Love of the Land: Amnesia International: Forgetting the Real Culprits in Gaza

Amnesia International: Forgetting the Real Culprits in Gaza

Justus Reid Weiner and Dimitri Teresh
Global Law Forum
JCPA
19 January '10

Amnesty International (AI) in its briefing paper titled “Suffocating: The Gaza Strip Under Israeli Blockade”1 asserts that Gazans are suffering enormously under the so-called blockade. These assertions obscure the true nature of the relationship between Israel and Gaza.

First and foremost, thousands of Hamas rocket, missile and mortar attacks predated and prompted any economic sanctions put into effect by Israel.2 Despite this fact, as a recent Ministry of Defense report indicates, the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza increased by almost 900 percent in 2009 as compared to 2008.3 Despite that, Israel’s perennial critics, such as AI, have become increasingly vocal. As will be demonstrated below, flogging the purportedly dire humanitarian situation distorts the overall picture of Gaza and forgets the actual cause for the clearly less-than-optimal circumstances in which Gazans live.

Predictions of an “imminent humanitarian crisis” in Gaza have been made at least as far back as 1996. In the year 2000, various NGOs including AI turned up the heat on Israel by claiming the Jewish state was responsible for the “imminent humanitarian crisis/disaster” in the Gaza Strip. Such terminology was mobilized anew in 2001, and since then annually in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. How has the Gaza Strip been “on the verge” of a humanitarian crisis for in excess of ten years? Chicken Little, the sky is falling.

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Love of the Land: Amnesia International: Forgetting the Real Culprits in Gaza