UN suspending aid into GazaFollow

For all the Pro-Israeli US media bias and all that, I haven't heard much of anything about this story (except for one story that popped up on Fox just now). The UN agency which was supplying food and supplies into Gaza has suspended all activities following several days worth of theft (at gunpoint) of food & supplies by Hamas.According to the Chinese Xinhua news agency, Hamas says that the issue has been resolved. Can't say if that's right or wrong but they're the only ones I saw claiming so and the UNRWA site hasn't been updated to reflect this change of circumstances. Got to love their excuse for taking the food at gunpoint though. "We... umm... figured they might not know which food was going where so, uh, we were helping them!" The most recent story on al-Jazeera says that the suspension of relief will continue until the trucks and food are completely returned.

Anyway, like I said, I was just mildly surprised to see this story getting essentially zero press. Or maybe I just missed it (which I mean sincerely).

Edited, Feb 8th 2009 1:15pm by Jophiel

CNN and BBC ran small pieces about the theft on the 4th. I think the Satilite launch by Iran overshadowed alot of it. Because all things considered, Iran is a lot more relevent threat at this point than Hamas is.

We're banning all . c n domain names at the moment because of the spammer

Nuke the Gaza strip already, nobody gets it.

********

It was an item in local news a couple of days ago, including Hamas' apologies and promises that they would return the aid goods.

No update on if they really did do that though.

But ultimately not really surprising I suppose, I mean that it happened.

Well yeah. The media loves to show how the palistinians are all just terrorists and don't deserve to have their own little state there even though they were there first(if you don't count ancient history).

I feel that what's going on over there is one of the worst examples of religion based stupidity. Some extremist blows himself up and kills a few people, Israel bombs a town and kills many times more. Why does this seem to make sense to so many people? It doesn't to me. If the entire world worked that way, you could kill a man for accidentally bumping into you on a sidewalk. Jeez...


Both sides are wrong, they need to work something out, or just finish wiping each other off the face of the goddamn planet already. I'm going to go look up the history of this...

I pretty much had a news free weekend, but I saw nothing about this on NPR this am. Going back and actually doing a 'search' revealed nothing either. I'd not attribute it to media bias more on simply apathy about this conflict. Do we care?

I've seen very little in the news of late about the Hamas/Israel struggle at all. If it wasn't for Paulsol's reminders one might almost imagine this world peaceful.

...or, maybe because this particular issue was resolved before stories could even go out.

Anyway an update;

I don't know, the story was in the Independent, who is not the most pro-Israeli newspaper ever.

On the other hand, I haven't seen much serious reporting about the Israeli election. Not many people are reporting that, for example, Netanyahu is planting a tree on the Golan Heights whilst saying that his son will sit beneath this tree with his grand-children, with all that it implies. Or that the king-maker in the election is the racist and semi-facist Avigdor Lieberman. That both he and Netanyahu favour the continuing expansion of the illegal settlements in the West bank, or that, in Lieberman's words, that Israel should treat Gaza as Russia treated Chechnya.

I don't know, I still think the media is ridiculously biased towards Israel. There might be the odd story, like the Hamas one you linked, which is not reported as much as it should. But when was the last time you saw an article about illegal settlements still being built on the West Bank? When was the last time you read an article discussing the legality of the Security Fence? Of the Gaza blockade? About settlers attacking Palestinians and destroying their property? Or that this behaviour is pretty endemic?

I appreciate that Hamas holding the UN at gunpoint is a cool story, but there are lots of illegal and immoral acts committed by Israelis that are very rarely reported on.

If you accept the former than the latter shouldn't have been any surprise. For what it's worth, I've seen a "front page" article on the Israeli elections every day on Google News for days now. The current headliner sublinks to 1,415 articles. Without playing tit-for-tat, I was aware of most of the stories in your links via my day-to-day news following.

Apparently the UN is now saying that the Hamas finally returned all their swag so aid can begin flowing again.Now that you mention it, I first read about the UN reversing its story on the UN school airstrike in the Israeli press about a week before I saw it mentioned in the American media -- on Fox, no less!

Edited, Feb 9th 2009 11:04am by Jophiel

Government. The government in Palestine commiting theft of the supplies supposed to be given to the people.

Get it straight

The government in Palestine commiting theft of the supplies supposed to be given to the people.

Right, gotcha, so it's the US GOVERNMENT that rapes or murders people when US soldiers do. Good to know.

I have no problem holding the US Government responsible when its soldiers rape and murder, sure.

"Hey, it wasn't the Army's fault that their soldiers raped and murdered your family! They're just... you know... some random dudes! Can't go blaming the US government for that!"

I'm sure that washes just swimmingly

So you didn't mean to imply that the actions that led to the UN suspending aid were sanctioned or representative of Hammas? My mistake, Gbaji, I just assumed that wast the entire point of this otherwise completely content free thread. Or did you mean the US Government sanctions the rape and murder of innocents?