Monday, January 28, 2008
The Boston Globe ran an op-ed on Saturday by Eyad al-Sarraj and Hamas apologist/Finkelstein fan Sara Roy, Ending the stranglehold on Gaza. Not surprisingly, the piece is full of tendentious claims. Martin Kramer does the math on one such claim. Hilarity ensues: Gaza buried in flour
...The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.
A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent.
Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.
What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie...
Update: CAMERA suggests that, far from having no possible use for so much flour, Gazans may, in fact, be building a secret weapon.
Nevertheless, I think the IDF will be ready:
Update 2: NGO Monitor blog notes that Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, an organization that has 'promoted the idea of boycotts.'
...When NGO's claims (made it seems for political purposes) are not just wrong, but clearly absurd, they turn the important work of human rights into a farce...
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: How Much Flour Can One Person Eat? (Update).
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For some reason I really like Charles Jacobs' Jewish Advocate piece (in full below) this week. Jacobs touches on flour in Gaza, Joel Kovel's recent trip through Boston (for previous video of Kovel: Racist Bard College Professor Joel Kovel Spouts... Read More
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Maybe the Harvard Research Scholar should write a paper on price elasticity of demand for flour in Gaza. A 99% reduction in supply and only an 80% increase in price. Hmmm. That shouldn't raise any flags in a "research scholar", eh? Unless facts really aren't meaningful in achieving her desired outcome.
The Globe’s report is co-written by Eyad al-Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
NGO Monitor has monitored the Gaza Community Mental Health Program for some time. While campaigning against the isolation of Gaza, in the past they have promoted the idea of isolation, specifically the idea of boycotts. They signed petitions for both an economic boycott of Israel and an academic boycott of Israel.
We've commented further on this story at our blog.
Scones and tea? Everyone?
Brings a whole new meaning to Flour Power.
Actually I think I know what they're using the flour for. My wife's grandmother makes scones that are harder than rocks.(don't ever eat her rock cakes) She must be covertly making them for the next intifada, which predictably will be soon after the 'inevitable failure' of the peace process due to 'Israeli intransigence'
Mr Bagel
Please stop using word "Palestinians". It's not a discription of the ethnic, religion or nationality. Palestine is A HISTORIC AREA NAME, like NEW ENGLAND. Anyone could be a "Palestinian" or "Newenglander". If do not like to use the name "Arab language speaking inhabitans of Erets Israel", please use word "Philistine", i.e., as from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) /ˈfɪləˌstin, -ˌstaɪn, fɪˈlɪstɪn, -tin/
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
Also from http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm:
"the Ottoman government imposed severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase, and also began actively soliciting inviting Muslims from other parts of the Ottoman empire to settle in Palestine, including Circassians and Bosnians."
About 20 years ago still were alive "Palestinians" who spoke Serbian language. By the way, "Bosnian" is not an ethnic either.
shalom