What's Really Going On In Gaza?

Amidst all the current fanfare and furor surrounding
Israel’s blockade of Gaza,it may be illuminating to
inspect what’s really going on in Gaza. The U.N.’s
summer camp program for Gaza teenagers is
instructive and illuminating.

By way of introduction, the United Nations,
thru its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),
funnels some 500 million dollars a
year into Gaza. UNRWA also sets up,
operates and oversees summer beach-camp for
some 200,000 Gaza teenagers. Many parents
in Hamas controlled Gaza willingly opt to
send their kids to the UNWRA beach camps
instead of directing them to attend
competing summer camps run by Hamas.

The Hamas summer camp experience offers
Koran recitation, Koran memorization,
guerrilla training with plastic or wooden
rifles plus some other seemingly normal
summertime activities like arts and crafts,
volleyball and soccer on the beach and swimming
in the Mediterranean. But, for a fleeting
period earlier this spring, it actually appeared
that the UNWRA camps (to the dismay and chagrin
of the Hamas camps) were going to have a surge
in attendance by Gaza’s teenagers. Why?

The answer is embedded in the definition of
precisely what constitutes a proper summer
camp. According to Hamas spokesman,Younis
al-Astel, the UNRWA summer camps are coed,
that UN camps teach campers how to dance,
and that UNWRA camps even had activities
which promote reconciliation between the
Palestinians and Hamas further flatly
asserts that UNRWA’s for Gaza’s teenagers
are little more than“… summer
camps of debauchery!"

Some Hamas officials also (falsely) claim
that UNWRA “lets boys and girls play together.”
Hamas’ Minister Of Culture actually
hotly protested that the UNWRA camps
“…even let pubescent girls swim in the sea.”
With such alleged activities, is it any wonder
that Gaza’s youth are attracted to UNWRA’s
summer camps? Indeed, Hamas complains that
"UN summer camps have affected our summer
activities this year because they (the UN camps)
attract the children by offering them
“entertaining games” (emphasis added).
Now that is assuredly intolerable, is it not?

Much of what Hamas alleges about the UNWRA
summer camp experience is patently false. But
that is apparently irrelevant to Hamas which
has a clearly different notion of what
activities should be offered at its many
Gaza summer camps. According to Ihab al-Eisawai,
Hamas’ summer camp media officer,
"each Hamas summer camp carries the name of
a Hamas militant killed by the Israeli
occupation, or the name of a village destroyed
in Palestine in 1948 and the
names of the prisoners….Our camps are different;
we carry out cultural, media, arts and technology
activities, in addition to focusing on teaching
them about the real Islam." In fact,Ismail Haniya,
Gaza’s titular head of the Hamas, announced that
campers who excelled in Koran memorization
would receive a prize that would pay travel
expenses for a pilgrimage to Mecca. What
red-blooded Gaza kid would not aspire to
that loftly goal?

Some Gaza kids who joined Hamas’ camps on the
first-day of the summer camp activities waved
Palestinian flags, others carried pictures of
shaheeds (Hamas’ martyrs) waved banners
imprinted with the names of Hamas prisoners
or held up placards with slogans such as:
“Victory For Gaza-The Glory Of Jerusalem.”

Apparently, the looming success of the quite
different UNWRA camping experience was too
much for Hamas afficiandos to tolerate.So,
on this past May 23rd, a group of thirty masked,
armed and benighted male Gazans assaulted,
torched and otherwise vandalized UNWRA’s largest
summer camp site on the Gaza beach. The zealots
tied up a guard and left a note and
three bullets threatening the life of UNWRA’s
local director, John Ging, unless UNWRA
cancelled camp for 200,000 Gaza kids. Perhaps
more importantly, Hamas security forces
conspiratorially allowed the
masked vandals unimpeded entry into the UNWRA
summer camp site. The Hamas security forces
then blocked UN supporters who tried in vain
to protest.

So, given knowledge of and insight into the
foregoing circumstances,a number of matters
concerning Gaza become less befogged and less
beshrouded in emotionally charged Hamas propaganda
or in activist press releases. First, you certainly
do not want to plan your next vacation to be on the
Gaza strip. Second, the average American or
European-bred teenager would be wholly horrified if
required to spend his/her summer at a Gaza beach
camp operated by Hamas. Third, adult life in the
Gaza strip is assuredly no summer camp for
anyone living there. After all is said and
done, Gaza is a tiny, blockaded enclave
completely dominated and tightly controlled
by the clenched fist of terrorist-tainted Hamas.

That said, based on reports and photos from
multiple disparate sources, the overarching
majority of kids attending either the
UNWRA or Hamas summer camps appear to be
properly clothed and well-nourished.
Therefore, considering the several hundreds
of summer camps being funded and actually
operating in stark competition between UNWRA
and Hamas, it would seem reasonable to believe
that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is not
nearly so dire nor so excruciatingly oppressive
as to mandate the critical necessity of a
blockade busting flotilla. But, then, that is
only my humble opinion.

Of a certainty, my own grandkids would not be
emotionally disposed to cavorting at an UNWRA
campsite on the Gaza strip nor would
they be fitting campers to benefit from the
clearly captivating summertime activities
sponsored with such loving verve and delicate
care by Hamas at their seaside camps along the
not-so-scenic Gaza strip.

Having now learned about the above circumstances
on the Gaza strip, the caustic warning of
Alexander Pope comes to mind. He cautioned:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep or taste notthe Pierian spring.”

P.S. My grandkids prefer summer visits to the
sugar-white, sandy beaches of the Florida
panhandle. Well, by August, when my grandkids
arrive, the beaches on the Gaza strip may be
more inviting than Florida’s sugar white beaches.
By then, Florida’s beaches may be blackened
and polluted with BP oil still profusely gushing
into the Gulf of Mexico. Go Gaza!