DEAR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EDITOR:

I always look forward to receiving National Geographic magazine, to which I have been a subscriber for 30 years. It is one of the few magazines I allowed into the house when my children were small. But when NG starts up with anything related to the Middle East, you can be sure that Israel will be getting a bashing. There were several articles in the past year or two that had my blood boiling, one on the separation fence, which basically accused Israel of creating a prison camp in Gaza and the West Bank (how I hate that term, it's Yehuda-Shomron, or Judea and Samaria; it's the biblical Jewish heartland, not the West Bank of the Jordan river. Let's call Jordan the East Bank then.) The other even more heinous article was in The Water Issue, again, accusing the Israelis of shutting off water to the Palestinians while they frolic in their swimming pools. Truly appalling 'journalism'. With great photos of course.

Anyway, I had to say something about this piece on the Gaza smuggling tunnels, but I know this letter is far too long to get published, I mean, where would they even start to edit? But I had to say something. So I thought I would share what I wrote. Of course I could have gone on for pages, I had a chunk about the 'Peace Flotilla' which was also mentioned in the article, but I had to stop somewhere. I regret not having the techspertise to actually publish the original article. Maybe check out NG's website.

Editor:

In the December 2012 issue of NG, there was, nestled between an article on Redwoods and another on Birds of Paradise, a piece on the Gaza smuggling tunnels. It is not the first time that NG has written about issues relating to the Israel-Arab conflict, and I do concede, this one wasn’t was as blatantly anti-Israel as some have been in the past (Separation fence and Water issue for example). So I am grateful for small things.

No doubt the regular Gazans have a terrible time of it, but it isn’t because the bad old Israelis are so mean to them. It is largely because Hamas, for whom the Palestinians voted in a travesty of an election, demolished the feeble democratoid structure that voted them in and established a theocratic terrorist state. Its charter quotes Koranic Hadiths in support of its goal, which is the destruction of Israel; anyone who bothers can read this charter. When the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, leaving their successful greenhouses fully operational along with international money to train the Arabs on how to maintain and profit from them, the first thing that the Arabs did, after destroying synagogues, was to loot and destroy the greenhouses. The article makes mention of ’abandoned Israeli settlements…their greenhouses lying in tatters’, but it doesn’t say who trashed them.

Only a careful, almost forensic reading yields any information as to why the Gazans are closed off in their ‘prison camp’ and why Israel and Egypt blockade Gaza. Only a cursory mention is made of the thousands of rockets which are sent into southern Israel’s towns on an almost daily basis, staunched temporarily by IDF actions such as Cast Lead and recently, Pillar of Defence. In between these 2 actions, Iran managed to supply Hamas, a proxy, with longer range missiles to bombard Israeli population centres, including Ashkelon, Ashdod and even Tel Aviv. How are these missiles getting into Gaza? Through the porous Egyptian border. Now that the Muslim Brotherhood has hijacked the Egyptian  ‘Arab Spring’ and Morsi has grabbed autocratic power, it remains to be seen how Egypt and Gaza will relate to each other. When Morsi, ludicrously, was appointed as mediator between Hamas and Israel in the ceasefire after Pillar of Defence, he solemnly swore to seal the border to weaponry into Gaza; then he took power and who knows what will be. Nothing good for Israel, I’m sure.

Another thing not mentioned is the tons of humanitarian aid which Israel sends in, and the water, and the fuel, and the electricity wired in from Ashkelon; yes, the same Ashkelon upon which missiles from Gaza rained in the past conflicts.

So why the aid? Because Israel keeps saying that its war is with Hamas, not the Palestinian people, however they can tell them apart. So why the tunnels? Because the Hamas kleptocracy commandeers the supplies. And because Israel is leery of sending in supplies which can be used for non-peaceful purposes. But it is Israel who ‘makes it extremely difficult and expensive for the UNRWA…-the source of life and livelihood for thousands of the 1.6 million Gazans- to import basic materials for rebuilding…’ UNWRA, the only ‘refugee relief’ agency which has not ever tried to solve the Palestinian ‘refugee problem’ but fosters it from generation to generation and pours international money into the coffers of the kleptocrats of both Hamas and Fatah. Every Palestinian would be a millionaire if the money hadn’t been squirreled away into Swiss bank accounts by Arafat and his cronies, Abbas included.  But that’s Israel’s fault too.

And that ‘a handful [!] of rockets are launched by young militants hired by local merchants whose profits would decline if Israel’s closure were further relaxed’ is not just ‘hideous enough to be believable’, it is an example of the mindset of the Arabs who are only too happy to terrorize Israeli families in the Negev even for no profit. And then when Israel finally retaliates, it is told to practice restraint, and that air strikes are ‘disproportionate’, while Hamas exults in the killing of not only Jews, but Gaza’s own citizens who are used as human shields by Hamas. Higher Gazan body counts equals more world disapproval of Israel. A double bind for Israel. 

When NG tries to take the complicated situation of the Arabs and Israelis and turn it into a piece of photo-journalism with a few sad human interest stories and half a background, it does itself a disservice. Really, stick to the trees and the birds and the mammoths and the mummies. Those articles are truly educational and enjoyable.