Palestinian shoppers are welcoming the first shopping mall in Gaza as merchandise brought through tunnels evading the Israeli blockade goes on sale. http://www.paltimes.net/arabic/read.php?news_id=115527 Palestinian Times Media on this issue (Link above) The humanitarian crisis of the Gaza Mall (from a more cynical perspective) Will the Western media show these images? Please scroll down below for photos of the new shopping mall that opened today in Gaza. I have also attached new photos and film of Gaza’s hotels, beauty spas, swimming pools, beaches and street markets -- images the BBC, New York Times and others refuse to show you. Meanwhile, Hamas are deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents, in order to fool gullible Western journalists and politicians who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged “humanitarian crisis.” (Photo of a new mall that opened today, July 17, 2010. If there “are no building materials allowed into Gaza” how did they build this shopping center, or the new Olympic-size swimming pool pictured below?) Two days ago the EU pledged tens of millions of EU taxpayers’ euros to add to the hundreds of millions already donated to Gaza this year, much of which has been misused to procure arms. UPDATE, Sunday July 18, 2010: Some journalists who subscribe to this list have asked me for a quote. You are welcome to use the following. Political and media commentator Tom Gross said: “On a day when (because EU Foreign Policy Chief Baroness Ashton is in Gaza) the BBC and other media have featured extensive reports all day long on what they term the dire economic situation in Gaza, why are they not mentioning the new shopping mall that opened there yesterday? “When leading news outlets mention the so-called humanitarian flotillas from Turkey, why do they omit the fact that life expectancy and literacy rates are higher, and infant mortality rates are lower in Gaza than corresponding rates in Turkey? Have they considered that perhaps the humanitarian flotillas ought to be going in the other direction, towards Turkey?” WHAT HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE? Last year, this website revealed to a Western audience pictures of the bustling, crowded food markets of Gazathat the Western media refuse to show you. Earlier this year, I reported the new Olympic-size swimming pool of Gaza (no shortage of building materials or water here) and the luxury restaurants, where you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. (Over 300,000 people have viewed photos on that webpage since May, according to my website monitor.) Now I want to draw attention to the fact that this morning, on the day that the EU again criticized Israel (but not Egypt) for supposedly oppressing Gazans, on a day when the BBC TV world news headlines again lead with a report about how “devastated the economy in Gaza is,” an impressive new shopping mall opened in Gaza (photos below, followed by a selection of other photos from Gaza). Will those Western journalists who write stories about “starvation” in Gaza and compare it to a “concentration camp” report this? Instead of reporting on the mall opening, the British-based international satellite broadcaster Sky News reported today “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire.” NEW GAZA SHOPPING MALL Photos from Saturday, July 17, 2010: Here is a news report in Arabic on the opening of the mall from today’s Palestine Times. (Click on each of these thumbnails to view the full photos.) This is the official website of the Gaza mall. (UPDATE July 22, 2010: Warning note: Some browsers have reported that there may be a virus attached to the Gaza Mall site if you open it, but many others, including mine, have not found this to be the case. In any event, so many people have been directed to the Gaza mall website -- www.gazamall.ps -- from this website that the mall’s website’s bandwidth has been exceeded so currently you will be unable to access the site in any case if you open it. I have posted a screenshot below, translated from Arabic.) UPDATE, July 20, 2010 More pictures of the mall here, here, and here from The Palestine Times. http://paltimes.net/arabic/photos.php?album=503 http://paltimes.net/arabic/photos.php?album=502 http://paltimes.net/arabic/photos.php?album=501 And this video of the mall has today gone up on YouTube. (The captions that have been added to this video are not mine, nor do I approve of all of them.) The mall is being widely featured in media throughout the Arab world, for example here (courtesy of AP), but why the continuing silence from Western media who subscribe to AP and who continue to cover “the situation in Gaza” day after day without mentioning the economic progress there? The mall includes a supermarket, international clothing stores, a food court, beauty products, a children’s playground, a restaurant, an underground carpark, and much-needed air conditioning. The mall is not only for Gaza’s elite. Tens of thousands of shoppers from Rafah to Beit Hanoun have already visited the site within a matter of days, according to Palestinian press reports. “There are international firms such as Adidas and Lacoste and Paris’ top selling perfumes,” said the head of the mall’s board of directors, Salah a-Din Abu Abdo. “Nevertheless, the local traders and businessmen are those running the business. I hope that in the future we’ll get merchandise from other foreign chains wanting to open branches here.” A Palestinian child waves to a woman dressed up as a large mouse as people walk inside the newly opened Gaza Mall, in Gaza City, on Saturday. The Gaza Mall is the first shopping center in the Gaza Strip to be opened since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. (AP) Published: Jul 17, 2010 23:03 Updated: Jul 17, 2010 23:16 RAMALLAH, West Bank: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says Gaza's borders must open to enable the territory's battered economy to recover. Ashton spoke at a news conference Saturday with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Ashton is to tour Gaza on Sunday to gauge whether Israel's decision to ease its 3-year-old blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory has improved the lives of ordinary Gazans. Earlier this month, Israel said it would allow the import of most consumer goods to Gaza. However, Israel continues to ban exports and restricts the import of badly needed construction materials. Ashton says Israel needs to go further and that "there needs to be an opening of the crossings to allow the flow of people and goods in both directions." UPDATE, July 21, 2010 Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest newspaper, whose editors subscribe to this email list, has now covered the mall. UPDATE, July 21, 2010 The National Post, one of Canada’s largest newspapers, almost alone among Western media has run acomment piece about the Gaza mall and also referring to this (Tom Gross media) webpage. UPDATE, July 21, 2010 Glen Beck today showed the mall on his show on Fox. He said that the media will gladly show you a “Palestinian with a bloody face but won’t show you the Gaza shopping mall.” It is fine that Fox have featured the mall, but why aren’t the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS and others interested in a balance, rounded approach to covering Palestinian issues? BIAS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN Before I draw attention to other photos below, please let me restate again my overall position since several other commentators have misrepresented it recently: I have consistently supported the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel since I first became interested in politics. But there is no point in creating a new Palestinian state if it will primarily be used as a launching ground for armed attacks on Israel, which would only in turn likely lead to a much bloodier war between Israelis and Palestinians than anything we have witnessed in the past. In order to make sure any Palestinian state is peaceful, and respects human rights for both its own citizens and its neighbors, it is crucial for Western policy-makers not be misled into making bad policy (as they have so often done in the past) in part, at least, as a result of believing the utter distortions of Western journalists, who greatly exaggerate the suffering of Palestinians and consistently cover up for the misdeeds of Hamas and Fatah. Of course, one should not forget that the media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about other issues. Yet when every allowance has been made, the sustained bias against Israel is in a league of its own. I am not for one moment suggesting that Israeli misdeeds should not be fully and unsparingly reported on (and indeed Israel being a vigorous democracy, such misdeeds are widely reported on in the Israeli media itself, and debated in the Israeli Knesset). But propagating the falsehoods of Fatah and Hamas propagandists has done nothing to further the legitimate aspirations of ordinary Palestinians, any more than parroting the lies of Stalin helped ordinary Russians. Such bias, I believed, is not only wrong in itself but seriously detrimental to international efforts to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis. MALNOURISHMENT? These are some of the photos previously carried on the dispatch “Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza” (May 25, 2010). Above: the courtyard of the Roots restaurant in Gaza. Above: A part of the restaurant’s 12-page menu, which includes a wide range of meat, poultry and seafood dishes. The restaurant is popular with Gazans holding weddings and other celebrations, UN and NGO workers, and foreign journalists. Here are more pictures of the restaurant. (Also see more pictures of Roots further down this dispatch.)http://www.rootsclub.ps/gallery_sub.php?id=3&name=Greens%20Terrace%%2020Cafe Promotional video clip of Roots http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_puiuvWHQ4&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/user/RootstheClub *** Whereas the restaurant above is one of those popular with wealthier Gazans, the pictures below show life for ordinary people in Gaza. Above: Recent photos show one of Gaza’s fruit and vegetable markets, a cake shop, and a children’s toy store in Gaza city. Hardly the “World War II-era concentration camp” that some Western journalists have claimed Gaza resembles. Playing the manipulative game of the BBC is easy. If we had their vast taxpayer-funded resources, we too could produce reports about parts of London, Manchester and Glasgow and make it look as though there is a humanitarian catastrophe throughout the U.K. We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles too. MAYBE THE TURKISH FLOTILLAS ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION? In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births. In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births. Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.) Gaza’s GDP is not as high as Turkey’s but it is higher than some other places in the Arab world, and it is much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West. (Source for above info: CIA World Factbook) World hunger organizations report that 10-15 million children below the age of 5 die each year, and 50,000 people die daily. One-third of all deaths in the world are due to poverty. While famine kills millions of children in Africa, India, and elsewhere, life expectancy for Gaza Arabs, at 72 years, is nearly five years higher than the world average. In Swaziland, for example, life expectancy is less than 40 years, and it is 42 years in Zambia. Meanwhile Western governments, misled by Western media, continue to pour more and more money into Gaza for people that don’t need it, while allowing black Africans to starve to death. As the correspondent for one of Japan’s biggest newspapers said to me last week, “Gaza and the West Bank are the only places in the world where I have seen refugees drive Mercedes.” Photo above: India, where hundreds of millions live in poverty. Photo above: A beach in Gaza. STEAK AU POIVRE AND CHICKEN CORDON BLEU (Repeat item from May 2010 dispatch.) If you drop by the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Gaza and the West Bank, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza. http://www.rootsclub.ps/index.php in english In Arabic http://www.rootsclub.ps/services-ar.php And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them). Please take a look at the pictures on the above website. They are not the kind of things you see in The New York Times or CNN or in Newsweek, whose international edition last week had one of the most disgracefully misleading stories about Gaza I have ever seen, portraying it in terms which were virtually reminiscent of Hiroshima after a nuclear blast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvvkXYD12U&feature=player_embedded Youtube promotional video clip Website: http://www.rootsclub.ps In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this video (which is up on the club’s own website), I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there. *** Here are some more Palestinian websites from Gaza: * The Islamic University of Gaza http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/en/ in English * The Gaza Grand Palace Hotel http://www.grandpalace.ps/ * The Al Deira Hotel http://www.aldeira.ps/ *** Egyptian journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl reported from Gaza in Al-Ahram this week: “A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza’s coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt.” GAZA’S OLYMPIC-SIZED SWIMMING POOL Above: A Palestinian newspaper photo (May 18, 2010) shows Gazan children in the newly built Olympic-sized swimming pool which opened earlier in May 2010, despite continuing claims by some Western journalists and NGOs that there are no building materials and a severe shortage of water in Gaza. Gaza's Olympic hopefuls swimming against the stream http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYQGIZlHvE For the budding athletes of Gaza, sport represents a way out of the struggling territory and into the wider world. But training under an Israeli blockade isn't easy -- especially when you want to be a swimmer and there's only one pool in Gaza which is half the size of the Olympic standard. Duration: 01:45 *** Repeat item from May 26, 2010 dispatch: While Western media, misled by corrupt and biased NGOs, continue to report on a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=285242 reports on the Olympic-size swimming pool that opened in Gaza in mid-May 2010 (i.e. before all the recent kerfuffle about humanitarian flotillas sailing to Gaza). “Gaza, (May 18, 2010): – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society. “Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project. “Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches. “As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.” STARVED OF WATER AND BUILDING MATERIALS? Most Israeli towns do not have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool. Cities like Netanya – which have been hit by repeated Palestinian suicide attacks, car bombings, and terrorist gunmen that have left over fifty Israeli residents of the town dead and more than three hundred injured – do not have such a pool. Nor, for example, do the Israeli towns of Sderot or Ashkelon which have been hit by thousands of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza in recent years, have an Olympic-sized municipal swimming pool. BLAIR’S SISTER-IN-LAW: GAZA IS “WORLD’S LARGEST CONCENTRATION CAMP” (This is a repeat item from the dispatch of September 14, 2008.) In an appalling insult to Holocaust survivors everywhere, British journalist Lauren Booth said last week that the situation in Gaza was just like a “concentration camp,” and added that the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur.” Booth’s brother-in-law, Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, does not share her views. Her sister, Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair, once made comments appearing to justify Palestinian suicide bombs against Israeli school buses, but later apologized for the remarks. Lauren Booth was recently issued a Palestinian passport by Hamas. Here is a photo from AFP (Agence France Presse) of Lauren Booth shopping in a grocery store in Gaza a few days before she made her Israeli “concentration camp” comments. Does it look like Auschwitz, or Darfur? HOTELS IN GAZA (Photos, June 2010) AL-DEIRA HOTEL This is just one of several such hotels in “concentration camp” Gaza: (Above: Hotel lobby) (Above: Hotel exterior) GETTING A FACIAL BEFORE YOUR MASSAGE A facial runs from $20 to $75, a one-hour massage is around $40 and a monthly gym membership is around $35 at the “Rosy spa” (above) in Gaza. ANOTHER SIDE OF GAZA (Film shot, June 2010) More images of the horrendous situation in Gaza you won’t see on the BBC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCRJrdCowMc&feature=player_embedded Daily life in Gaza in pictures - 2010 (Below) MORE AID, ANYBODY? Never mind the economic crisis in Spain, Greece and elsewhere in the EU. On July 14, 2010, the EU announced increased financial support for the Palestinians. The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports: The European Commission has agreed an additional financial package worth € 71 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, topping up the € 224 million already allocated by the EU in the 2010 European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, as well as a reinforcement of humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees. [All notes above by Tom Gross.] * While prominent Western media continue to lead their viewers and readers astray with accounts of a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, fancy restaurants (video below) and an Olympic-size swimming pool open there * Most Israeli towns don’t have Olympic-size swimming pools * Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that Western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write * If you drop into the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu” (video, photos below) * UN-run summer camp for Palestinian children burned to the ground for being “un-Islamic”; UN staff there threatened with murder; UN Security Council fails to react * It is quite something when the president of a country (Shimon Peres) sees the need to criticize a foreign newspaper, such are the depths that The Guardian sunk to yesterday Above: the courtyard of the Roots restaurant in Gaza. Above: A part of the restaurant’s 12-page menu, which includes a wide range of meat, poultry and seafood dishes. The restaurant is popular with Gazans holding weddings and other celebrations, UN and NGO workers, and foreign journalists. Above: A Palestinian newspaper photo (May 18, 2010) shows Gazan children in the newly built Olympic-sized swimming pool which opened earlier this month, despite continuing claims by some Western journalists and NGOs that there are no building materials and a severe shortage of water in Gaza. Above: Recent photos from one of Gaza’s fruit and vegetable markets, from a cake shop, and from a children’s toy store in Gaza city. Hardly the “World War II-era concentration camp” that some Western journalists have claimed Gaza resembles. *** This dispatch was also referred to in this Jerusalem Post news article and this Jerusalem Post editorial, and in news articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications. CONTENTS 1. The lies the media and NGOs tell about Gaza THE LIES THE MEDIA AND NGOS TELL ABOUT GAZA In recent days, the international media, particularly in Europe and the Mideast, has been full of stories about “activist boats sailing to Gaza carrying desperately-needed humanitarian aid and building materials.” The BBC World Service even led its world news broadcasts with this story at one point over the weekend. (The BBC yesterday boasted that its global news audience has now risen to 220 million persons a week, making it by far the biggest news broadcaster in the world.) Yet the BBC and other media fail to report on the fancy new restaurants and swimming pools of Gaza, or about the wind surfing competitions on Gaza beaches, or the Strip’s crowded shops and markets. No, this would spoil their agenda. Playing the manipulative game of the BBC is easy. If we had their vast taxpayer funded resources, we too could produce reports about parts of London, Manchester and Glasgow and make it look as though there is a humanitarian catastrophe throughout the UK. We could produce the same effect by selectively filming seedy parts of Paris and Rome and New York and Los Angeles too. Of course there is poverty in Gaza. There is poverty in parts of Israel too. (When was the last time a foreign journalist based in Israel left the pampered lounge bars and restaurants of the King David and American Colony hotels in Jerusalem and went to check out the slum-like areas of southern Tel Aviv? Or the hard-hit Negev towns of Netivot or Rahat?) But the way the BBC and other prominent Western news media are deliberately misleading global audiences and systematically creating the false impression that people are somehow starving in Gaza, and that it is all Israel’s fault, can only serve to increase hatred for the Jewish state – which one suspects was the goal of many of the editors and reporters involved in the first place. STEAK AU POIVRE AND CHICKEN CORDON BLEU If you drop by the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook for Gaza and the West Bank, you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza. And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them). Please take a look at the pictures on the above website. They are not the kind of things you see in The New York Times or CNN or in Newsweek, whose international edition last week had one of the most disgracefully misleading stories about Gaza I have ever seen, portraying it in terms which were virtually reminiscent of Hiroshima after a nuclear blast. And here is a promotional video of the club restaurant: In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this video (which is up on the club’s own website), I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there. In a piece for The Wall Street Journal last year, I documented the “after effects” of a previous “emergency Gaza boat flotilla,” when the arrivals were seen afterwards purchasing souvenirs in well-stocked shops. And please see here for more pictures of Gaza’s “impoverished” shops. *** The front of the Roots Club flyer reads: STARVED OF WATER AND BUILDING MATERIALS? While Western media, misled by corrupt and biased NGOs, continue to report on a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports on the Olympic-size swimming pool that opened in Gaza last week. (Article below). As reader Joy Wolfe of Manchester, England, a subscriber to this list, points out to me in an email: “How does an area that claims to be starved of water and building materials and depends on humanitarian aid build an Olympic size swimming pool and create a luxury lifestyle for some while others are forced to live in abject poverty as political pawn refugees?” Another reader, Barry Shaw, writes from the Israeli town of Netanya: “Gaza City recently opened an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Netanya does not have a municipal Olympic pool. Neither does Ashkelon, or Sderot. Gaza City is part of the Palestinian territory operated by the Islamic terror regime, Hamas. Netanya has been hit by repeated Palestinian suicide attacks, car bombings, and terrorist gunmen that have left over fifty of its citizens dead and more than three hundred injured. The Palestinians receive record amounts of international funding. The victims of Palestinian terror get nothing.” Another subscriber, Michael Horesh, points out, “The Financial Times of London, a leading media beacon in international money matters and no friend of Israel, observes that ‘Branded products such as Coca-Cola, Nescafé, Snickers and Heinz ketchup are both cheap and widely available in Gaza… [as are] Korean refrigerators, German food mixers and Chinese air conditioning units.’” AN INDUSTRY OF LIES While middle class Palestinians plead poverty and receive excessive amounts of international funding, elsewhere in the world (in places like Congo and Zimbabwe and Bangladesh) millions of children really are dying of starvation and disease, all but ignored by those very same governments and aid agencies that pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Palestinian coffers. Of course, there is a whole industry of people (UN and EU staff, NGO workers, journalists) who make their living and have a vested interest in continuing to propagate lies about Gaza and West Bank. As the boats of “humanitarian aid activists” (including a number of European politicians and journalists) left Turkey on Saturday I wonder if they understood what the crowd was chanting. Video below form Turkish TV: The crowd shout: “Intifada, intifada, intifada! “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!” GAZA’S OLYMPIC-SIZED SWIMMING POOL The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports (May 18, 2010): www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=285242 “Gaza – Ma’an – Gaza’s first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society. “Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project. “Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches. “As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.” WHO BURNED DOWN THE SUMMER CAMP? (No, it wasn’t a rampaging mob of American supporters of Israel on an AIPAC lobbying trip.) A UN-run summer camp for Palestinian children was burned to the ground on Sunday and the UN staff threatened with murder. Tens of thousands of Gazan children were due to attend the camp this summer, as they have every summer in recent years. This is a rare occasion when the international media did report on Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence, although most downplayed any criticism of Hamas or other Islamists in their reports. *** “A SUMMER PROGRAM OF ARTS AND SPORT” The BBC reported online: Masked gunmen have attacked a UN summer camp being set up for children in the Gaza Strip, UN officials say. The attackers burned tents and destroyed other equipment after tying up a guard. They also left a letter threatening the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), John Ging… “The armed men torched the camp, which contained recreational equipment and swimming pools, and completely destroyed it,” UNRWA spokesman Abu Hasna told journalists. The camp is one of dozens of beach facilities set up by the UN offering a summer programme of arts, sport and other activities for some quarter of a million children in the Gaza Strip… *** “TEACHING SCHOOLGIRLS DANCING AND IMMORALITY” CNN explained that the Islamists of Gaza object to the fact that boys and girls were due to participate in activities together at the camp: CNN began its online report: “A U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza was burned Sunday hours before it was due to open, witnesses said, blaming Muslim extremists who apparently object to boys and girls going to camp together.” *** Reuters also reported: “About 20 men, some carrying assault rifles, tore up large plastic tents and burned storage facilities at the site, where tens of thousands of children are due to attend camp sessions… “Two days earlier, a previously unknown militant group, The Free of the Homeland, issued a statement criticizing the camp’s organizer, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), for, ‘teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.’” *** The Al-Jazeera report online adds: “Dozens of armed attackers also vandalized bathrooms… and assaulted a guard and tied him up… the men also left a letter with four bullets, threatening the agency’s Gaza director and sending a chilling message to the camp’s organizers.” FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS AND NGOS IGNORE HAMAS’S WORSENING HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD In an editorial, The Jerusalem Post reflects on the atrocious human rights situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and notes that “an iron curtain of a strict theocracy is slowly descending on Gaza, but many human rights proponents still prefer to depict it as the embattled bastion of freedom fighters… “Both foreign governments and NGOs, in their inaction, are signaling to Hamas that domestic oppression by its tyrannical regime is tolerable so far as the international community is concerned,” said the paper. DOZENS MORE WEST BANK ROADBLOCKS TO BE DISMANTLED Following a meeting between IDF OC Central Command and Palestinian security officials yesterday, Israel has announced the further dismantling of 60 roadblocks and the easing of travel throughout the West Bank. Most West Bank roadblocks have been dismantled since the government of Benjamin Netanyahu assumed power in Israel last year. The Israelis explained that the success of the Palestinian security forces in fighting terror led to the decision to ease restrictions. The IDF pointed out, however, that it will “continue to operate firmly against terrorism while sustaining liaison and coordination with Palestinian officials, in order to maintain the life routine and security of all residents” of the West Bank and Israel. SHIMON PERES ATTACKS THE GUARDIAN’S BLATANT LIES Israeli President Shimon Peres yesterday accused the British paper The Guardian of telling blatant lies about Israel in a front page story that slandered Israel in general, and Peres in particular. It is quite something when the president of a country sees the need to criticize a foreign newspaper for failing to maintain elementary journalistic standards – failing to ask for his response before publishing a massive defamation of him, for example. But such are the depths to which The Guardian sunk yesterday. (As I noted on this email list, The Guardian recently had to apologize for running a notorious organ trafficking libel about Israel.) Additional Israeli government sources added that “documents that Guardian journalist Chris McGreal – who has a long track record of writing anti-Israel pieces – used to run his story are completely fabricated.” (The alleged documents come from a new book by a publicity-seeking anti-Zionist American researcher.) The story concerned an alleged offer to sell arms, including nuclear warheads, by Israel to South Africa in 1975. Quite why The Guardian decided this is now lead front-page breaking news 35 years later, is beyond me, given how much real current news there is in the world. Of course, The Guardian has nothing to say about the arms sales by Britain and many other Western countries to Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. Could its continuous singling out of Israel perhaps be because Israel is a Jewish state? *** UPDATE: Yossi Beilin, a former leftist minister, has also dismissed The Guardian’s article and the book on which it was based, as complete nonsense, as has Avner Cohen, the world’s leading expert on Israel’s alleged nuclear arms. In an interview with the South African Press Association, Pik Botha, who served as South Africa’s foreign minister in the waning years of apartheid, also dismissed the article’s claims as untrue. Nevertheless, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and other prominent media today picked up and reported onThe Guardian’s article, and The Guardian’s demonization of Israel continues to spread. The Guardian has a whole news page and a lead editorial on the subject again today. To say that they are obsessed with Israel would be an understatement. More background here. (Note the Al Jazeera interview in that post.) OBAMA SLOWLY PAVING THE WAY FOR MILITARY STRIKES ON IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM? Regarding the last line below, it looks like President Obama might – finally – be inching in that direction... ----- Forwarded Message ---- Breaking News Alert U.S. Is Said to Order Expanded Use of Covert Action in Middle East WASHINGTON -- The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate. [All notes above by Tom Gross]
Benazir Shah tells us more on the shopping frenzy at the much awaited mall.A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?
July 17, 2010
All notes below by Tom Gross
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http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article85981.ece
EU foreign policy chief seeks open Gaza borders
Tom Gross adds: As I have written before, of course there is poverty in parts of Gaza. There is poverty in parts of Israel too. But when was the last time a foreign journalist based in Israel left the pampered lounge bars and restaurants of the King David and American Colony hotels in Jerusalem and went to check out the slum-like areas of southern Tel Aviv? Or the hard-hit Negev towns of Netivot or Rahat?
Cactus for Development and Investment is a multi-concept hospitality company located in Gaza city - palestine that owns and operates a number of restaurant facilities in Palestine:
Roots (The Club),
Roots (Fine Dining Restaurant),
Ambassador (Banquet Hall),
Greens (Terrace Café),
Roots (Catering Services),
Big Bite
And here is a promotional video of the club restaurant:
Here she is again in Gaza last week (i.e. Sept. 2008).
And here she is meeting Hamas terrorist leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who presents her with a special Palestinian “diplomatic passport”.
Booth writes for several British newspapers, including the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Mail on Sunday and theSunday Times, and is often a guest on the BBC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgh5V4wlLfA&feature=player_embedded
All notes and summaries copyright © Tom Gross. All rights reserved.
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001114.htmlFancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza
May 25, 2010
Update: Thank you to all those commentators that have recommended reading this dispatch, such as Melanie Phillips at the British magazine The Spectator.
2. Steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu
3. Starved of water and building materials?
4. An industry of lies
5. Gaza’s Olympic-sized swimming pool
6. Who burned down the summer camp?
7. “A summer program of arts and sport” unacceptable to Islamists
8. “Teaching schoolgirls dancing and immorality”
9. Foreign governments and NGOs ignore Hamas’s worsening human rights record
10. Dozens more West Bank roadblocks to be dismantled
11. Shimon Peres attacks The Guardian’s blatant lies
12. Obama slowly paving the way for military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program?
[All notes below by Tom Gross]
Ambiance galore.
Beautifully designed buffets.
Every detail handled for you.
From: NYTimes News Alert
Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 8:59:37 PM
Subject: News Alert: U.S. Is Said to Order Expanded Use of Covert Action in Middle East
The New York Times
Mon, May 24, 2010 -- 8:59 PM ET
Friday 27 August 2010
Newly opened Gaza Mall
Gaza's First Shopping Mall
Israel quietly helps to build Palestine, without Obama and the EU’s interference
Yes Tom Grossman is a Jewish guy supporting Israel's position.
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