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Palestinians and take part at ceremony honoring participants in the hunger strike with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in Gaza city on 21 May, 2012.
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As Israeli propaganda continues to play dirty
05-08-2010,10:29
By : Mohammed S. AlNadi
Gaza - Two weeks ago, a shopping center was inaugurated in Gaza; consequently, as usual, a wave of Israeli propaganda found the time appropriate to manipulate the incontestable fact of Gaza being under siege.
Despite all clear signs of suffering, absolute poverty, and the high rate of unemployment soaring at %44, Israeli media tried to drew “The good life in Gaza” picture to the world, using this shopping mall as a tool to delude the world into believing that Gaza is as economically flourished as Tel Aviv and, at the same time, to counterattack calls for lifting the siege.
After the siege had been imposed and the war that followed, up to %90 of businesses tumbled, and almost no goods were allowed in due to strict borders’ shutdown.
Jacob Shrybman, Assistant Director of the Sderot Media Center, however, writes in his article “The good life in Gaza” which was published on ynetnews about “the joyous pictures of the upscale Gaza mall's grand opening and the various goods on offer,” while ignoring the terrible living conditions and the pictures of the Gaza’s destroyed infrastructures—houses, schools, mosques and other basic buildings that haven’t been rebuilt since after the war.
In his attempt to play down efforts being exerted by European officials calling for lifting the siege on Gaza, and trivialize the impact of the combination of the siege and war, he sarcastically wonders whether EU High Representative Ashton had time “to stop by the new Gaza mall to check out how sales were going while inspecting all the terrible sights of Gaza's humanitarian crisis during her visit.”
He talks as though she was on a trip of sightseeing and she missed a chance worth $ 1 million. But in fact, the situation in Gaza is increasingly dire, and if, according to Shrybman, there was a grandiose opening of the shopping mall, it is not necessarily representative of what the situation is really like, as the majority of people still go into the building just out of curiosity, but they don’t have the money to make purchases. And very few who visit the site just to shop.
The place was primarily established by Hamas along with other investors in an attempt to improve Gaza’s economics and create job opportunities for hundreds of blockaded families; meanwhile, the blockade is still in place, and the people of Gaza are still suffering at the hands of Israel.
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