Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: poverty

Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts

Monday, July 24, 2023

Gazans plan a major anti-Hamas protest on Sunday

Last night there were anti-Hamas demonstrations in various locations in Gaza.

The protesters reject the disastrous conditions that the Gaza Strip is going through, and demand as good a life as the children of Hamas leaders enjoy.

Here's one that was posted on TikTok this week although I don't know when it occurred:

There are actually two stories here. One is that there are demonstrations like these altogether, and the other is that the media roundly ignores them.

Hashtags accompanying videos of last night's demo say "Where is Al Jazeera?" nearly as often as they say the slogan of the demonstrations, "We want to live."

Earlier this month, the leaders of the protests issued a list of demands to Hamas to improve their lives.

The word "Israel" is not mentioned - they blame Hamas and Hamas alone for their predicament.

They are demanding more hours of electricity, timely payment of Gaza government salaries, and for Hamas to stop taking out "taxes" on the money Qatar sends to Gazans (as well as an increase.)

If the demands aren't met, the protesters plan a huge set of demonstrations this coming Sunday, July 30.

So why are these issues not being covered by the media, including Arabic media?

One major reason is that there is an unwritten rule: unless problems can be blamed on Israel, they must not be publicized. And even ordinary Palestinians have internalized this rule when they speak to reporters on the record.

When they are assured anonymity, they are much freer to criticize their leaders, but most reporters aren't even interested in asking the right questions. The international media has its own narrative to uphold, and that one coincides with that of the PA and Hamas - always blame Israel and Israel alone.

Yes, there is censorship from Hamas and the PA, and they routinely will insult their political opponents on their own media so we know about their own infighting. But popular protests like these do not benefit the PA, because they have their own critics and protesters, and the optics of showing Palestinians protest against their own leaders is problematic for both sides.

These sorts of things only get any traction when they are too big to ignore.

This Sunday's protests will probably not bother Hamas - they will repress them and try to keep them quiet. But any Middle East media that ignores those protests are clearly not media that can be trusted to report anything accurately.

Which is essentially all the media in the region.

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!

"Pro-Palestinian" activists sure don't care about the suffering of Palestinians in Iraq

There are thousands of Palestinians still living in Iraq with essentially no rights. They have been attacked, and many killed, by Iraqis since 2003. They are not recognized in Iraq as a refugee group. Other Arab countries refuse to allow them to immigrate.

The Safa news agency interviewed Baghdad-based journalist Hassan Al-Khaled who said that there are some 6,000 Palestinians in Iraq, 70% of whom live below the poverty line. He aid that there is no joy this Eid al-Fitr for them.

In 1948, many Palestinians were forced by Iraqi forces to join them and fight against Israel. After their defeat, they were allowed to go to Iraq, where they were treated decently. That all changed after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, who had given them huge privileges.

In 2020, UNHCR dropped their rent subsidies for the Palestinian families, throwing them into an even deeper crisis.

Al-Khaled complained about the lack of relief associations or organizations that help Palestinians in Iraq, saying, "If there are any, the amount assistance they provide to the refugees is not enough for everyone."

Think about that. There are hundreds of NGOs in the Palestinian territories, and hundreds more that claim to aid Palestinians worldwide - and this journalist is not aware of a single NGO that provides aid to Palestinians in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Arab countries refuse to allow them to enter, even as hundreds of thousands of other refugees from Iraq have been allowed in. They use Israel as an excuse to keep Palestinians in misery in Iraq. HRW wrote in 2006:

The PLO and the Arab League have rejected in principle and actively discouraged in practice local integration or third-country resettlement of Palestinian refugees. Their view is that local integration or resettlement would negate the right to return of the resettled refugees. The Arab countries hosting large Palestinian refugee populations point to Israel's legal obligation to permit the refugees' return to justify their refusal to integrate the Palestinian refugees and afford them rights equal to their own citizens.

Jordan and Syria have (with some exceptions) refused entry to Palestinians who attempt to flee Iraq, in violation of the international legal prohibition against refoulement. When these two countries made temporary exceptions to their policies of refusal, they conditioned admission of Palestinian refugees on their confinement to camps, for example al-Ruwaishid camp in Jordan in 2003, and al-Hol camp in Syria in 2006. Because of the widely observed policy against resettlement of Palestinian refugees, these camp residents have already waited longer than other refugees fleeing Iraq, such as the Iranian Kurds, for access to third-country resettlement.

Just as with Lebanon, when Palestinians are brutally mistreated by an Arab nation, all of the "pro-Palestinian activists" are suddenly silent. The reason is because they are not pro-Palestinian at all, but anti-Israel. And using Israel as an excuse to actively keep Palestinians in misery - policies that are meant to hurt Palestinians because doing so might indirectly, one day, help weaken Israel - proves that this "anti-Israel" attitude is really antisemitism.

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!

"Palestine" ranks better than most countries in "multidimensional poverty" and "human development index"

The UN Human Development Reports of the UN Development Program defines a "Multidimensional Poverty Index" (MPI.)

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

The MPI score is based on these metrics:

How do Palestinians do?

Pretty good, actually.

While Western nations are not listed in this chart, the Palestinians are shown to be in far better shape than over 100 countries that are listed. I call out some of them.

Anti-Israel activists like to pretend that Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn to terror, and one of the reasons they like to trot out is how impoverished they are.

If that was the case, then why are we not seeing the same support for terror in the 100 countries who have a higher poverty score than they do?

Until COVID, Palestinians had also been steadily getting better scores every year in UNDP's Human Development Index, but even after a brief setback they are ranked "high" in various metrics.

Israel haters hate context like this. Because by any metric, Palestinians aren't in nearly as bad shape as people in over a hundred countries - but Palestinians get far more aid per capita than every single one of them.

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!

As the Mufti forbade selling land to Jews, Transjordanian sheikhs WANTED Jews to buy their land

In the early 1930s, the antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem convened a series of meetings where Arab sheikhs pledged not to sell their land to Jews - a policy that continues today with the Palestinian Authority.

November 21,1934 Palestine Post:

January 1, 1935 Palestine Post:

But as this was happening, landowners in Transjordan compared their poverty with the prosperity in neighboring Palestine, and concluded that Jewish investments was what Transjordan needed.

JTA reported on January 18, 1933:

The Hebrew paper “Davar” discloses today that Transjordanian tribe heads have for some time been approaching the Jewish Agency with offers for the sale of land. The miserable situation of Transjordania as compared with the prosperity in Palestine convinces them that the salvation of Transjordania can come only through the Jews, the tribe leaders are reported to have said. These same leaders have urged Emir Abdullah to encourage the Jews to settle in Transjordan, the paper writes.

From JTA, February 6, 1933:

Permission to sell Transjordan land to foreigners is requested in a petition signed by twenty-one of the most influential Transjordan tribal leaders and members of the Legislative Assembly, which has been submitted to the Palestine Government and Emir Abdullah.

The petition emphasizes that the precarious condition of the country calls for such action.

The petition, which was drawn up following a meeting of Arab chieftains, in Amman, adds a new chapter to the Transjordan matter which was apparently closed on January 25th when Emir Abdullah announced the cancellation of an option he had granted to a Jewish company for the lease of 70,000 dunams of his personal domain in Transjordan.

The Arab chieftains at their meeting in Amman discussed Emir Abdullah’s communique announcing the cancellation of the lease to Jews. The majority of those present, however, found that the sale of land to Jews is the only solution for the present acute situation.

Seventy percent of the cattle owned by the Arabs in Transjordan have perished from starvation, it was stated.

Transjordan and Palestine had similar climates, similar resources, and the Arabs were from similar tribes. The only reason Palestine was thriving and Transjordan was failing was because of Jewish energy and investments. This was obvious to everyone at the time, including Arabs.

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!

Lebanese apartheid: More than half of Palestinians in Lebanon live in poverty

From Ma'an:

Around 160,000 Palestinians are living below the poverty line in refugee camps in Lebanon, the ambassador to Beirut says.

Nearly 13,000 Palestinian refugees are living in extreme poverty in Lebanon, Ashraf Dabour told Ma'an.

Palestinian refugees are banned from entering 75 professions in Lebanon. "Practicing any of these careers is considered a breach of Lebanese law," Dabour said.

The Lebanese parliament amended a law restricting Palestinian refugees' access to work. "However, the Lebanese cabinet has not put that amendment into effect," the Palestinian ambassador said.

"We hear sweet talk from Lebanese officials about the Palestinian refugees' right to work and live in dignity, but in reality nothing is translated into action."

Dabour said the Palestinian health sector in Lebanon owed hospitals around $2 million. "There are some medical procedures which our health security program in Lebanon can't afford, and I hereby urge Arab and Palestinian businessmen to help our people in refugee camps in Lebanon."

There were, at the end of 2010, between 260,000 and 280,000 Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon (UNRWA has over 465,000 registered "refugees" but about 200,000 actually left Lebanon for Europe and elsewhere.)

Which means that more than half of the Palestinians in Lebanon are in poverty, because of the discrimination they face by the Lebanese government.

Not that this is new news. Two years ago UNRWA came out with a report with more specifics about Palestinian poverty in Lebanon, and it mentioned that one reason was that many were forced to live in "closed" camps that were not integrated into the economy of surrounding towns, and that in itself was an indicator of likely poverty. Only one other area had that same problem - the West Bank, under the PA.

Since then, Palestinian Arab refugees from Syria have come into Lebanon, and been forced into these same overcrowded and poverty-stricken camps, unlike other refugees from Syria.

Yet this blatant discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon is simply not mentioned by those who pretend to care about them. No calls for boycotts by rock stars, no campus demonstrations, no calls for aid.

When their suffering cannot be blamed, even indirectly, on Israel, no one really gives a damn.

The next time you see a "pro-Palestinian" demonstration, just ask them about discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon. And put it on video.

Lebanon, the apartheid state

From The Daily Star (Lebanon):

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are two times more likely to live in poverty than other Lebanese people, preliminary report findings released Tuesday have shown.

The “Socio-Economic Survey of Palestine Refugees in Lebanon” is the first comprehensive evaluation of its kind. It assesses the demographics of the Palestinian population as well as their access to the labor market and various health, education and housing needs.

The full findings of the European Union (EU)-funded survey are not expected until the end of the month, but the initial results paint a rather bleak picture for the 260,000 – 280,000 Palestinian refugees the report found to be living in the country.

This is a significantly smaller figure than the 425,000 UN registered refugees, many of whom are thought to have emigrated in search of work.

“Anyone who has visited one of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon knows that poverty is widespread there and the living conditions are simply unacceptable for a middle-income country,” said EU operation section head Diege Escalona Paturel. “Until today no reliable data on the socio-economic situation and poverty levels in the camps existed and thus all programs and campaigns have been based on estimates and guesses in the best case, propaganda in the worst.”

The survey, conducted by researchers at the American University Beirut (AUB) in coordination with United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) statisticians, found jobless rates among Palestinians to be 56 percent, with only 38 percent of the working population – 53,000 out of 120,000 refugees – considered to be in stable employment.

A mere 6 percent of Palestinians go on to attend university, in contrast to 20 percent of Lebanese, the report said. [In Gaza the number is closer to 46.2% - EoZ, h/t Zach]

A large amount of blame is being placed on the perceived lack of opportunities, limited by state restrictions requiring Palestinians to obtain work permits and which, in spite of recent relaxations, still exclude Palestinians from certain professions, such as medicine.

To put these numbers in context, it means that the unemployment rate of Palestinian Arabs in a sovereign Arab country is far higher than they are in "besieged" Gaza, where the rate is about 35%. The poverty rate in Lebanon for Palestinian Arabs is also higher than in Gaza.

So where are the convoys and flotillas by "pro-Palestinian activists" to help the Arabs of Palestinian descent who live in Lebanon?

Oh, sorry, no one cares about them, because "pro-Palestinian" activists only care when they can blame Palestinian Arab misery on Israel. When Arabs deliberately discriminate against their Palestinian brethren, it gets hushed up so as not to dilute the message that Israel is uniquely evil and that somehow Israel is to blame for the past six decades of Arabs treating Palestinian Arabs like dirt.

In this case, their fellow Arabs are simply following Lebanese laws specifically written to discriminate against Palestinian Arabs.

You know....the textbook definition of apartheid.