A Small Story

You can read the big stories in the newspapers; here is a small story:

You can read the big stories in the newspapers; here is a small story:

Middle East News Line (MENL) reports that UNRWA “renewed the distribution of emergency food aid to 600,000 Palestinians registered as refugees in the Gaza Strip. [Ed. Note: what kind of “emergency” lasts 55 years?] The program was suspended on April 1 following restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities at the sole commercial entry point for Gaza. UN officials said Israeli authorities implemented arrangements that permitted the agency to bring sufficient amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. They said Israeli authorities have insisted that holes be drilled in the two-inch wall cavities of containers leaving Gaza so that they can be searched by mini-camera. Officials said the procedures would add to the costs and the delays in providing food. UNRWA delivers around 250 tons of food aid per day to the refugees in the Gaza Strip.”

Why the “restrictions” on humanitarian aid? Because on April 1, Hamas used cargo containers to smuggle terrorists out of Gaza and into the Israeli port at Ashdod. They killed 10 Israelis in the port – which was small potatoes because they were supposed to detonate themselves alongside the chemical storage units, releasing enough poisonous gas to kill thousands of Israelis.

For a small story, it is disgusting at so many levels. It was an intended chemical weapons attack, for starters. WMD. And the intended victims were Jews. The level of perversion involved in planning to gas Jews in Israel in the 21st Century was hardly remarked upon. This is itself disgusting at more than one level. And for Hamas to plan it knowing that Arabs would die as well is cynical beyond belief, except that we have seen this before. It is part of a determination to ensure that the Palestinians become ever more miserable and dependent on Hamas for “services” as their world deteriorates, and that the world sees the Palestinians as “victims” of Israel – ignoring that they are victims first of Hamas.

Israel has no choice but to respond to acts of terror, which explains the shipping containers. Once Hamas used them, Israel couldn’t continue to allow them into the country without additional security measures. [And Israel was, of course, expected to find a way for Palestinians to get their UNRWA packages – not UNRWA, and surely not the Palestinians, but Israel. For more on Israel’s social responsibility, see JINSA Reports #390 and #392.] This is the principle applied when a woman blew herself up at the single point of entry for Palestinian workers into Israel. The result was that a) all women became suspect, and b) the passage was closed for several days – further stressing an already tenuous situation. It is the principle applied as Hamas smuggles explosives into Gaza in small fishing vessels. When Israel catches one, it closes the fishing areas, disrupting the mainstay of many Palestinians’ livelihoods.

Now, just in case you think maybe Yasser doesn’t care about any of this, rest assured that he does. “Let it collapse,” he told a PA “consultant,” who happens to be a former American diplomat. “It will be the fault of Israel and the Americans.”

So there in a very small story, you have it. Palestinians planning the most gut-wrenching way kill Jews, expecting to kill some of their own people while ensuring the economic and social ruin of the rest of them, and figuring it’s all OK as long as Israel and America get the blame.