction materials going?

Gisha, of course, blames Israel alone for the slowness (or absence!) of reconstruction. They are willingly ignoring the facts.

It appears that Gaza residents who lost their homes are preferring to resell their construction materials to rebuilding their homes. And you can be certain that much of that material is being used to rebuild terrorist tunnels - something Hamas and Islamic Jihad are bragging about.

Based on the photos coming out of Gaza recently, not only are no houses being built - but the heavily damaged buildings haven't even been removed!

Hamas knows quite well that the photos of Gaza devastation translates into cash that will be donated for reconstruction - for materials that Hamas will end up using for terror. So Hamas has no incentive to help rebuild Gaza.

And Gisha, HRW and other anti-Israel NGOs show by their emphasis on Israel that they don't give a damn about Gaza residents. They only want to demonize Israel.

If you want to see the real reason why Gaza is having problems rebuilding, read the Israel ambassador to the UK's article in CiF from last week.

And perhaps email AP or Reuters to investigate why the truckloads of construction materials entering Gaza every day has not translated to a single house being rebuilt.

Elder gets results (belated Gisha edition)

Another remarkable coincidence!

Last month, I noted that Gisha, the Israeli NGO that pretends to care about freedom of movement of people and goods to and from Gaza, had never said anything bad about Hamas.

This even though Hamas was routinely stymieing movement to and from Gaza, which is exactly what Gisha supposedly cares about. Specifically, I noted a widely reported story of how Hamas didn't allow some 37 orphans to leave Gaza to go to Israel, which Israel gave approval for.

I noted that Gisha, funded from European dollars, was taking an interesting position by ignoring Hamas violations of freedom of movement while concentrating on Israeli and (to a lesser extent) Egyptian restrictions.

Lo and behold, two days after I wrote my article, Gisha wrote its first extraordinarily mild scolding of Hamas for this same story. Although it couched it as a minor infraction compared to Israeli restrictions, Gisha reluctantly wrote:

According to the most recent data released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 43.2% of Gaza residents are children under the age of 14, which is slightly more than 750,000 children. Around 1,500 of them are newly orphaned since the fighting last summer. Hamas’s decision prevented 37 of them from receiving a rare opportunity to leave the Gaza Strip, since Israel allows Palestinians to exit only if they meet a strict set of criteria. Most Palestinians who receive approval to exit are medical patients and those accompanying them, merchants and a handful of “exceptional humanitarian cases”. Given this, it’s unfortunate that Hamas officials also obstruct travel for political reasons.

"Unfortunate!" Oooh, that must have hurt! But it is important to protect your funding sources, and we cannot have European governments asking uncomfortable questions about why Gisha refuses to ever say anything bad about Hamas. Better to write the barest minimum possible against Hamas so if anyone does ask a question, Gisha can answer, "Look! See? We did it! We're objective! Please keep our funding going!"

Sheer coincidence that the first negative thing Gisha seems to have ever written on its own about Hamas (not quoting other sources) happened right after I pointed this out.

Gisha NGO manages to avoid condemning Hamas again

I mentioned last month that the Gisha NGO, the "legal center for freedom of movement" which is well-funded by many European governments and organizations, goes out of its way to avoid condemning Hamas for its restrictions on freedom of movement into and out of Gaza.

The last time it condemned Hamas for blocking Gazan;s movement, as far as I can tell, was in 2011. The many examples since then have gone unremarked by this "freedom of movement" organization.

Here is how Gisha reported on the closing of the Erez crossing last week:

Erez Crossing closed last Thursday, January 8, following a disagreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is operating only for exceptional cases: Medical patients, Israeli citizens, and UNDP and UNRWA staff. According to Palestinian sources, the crossing was closed after Hamas placed a container on the Palestinian side of the crossing designed to be used as an office for its employees. The container is said to obstruct passage, and both Israel and the PA objected to its installation. PA employees on the Palestinian side of Erez refuse to work until the container is removed. Gisha calls on all parties to immediately resolve the matter, which is impacting on the civilian population and its ability to travel.

Hamas effectively installed an additional gateway for travelers to go through before entering and leaving Gaza. Yet it took three days for Gisha to even mention this on its site, and when it did it studiously avoided blaming Hamas for its unilateral move that caused the crossing to be closed. The entire press release was clearly only published reluctantly. Erez remained mostly closed for an entire week until it was re-opened today, and this is Gisha's only mention of it.

On the other hand, within one day of Israel closing the crossings last November due to rocket fire, Gisha immediately and expansively condemned Israel, calling it "collective punishment."

It is interesting that this EU-funded organization shows so little regard to Gazans when Hamas is the party guilty of restricting their freedom of movement.

Gisha NGO curiously silent about Hamas violations of freedom of movement

Gisha is an Israel-based NGO that calls itself the "legal center for freedom of movement" concentrating on the rights of Gazans and goods to go in and out of Gaza.

While it has a website, a blog and a Twitter account, somehow it missed this widely reported story:

A group of 37 orphans from Gaza Strip were prevented from crossing into Israel Sunday after Hamas backtracked from a deal reached to allow the kids to tour the Jewish state, saying the tour was an attempt to "brainwash" the kids. The indicent took place amid claims of clashes along the border between the IDF and Palestinians.

The group, comprised of children aged 5 to 12 whose fathers were killed in the 50-day summer war between Hamas and Israel, were all ready to go at the border crossing with Israel when Hamas rescinded its initial agreement to the visit.

Wouldn't this be right up Gisha's alley - Gazans being denied the right to freely travel? Not to mention that they are orphans! How could Gisha miss this?

A look through their archives finds that it missed some other stories as well: my story earlier today of Hamas blocking certain Israeli items from being imported, Hamas not allowing sick Gaza children from traveling to Egypt, Hamas stopping human rights workers from leaving Gaza, Hamas banning Fatah politicians from going to the West Bank, and others - all that involve daily violations of the rights of movement by Hamas against Gazans that are even more restrictive than Israeli regulations.

Gisha will talk about Egyptian closures of the Rafah crossing. But as far as I can tell, this Israeli NGO cannot find a negative thing to say about Hamas actions hurting the freedom of movement of people and goods from and to Gaza!

Gisha has a budget of about a million dollars a year, and is funded by donors such as the European Commission, United Kingdom, Oxfam GB, Trocaire, Oxfam Novib (the Netherlands), Irish Aid, Norway, UNDP, Broederlijk Delen, and NDC (joint funding from Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands).

Isn't it interesting that such a lavishly funded NGO will not say anything against a terror group that violates every aspect of freedom of movement in Gaza that Gisha supposedly monitors?

Gisha claims to be non-partisan - yet it cannot find anything wrong with Hamas actions in Gaza against its people. That is a pretty large blind spot for a "non-partisan" organization.

UPDATE: I guess I embarrassed them. Two days after I wrote this post, and four days after Hamas denied the children from exiting, Gisha reported on the story, saying "it’s unfortunate that Hamas officials also obstruct travel for political reasons."