As I’ve noted before, in the eyes of its defenders the blockade of the Gaza Strip is a security measure aimed at denying rockets to Hamas, while in fact it’s a comprehensive effort to collectively punish Gaza residents—a majority of whom are children—in hopes that this will somehow lead to Hamas being replaced by a more moderate regime. Yousef Munayyer’s rundown of the consequences of the blockade makes the point clearly. For example, “In 2006, Israel carried out an attack on Gaza’s only power plant and never permitted the rebuilding to its pre-attack capacity (down to producing 80 megawatts maximum from 140 megawatts).”
How long do you have to starve and mistreat someone before they decide you were right all along?
In other news, I think Helen Thomas will probably get fired for this. Those kinds of views might be acceptable for Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and conservatives like Pat Buchanan, , but probably not the press.