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Palestinian Lives Don't Matter unless Israel Is to Blame

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - Some media outlets are prepared to devote months of journalistic effort in order to trace the trajectory of a single bullet that accidentally kills a Palestinian - provided the bullet is Israeli. But when the shots are being fired by Hamas, the story barely rates in most Western news accounts. The current round of demonstrations in Gaza comes in reaction to years of Hamas' economic mismanagement. This is not for lack of funds on Hamas' part: Since 2012, the group has taken in over a billion dollars from Qatar alone to pay the costs of fuel, humanitarian aid and civil-servant salaries. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hamas had spent $90 million building attack tunnels into Israel, at an average cost of nearly $3 million a tunnel. The material devoted to each tunnel was "enough to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools or 19 medical clinics." Three wars against Israel, each started by Hamas, have also taken their toll in lives, injuries, and infrastructure. You shouldn't be surprised by the scantiness of Western coverage: It would complicate a convenient narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that holds that the former is the oppressor. Yet more Palestinians have died in Syria in the last decade, mainly on account of the depredations of Bashar al-Assad, than have been killed by Israel. And Palestinians continue to be the victims of leaders who see no reason to subject themselves to regular elections, or financial audits, or criminal investigations, or any other mechanism of political or moral accountability. That lack of accountability is abetted by Western journalism that has been depressingly incurious about any form of Palestinian suffering for which Israel cannot be held responsible. Palestinian lives and livelihoods should matter despite who harms them. A world that shrugs at Hamas' abuse of its own people merely licenses the abuse to continue, unchecked.
2019-03-21 00:00:00
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