Happy Yom Kippur: Israel Responsible for Hungry Pali Children

Leave it to the Los Angeles Times to print such outrageous bilge on Yom Kippur, authored by a radical UCLA professor. Forget the fact the world pours billions into the Palestinian rathole and maybe it's up to them to feed and educate their children, rather than posing for pictures with weaponry.

But no, it's all Israel's fault, though where education is concerned, I don't recall Israel putting Hamas Mickey Mouse on television.

This op-ed is absolutely shameful, though entirely predictable.

An entire generation of Palestinians in Gaza is growing up stunted: physically and nutritionally stunted because they are not getting enough to eat; emotionally stunted because of the pressures of living in a virtual prison and facing the constant threat of destruction and displacement; intellectually and academically stunted because they cannot concentrate -- or, even if they can, because they are trying to study and learn in circumstances that no child should have to endure.

What about entire generations of Israeli children living under constant threat by nations surrounding them with ill will?

How is it they've managed to succeed?

As a result of Israel's blockade on most imports and exports and other policies designed to punish the populace, about 70% of Gaza's workforce is now unemployed or without pay, according to the United Nations, and about 80% of its residents live in grinding poverty. About 1.2 million of them are now dependent for their day-to-day survival on food handouts from U.N. or international agencies, without which, as the World Food Program's Kirstie Campbell put it, "they are liable to starve."

Here's a novel solution. Take the endless stream of money you get for nothing and put it toward feeding your children rather than inculcating them with a hateful ideology and supplying your terrorists with weaponry?

An increasing number of Palestinian families in Gaza are unable to offer their children more than one meager meal a day, often little more than rice and boiled lentils. Fresh fruit and vegetables are beyond the reach of many families. Meat and chicken are impossibly expensive. Gaza faces the rich waters of the Mediterranean, but fish is unavailable in its markets because the Israeli navy has curtailed the movements of Gaza's fishermen.

Never mind the fact the Palis have been smuggling weapons and drugs off the Mediterranean and pose a maritime threat which has been well documented.

Read the rest of this incredibly slanted propaganda.

The author of this nonsense is one Saree Makdisi, a radical professor at UCLA, as exposed here.

Professor Saree Makdisi’s nominal task at UCLA is teaching English literature, with a particular concentration in Romantic Period work. But his true burning passion, Palestinian activism, is never far from hand. Indeed, how could it be? Makdisi is not just a third-generation Lebanese academic, but also the late Palestinianoid Edward Said’s nephew.

Makdisi was born in Lebanon, but by the so-called “war years” was safely ensconced at the Northfield Mt. Hermon School, a school whose tuition, at least for the 2005-2006 year, stands at $35,000 for boarding students. His grandfather, Anis Makdisi, was a professor of Arabic literature for 40 years at the American University in Beirut, while his father Samir Makdisi has served as an economics professor at AUB, with a stint in the 1970’s for the International Monetary Fund.

Much like the self-mythologizing Robert Watson, Makdisi’s lineage is pure top-shelf academia, and like Watson, Makdisi has a desperate sense of noblesse oblige. Thus, despite not actually being a Palestinian (itself not an actual ethnic group), Makdisi would grow up to become a raving Palestinian irredentist just like his famous uncle Edward.

Makdisi has rolled up an enviable string of well-placed op-eds during the past four years, and has been especially prolific in the most recent two. His hatred of Israel is at all times present. Makdisi has stated repeatedly that “racism is, and has always been, at the heart of what Israel stands for as a state,” and, echoing his uncle Edward, argues, “it was inevitable that mainstream “political” Zionism…would articulate its vision according to epistemological terms provided by or borrowed from a racially and ethnically fueled imperialism.” In other words, Israel’s founding philosophy marks the nation as a colonial oppressor.

He's also quite the Jimmy Carter fan.