Monday, January 28, 2008
The Boston Globe ran an op-ed on Saturday by Eyad al-Sarraj and Hamas apologist/Finkelstein fan Sara Roy, Ending the stranglehold on Gaza. Not surprisingly, the piece is full of tendentious claims. Martin Kramer does the math on one such claim. Hilarity ensues: Gaza buried in flour
...The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent.
Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.
What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie...
Update: CAMERA suggests that, far from having no possible use for so much flour, Gazans may, in fact, be building a secret weapon.
Nevertheless, I think the IDF will be ready:
Update 2: NGO Monitor blog notes that Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, an organization that has 'promoted the idea of boycotts.'
...When NGO's claims (made it seems for political purposes) are not just wrong, but clearly absurd, they turn the important work of human rights into a farce...
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: How Much Flour Can One Person Eat? (Update).
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For some reason I really like Charles Jacobs' Jewish Advocate piece (in full below) this week. Jacobs touches on flour in Gaza, Joel Kovel's recent trip through Boston (for previous video of Kovel: Racist Bard College Professor Joel Kovel Spouts... Read More
[This past Monday the 11th, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard hosted Columbia University's Joseph Massad for a lecture entitled, "Desiring Arabs: Orientalism and Sexual Rights." Our own Hillel Stavis was on hand and files this repor... Read More
Maybe the Harvard Research Scholar should write a paper on price elasticity of demand for flour in Gaza. A 99% reduction in supply and only an 80% increase in price. Hmmm. That shouldn't raise any flags in a "research scholar", eh? Unless facts really aren't meaningful in achieving her desired outcome.
The Globe’s report is co-written by Eyad al-Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
NGO Monitor has monitored the Gaza Community Mental Health Program for some time. While campaigning against the isolation of Gaza, in the past they have promoted the idea of isolation, specifically the idea of boycotts. They signed petitions for both an economic boycott of Israel and an academic boycott of Israel.
We've commented further on this story at our blog.
Scones and tea? Everyone?
Brings a whole new meaning to Flour Power.
Actually I think I know what they're using the flour for. My wife's grandmother makes scones that are harder than rocks.(don't ever eat her rock cakes) She must be covertly making them for the next intifada, which predictably will be soon after the 'inevitable failure' of the peace process due to 'Israeli intransigence'
Mr Bagel
Please stop using word "Palestinians". It's not a discription of the ethnic, religion or nationality. Palestine is A HISTORIC AREA NAME, like NEW ENGLAND. Anyone could be a "Palestinian" or "Newenglander". If do not like to use the name "Arab language speaking inhabitans of Erets Israel", please use word "Philistine", i.e., as from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) /ˈfɪləˌstin, -ˌstaɪn, fɪˈlɪstɪn, -tin/
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
Also from http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm:
"the Ottoman government imposed severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase, and also began actively soliciting inviting Muslims from other parts of the Ottoman empire to settle in Palestine, including Circassians and Bosnians."
About 20 years ago still were alive "Palestinians" who spoke Serbian language. By the way, "Bosnian" is not an ethnic either.
shalom
Lovely naphtali.
You're in league with holocaust deniers when you deny the existence of Palestine and Palestinians. Israel exists due to a UN decree, the same one that stated that Palestine exists as a separate people and entity. Deny the decree for Palestinians and you also call into question the existence of Israel.
Your argument that the Ottoman gov't "imported" Palestinians is ludicrous, especially given that 99.9% of the Israelis were definitely "imported" Jews.
P.S. "Jewish" is not an ethnic identity either, have a look at your swarthy, dark-haired Jewish friend, and compare him to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed one, or the red-haired, green-eyed one. Use yer noggin, son.
Ah - wait a second Ghost.
Re this:
You're in league with holocaust deniers when you deny the existence of Palestine and Palestinians. Israel exists due to a UN decree, the same one that stated that Palestine exists as a separate people and entity. Deny the decree for Palestinians and you also call into question the existence of Israel.
***
I don't think there is any comparison between arguments about whether the Palestinians constitute a separate people and Holocaust denial. One is arguably a political construct and the other represents the mass murder of millions of Jews and other minorities, political dissidents, etc. This isn't an opinion.
After the 1948 war between Israel and the Arabs, Arab refugees were specifically and deliberately referred to as "Arabs". "Palestinians" referred to Jews at the time, and also this was the era of pan-Arabism, in which "the Arab nation" was considered to be more significant than nationstates within it.
This is also part of the doctrine of Greater Syria, which similarly would reject the nationstates of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and of course, an independent Palestinian state. Similarly an Islamic Caliphate would override nationstates including "Palestine."
Personally, I think the Palestinians constitute a people because they say they are a people.
But historically this is to some degree a matter of opinion that has been openly contradicted by other Arab entities.
Also the failure of these various states, especially Transjordan to help create a Palestinian state after the UN Partition speaks volumes about their opinion on the matter. Most significantly the West Bank and east Jerusalem were annexed by Jordan.
The UN did not create "Israel" and "Palestine," the partition allowed for the creation of a Jewish majority state and an Arab majority state in cis-Jordan. Israel survived as a separate nationstate.
However, the putative Arab majority state did not become Palestine, it became Jordan and also Egyptian-occupied Gaza.
The Holocaust, on the other hand, is a fact. Period.
Now, onward:
Your argument that the Ottoman gov't "imported" Palestinians is ludicrous, especially given that 99.9% of the Israelis were definitely "imported" Jews.
With respect, the Ottoman Empire did indeed oversee the immigration of people from all over the Ottoman Empire to "Southern Syria," as it was then known. Check your history; you can start with Benny Morris.
The fact that most Israeli Jews also came from elsewhere doesn't change the fact that many Palestinians are not "indigenous people" although some are and so are some Jews, and in fact many Israeli and Askenazi Jews are related to Palestinian Arabs (and also Kurds.)
Moreover, Am Yisroel is not a recent development nor a political one. The term, people of Israel has been in use for millenia.
Palestina on the other hand is a Roman term applied to Judea after the Bar Kochba rebellion was crushed. It refers directly to the "philistines," the ancient enemies of Israel.
This was and is the term used by Christians also, as they replaced the Jews (in their minds that is) in God's favor - especially after Christianity became the state religion of Rome. This reinforced the image of the Church as "the true Israel."
In other words, it was propaganda.
It also represented the victory of the Hellenized world over the Jews.
Regardless, neither the people of Israel nor the land of Israel are UN inventions but rather predate the UN by several thousand years.