Time Magazine:
[...] For in the end, the only thing that is certain is that every symbol of Hamas' rule in Gaza, every government building, police station, and office block has been replaced by a very large hole. It will take years for Hamas to re-build Gaza's infrastructure and to offer basic services to the war-dazed 1.5 million Palestinians inside the sealed-off territory.
What a biased piece of crap.
ReplyDeleteHamas had nothing to do with building the infrastructure in the first place. Most of it dates from the Israeli "occupation" - in other words, the Israelis planned and arranged it.
Hamas did not offer much in the way of basic services to their population, unless you count handing out suicide belts, Kassam rockets and bullets as basic services. Okay, maybe in some parts of the Bronx that counts...
Hamas has spent the last 3 years since the disengagement, destroying farmland, infrastructure, burning down hothouses and busied themselves with digging tunnels to accomplish the FINAL SOLUTION. When not occupied with this enterprise Hamas was killing and torturing collaborators, Fatah defenders, and building rocket launchers.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about burning the hothouses, consider the reality.
ReplyDeleteThe hothouses were of great value to Jews who wished to grow bug free produce ( Alei Katif). Hothouses are very expensive in comparison to traditional farming methods. And the produce that grows outside of the soil is nutritionally inferior and tastes like metal. (I check for bugs rather than buy it, even if it were free).
What possible value could these hothouses have to a non Jewish farmer?
They were a white elephant and someone should have told the Jewish donor who bought them. At least the evacuees got something for their real estate.
Furthermore, the cheapest way to dispose of a structure is to burn it down and that is why they did it that way. (Read the Arabic press, I do).
As far as digging tunnels, we know that these tunnels were used to bring food and fuel into Gaza after the embargo. They were also used to bring in weapons.
What would you have done in the same situation? If your family was starving, would you sit there saying tehillim or would you try anything to survive?
There were plenty of tunnels dug outside of the Warsaw ghetto that were also used to bring food, supplies and bombs. When desperate Jews did this, they are heroes, but when desperate Arabs do the same, what do you call them????
I am NOT defending Hamas, which is an evil Messianic death cult.
But all Arabs and all Muslims are not responsible for Hamas any more than all Europeans are Nazis. Arab Muslims in the ME are victims of Hamas just as Europeans were victims of the Nazis.
"The hothouses were of great value to Jews who wished to grow bug free produce ( Alei Katif). Hothouses are very expensive in comparison to traditional farming methods. And the produce that grows outside of the soil is nutritionally inferior and tastes like metal. (I check for bugs rather than buy it, even if it were free).
ReplyDeleteWhat possible value could these hothouses have to a non Jewish farmer?"
Do you mean to tell me that only Jews use hothouses/greenhouses? They exist in many places around the world and are used by people from various backgrounds. They are mainly used to grow things when it is too cold to do so outside unprotected, e.g. out of season. Out of season produce also brings higher prices.
You also seem to allude to hydroponic produce, saying that is inferior to stuff grown in the ground. While that might be true, farming is a business and if there are markets for something that means some people are satisfied with such produce, and people can make a living from them. My recollection is that the Gaza 'hothouses' exported stuff to Europe for one thing. They were not only used for 'bug-free' stuff for Haredim. Additionally, even if they didn't like or know how to use greenhouses set up for hydroponics, why couldn't they remove the hydroponic stuff and just use the greenhouses with soil to grow things instead? Why destroy them totally?
While maybe there is something to what you are saying that perhaps (at least partially) the hothouses were not destroyed solely to destroy what the Jews had left there, I suspect that maybe the simple Arab farmers didn't know how to handle the sophisticated high-tech Israeli farming eqpt., knowing only low-tech methods, so they found them an obstacle, which they removed. However, I am still not totally convinced that, as you imply, their actions were just based on agricultural considerations and that 'nationalistic' motives were not involved.