A different view of Gaza
Lorne Gunter, National Post One of Canada’s largest papers
Wednesday, Jul. 21, 2010
A shopping mall opened in Gaza City last weekend. It is called, appropriately enough, Gaza Mall and even has a website (gazamall. ps) complete with a catchy logo, and ads for "Israeli men's trousers at an attractive price" and shirts from the United States.
There's nothing remarkable about this, you say. New malls open all the time all around the world.
But think about it: One of the main complaints international organizations have against the Israeli blockade of Gaza is that construction materials, supposedly, are not getting through. Gazans are allegedly forced to live in dilapidated apartments and houses because big, bad Israel will not let cement mix and rebar pass its lines.
So just where did the materials come from to build Gaza Mall?
Admittedly, online descriptions of the mall as a "luxury" shopping centre are a bit over the top, although I suppose such descriptions are relative. (The first suburban shopping centres in Canada in the 1950s, while dwarfed by today's mega-malls, must have seemed like palaces of commerce compared with the downtown department stores of the day.)
You can see photos of the Gaza Mall grand opening at the Palestinian Authority's Safa website (safa. ps) or the website of journalist and commentator Tom Gross -- tomgrossmedia. com.
Note the tinsel streamers, balloons and mascots. If you look closely at the photos, you see a simple, two-storey collection of brightly lit but plain shops, apparently run by local merchants, rather than the large chain stores , that populate North American and European (and Israeli) malls.
There is a single staircase in the centre--no escalator. However, according to the mall's promotional material, there is
"air conditioning, a parking lot, security guards, a full-service supermarket and a food court."
Wait a minute, did the mall website say air conditioning!? It did. Somehow, despite the death grip Israel is supposed to have around the throats of poor, vulnerable Palestinians, the grip that we are told leaves Palestinians wanting for food and medicine, the stranglehold that has led to "concentration camp" conditions inside Gaza could not prevent the developers of Gaza Mall from finding commercial air conditioners to cool their building.
And what about the Israeli pants that are specially priced during the grand opening sale? Or the American shirts?
Israel and the United States are supposed to be the enemies of the Palestinians.
Every week in their Friday sermons to the faithful, Palestinian imams spew out the most hateful claims against the "Zionists" and their sympathizers in Washington. Prayers are offered for the destruction of Israel and martyrdom is assured for all those who attack the Great Satan. (By the way, none of this has been tempered as a result of Barack Obama's obsequious outreach to Muslim leaders and nations.)
Yet on the first days the doors opened at Gaza Mall, two of the big come-ons were pants made by the running, pig-dog Zionists and shirts from the decadent, imperialistic West. It all puts me in mind of the Cold War tales of ordinary Soviets trading away goods they'd had to work months to afford, just for a pair of black-market Levi jeans.
There is undoubtedly a lot of very real suffering and deprivation in Gaza, but as the Israeli Foreign Ministry pointed out recently, nearly 11,000 Gazans received free treatment for their diseases or injuries in Israeli hospitals last year and tons of food and medical supplies. Potable water and aid make their way to Gaza every day through Israel. Indeed, much of the food and aid originates in Israel.
The reason Israel was keen to interdict the Turkish flotilla in May was not so it could pile on the misery of Gazans; Israel lets scores of aid shipments in every day. It merely wanted a chance to offload the flotilla's cargo and check it for weapons that could be used against it by Gaza's terrorist rulers, Hamas.
When you are on Tom Gross's page about Gaza Mall, scroll down to near the bottom where he has pictures of bustling Palestinian markets bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables.
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001127.htmlI won't try to argue that everything is happy and easy in Gaza. But Western coverage of the situation there seldom mentions the aid convoys and never mentions the new air-conditioned mall, resort hotels, spas, restaurants and busy markets.
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