It is getting more than a little tiresome.
I hear, again and again, tv talking heads tell me that Gaza is occupied, the implication is that Israel is occupying Gaza.
If any of these tv "personalities" could read, they would know that Israel evacuated - actually the Jews were chased out by the IDF on then-prime minister Ariel Sharon's orders -in 2005.
From the Washington Post:
But in 2005, as prime minister, he ordered Israeli soldiers to forcibly evict some 8,000 Jewish settlers from two dozen communities in the Gaza Strip, ending the Israeli civilian and military presence inside the coastal enclave that Israel wrestled from Egypt in the 1967 war.
Shades of Ben Gurion and Rabin and the Altalena.
In the UK, The Guardian reported that
Thousands of Israeli troops evicted Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip today amid anger, grief and isolated acts of violence.
The actual removals - which have seen troops dragging some settlers out kicking and screaming - have taken place amid high emotion but little physical confrontation.
Protesters as young as 12 at Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement, struggled as troops dragged them onto removal buses. "I want to die," one youth screamed as he was hauled away.
Settlers were pulled from homes, synagogues and even a nursery. As the day wore on, it appeared more settlers were cooperating with the troops.
Tom Gross defines himself on his blog as a journalist and international affairs commentator, specializing in the Middle East details in text and graphic coverage the Jews' expulsion from Gaza and includes before (when Jews were there) and after (when Jews were gone) photos.
The images of a burned synagogue and destroyed greenhouses attest to the fact that Gaza is not occupied by anyone other than Arabs.
Charles Krauthammer, writing on the Washington Post's Opinion Page, writes
Apologists for Hamas attribute the blood lust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling die-hard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.
And there was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.
Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf, on his blog titled The Hasbara Buster argues that
About half the greenhouses in the Israeli settlements in Gaza have already been dismantled by their owners, who have given up waiting to see if the government was going to come up with extra payment as an inducement to leave them behind, say senior officials working on the coordination of this summer's Israeli pullout from Gaza.(...)
Of the roughly 1,000 acres of agricultural land that were under greenhouses in the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza, only 500 acres remain - creating significant doubts that the greenhouses could be handed over to the Palestinians as "a living business," the goal cited by the Israeli coordinator of the pullout, Eival Giladi.
Finally, a last-minute effort by American Jewish philanthropists raised $14 million and the remainder of the greenhouses was bought and turned over to the Palestinians.
Even by Ibrahim Ibn Yusuf, the Jews have been long gone from Gaza - so how can there be claims of "occupation"?
Next time anyone says Gaza is occupied understand that, yes, it is occupied - by Hamas, voted in by the good people of Gaza. (Was Jimmy [I hate Israel] Carter or the UN there to supervise the free elections?)
