Poverty on the Rise in Gaza as Israel Seeks Billions in US Aid
"There is nearly nothing left, nothing to come back to as the Israeli military moves through crushing homes, infrascruture, life. This is ethnic cleansing .."

Due to this specific targeting of infrastructure, and to the constant closure of the Gaza Strip, unemployment has reached 80% at times. Five people looking for jobs left their home in the Khan Younis refugee camp this week. They tried to leave the Gaza Strip through an Israeli military checkpoint that only allows products to pass through. Israeli soldiers shot and killed every one of them. For a few days the Israeli government and the corporate media put them on Israel's so-called "wanted" list.

A guy from Mawasi has not been home in 2 years. He told me this is Rafah, about 15 minutes from home. He says, "the Israeli government does not want any young people to be in Mawasi, they want to drive everyone away." There are no schools in Mawasi, save for a movable school caravan described as being, "only for emergency cases." By this they mean for the young children, to give them something to do that might possibly help normalize their lives.

They are so stressed by the constant Israeli attack that 50% of the kids are wetting their beds. Sixty-one percent of Palestinian children suffer from anemia in this area, not from a lack of food to be eaten, but from a lack of appetite.

A UNRWA doctor told me, "They're too nervous to eat. They're scared all the time."

The Israeli Defense Minister is in Washington getting approved for an increase in the already 12 million dollars per day that Israel receives from the US.
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Perspectives on the Middle East: A response

Slideshows like this one are not only inaccurate but they are counter-productive in my book. You cannot talk with someone unless you can see the world through their eyes. The "we are 100% right and you are 100% wrong" approach has proven itself a pretty disastrous and bloody path to take. We can't change our enemy, we can only change ourselves; we cannot change how they behave, only how we behave. Isn't that what we teach our children?

So we should start by doing something that shows we want peace, like dismantling settlements in the West Bank. Until we do that, nothing but nothing will ever change in this region. We should not be concerning ourselves with being "right" as this slideshow tries so hard to do; we should be focusing on being "smart." Because until we do that, we'll continue to have two groups on either side of the fence, and sometimes crossing over it, screaming at each other over and over and over, screaming their mantra -- like the author of this slideshow: "It's mine mine mine mine mine mine." And each believing in its truth 100%. And each dying for it.
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The Iron Wall

The American obstacle

Eight Palestinians killed in Israeli raid were unarmed civilians, says UN inquiry

The New York Times gets an 'F' for geography