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Most people think that Gaza is a place of utter desolation, with humanitarian aid being withheld by the cruel Israelis, a place of unspeakable deprivation. It’s not true. Huge amounts of humanitarian aid is now flowing into Gaza, some 1400 truckloads every week at present, thanks to the help of the IDF. But once those trucks are inside Gaza, Hamas operatives take control and direct the trucks to their own warehouses, where they unload much of that aid, some of which remains to be distributed to Hamas members for their extended families, and the rest is kept for resale, at extravagant prices, to the Gazan civilians who were supposed to receive that humanitarian aid for free. Since the war in Gaza began, Hamas has taken in $500 million from the sale of such aid. The humanitarian aid, or some of it, does get through, but Hamas makes the Gazans pay.
And it is amazing what other goods are on sale in Gaza, at prices that are exceedingly low. More on what a French journalist saw in the markets in Gaza can be found here: “Going too easy on Gaza: Israeli right rage after PS5 sells for NIS 700 in Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, September
Despite persistent claims of goods shortages and price rises in Gaza, the prices of some goods have been astoundingly low, including that of a PlayStation 5 (PS5), according to video obtained by French journalist Jonathan Serero on Sunday.
🔴 ISRAEL EN GUERRE: Avez vous un peuple victime d’un génocide qui a les moyens de vendre ou d’acheter des Playstation 5? Évidemment que non.
Les étalages des magasins de Gaza sont bondés de vivres, de nourritures et de la célèbre console de jeux de Sony dernière génération. pic.twitter.com/ZeBJkGmAHq— Jonathan Serero (@sererojonathan) September 15, 2024
The video shows the PS5 game console, fresh fruits, soaps, perfumes, sweets, snacks, soft drinks, and more in the market in the center of Gaza.
The same resident was heard saying, “In Gaza, during the war, you can get everything at the stalls.” The resident enthusiastically said that the console cost him only 700 shekels; the current retail price on the Sony website is $499.99.
The video caused shock and anger among several prominent right-wing Israeli commentators, with many calling this proof that Netanyahu was going too easy on Gaza….
Does that sound like the Gaza that journalists have been describing to the world? Would you have imagined from reports in the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and of course Al Jazeera, that shelves in Gaza stores, and in stalls outside, were groaning with every sort of merchandise? Of course not. It’s amazing that this French journalist managed to film — secretly — what was on sale in the market in the middle of Gaza.
Not only are Gazans, in their “open-air concentration camp,” able to buy “fresh fruits, soaps, perfumes, sweets, snacks, soft drinks and more” in the markets, but they can buy the latest Sony Playstation 5 for less than a third of what Americans pay for the same item.
Allowing in humanitarian aid — food staples and medicine — is one thing, but that Gazan resident boasting you can get “everything at the market stalls” in Gaza and providing the ocular proof to the French journalist Jonathan Serero is quite another. Members of the Israeli right did not expect that in Gaza those stalls would be groaning under the weight of “fresh fruits, soaps, perfumes, sweets, snacks, soft drinks,” nor did they expect that Gazans would have available, and at a huge discount, the latest in Sony Playstations. They are angry that Netanyahu has not clamped down on imports other than humanitarian aid. That French journalist’s video should make one rethink all the tearjerker stories about Gaza being an “open-air concentration camp.” But because you visit Jihad Watch, and therefore are well-informed, you never believed that nonsense, did you?
Gaza is (or was) a state. It had it’s own borders and it’s citizens elected their own government. So just how is that a “concentration camp?”
There should be a clause somewhere in the definition of anti-Semitism that stops the Holocaust from being trivialised by people using language like “genocide” or “concentration camp” about situations which are plainly no such thing, thus diminishing the real and terrible events. Or maybe there should be some such provision in the Geneva Convention. For, apart from the dishonour done to those who suffered and died, if we hail everything as a genocide, we won’t spot the real thing when it creeps up on us.
Gazans VOTED for Hamas. They supported Hamas. They allowed Hamas to put weapons in their homes, their children’s schools, their mosques, etc. They teach their children to hate Jews from infancy. There are no innocent Gazans.
I am on a a few Facebook pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas pages. Every so often they’ll post a before and after set of photos, “before” showing developed neighborhoods, nice beaches, broad avenues, and so forth, and “after: the post-October 7 destruction.
In other words, they know and knew that it wasn’t some destitute, stricken, open air concentration camp and they lied when they told us it wasn’t. But it’s obvious they lie whenever it suits them.
One problem is the media–there isn’t a free one in Gaza and outside journalists are required to have minders and Hamas-supplied translators, sometimes the same person. Any Gazan who offers a critical opinion of the people who brought this on it will face severe problems and no one does.