A little over a week ago, I wrote about the double standard that Nicholas Kristof admitted that he applied to Israel, and that his rationalization for this double standard did not hold up to scrutiny. This week — after a stop in the Negev to take potshots at the tree-planting Jewish National Fund — Kristof writes from Gaza. When Kristof tweeted a link to my previous post, I was hopeful that this meant that he had read it. If he did so, the points I made did not get through to him, as his writing from Gaza suffers from many of the same flaws as did his writing about the West Bank, that is, disregard of recent history, unquestioning reliance on the work of biased NGO’s, and judging Israel by a double standard, all while putting up a transparent veneer of “balance.” This time Kristof adds to the mix a denial of the Israeli government’s legitimate right and obligation to protect its own civilian population from terrorist attack.
Kristof begins by describing the wretched state of affairs in much of Gaza today. I have no doubt that much of what is happening now in Gaza is heartbreaking (well, except for the 1700 Hamas millionaires, whom I imagine are doing just fine). Kristof’s first failure, however, is in providing nothing of the recent historical context for the current situation. Kristof omits any mention of the failed peace offer in 2001, in which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted, and Arafat rejected, US President Bill Clinton’s proposal for a historic compromise that would have brought independence to Palestinians and peace to both sides. He also omits that, in the wake of the futile 2001 offer, Israel enacted a unilateral disengagement in Gaza. In 2005 Israel uprooted families and entire Jewish communities from Gaza, and left behind a commercial enterprise with seed money put up by private donors. The people of Gaza had an opportunity then to build a state, but made the choice instead to elect Hamas, and to allow Hamas to build a terrorist wonderland. Most notably, he omits ELEVEN THOUSAND rockets fired since this disengagement.
I suppose none of this is surprising, since New York Times editors think that only people who are already “very well informed” about the situation care about context.
Instead of providing this crucial background, Kristof accuses Israel of “economic warfare on an entire population” and “collective punishment.” Presumably, Kristof’s guides from Gisha did not bother to tell him that land restrictions on Gaza have been eased significantly, or that cement supplied by the UN for rebuilding has been reportedly diverted by Hamas to build new tunnels. What is also missing from Kristof’s description of Gaza as an “open air prison” is that, after large fanfare for the generosity of the donors that promised aid after last summer’s war, almost none of it has materialized. Kristof also appears unaware that a 2011 commission of the UN — surely no friend to Israel — found that “there is no material before the Panel that would permit a finding confirming the allegations” that Israel had imposed its naval blockade with the intention to “collectively punish the civilian population” of Gaza.
The most telling line in Kristof’s piece, as has already been noted by others, is this one: “True, Hamas’s misrule is central to the problem, but we don’t have influence over Hamas; we do have influence over Israel.” The logic behind this sentence is deeply, deeply flawed — essentially, Kristof is saying, since we in the West have no control over Hamas, we should pressure Israel into making it easier for Hamas to kill Israelis, in order to ease the suffering of the people who elected Hamas in the first place.
Israel cannot, however, rid Gaza of its Hamas problem. The current sad situation in Gaza was created by the people of Gaza, who elected Hamas in 2006, and it can only be ended by the people of Gaza. It’s true, of course, that although Hamas was initially elected, it maintains control of Gaza by force, and not by virtue of democratic government. The population within Gaza, however, is responsible for allowing Hamas to be entrenched among them. The fear of reprisal is very real, but if the people of Gaza will not stand up for themselves, there is no hope for them to get out from under Hamas’s repressive and murderous regime. The Israeli government, meanwhile, is under no moral, ethical or legal obligation to allow continued attacks on its own citizens, because of the fact that Gaza is a terrorist state.
