As I mentioned in Friday’s post, New York’s new 15th District’s candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is not only a radical leftist, her muddled worldview is badly warped with regard to the unrest on Israel’s border with Gaza ~ Democratic Socialist who upset NY Rep. Joe Crowley falsely claimed Israel committed “massacre” in Gaza ~

In a May 14 tweet, Ocasio-Cortez said that Israel’s killing of Palestinians along the Gaza border was a “massacre” and that “no state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters.”
 
“There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else,” she said. “Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”

Where to begin? Obviously the young woman is woefully ill-informed, so first I’ll just counter with this little truth bomb which totally disrupts the narrative of Israelis as the bad guys ~

Yesterday between #Gaza and #Israel:
🚛 11,764 tons of goods in 400 trucks entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom Crossing
🚑 There were 4 ambulance crossings through Erez Crossing
🚶‍♂️ 940 Palestinians entered Israel from Gaza for humanitarian purposes pic.twitter.com/YVJvVO2vbs

— COGAT (@cogat_israel) June 28, 2018

[COGAT stands for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories; Implementation of civil & humanitarian policy in Judea & Samaria/Gaza Strip]

 
The fact is, the residents of Gaza receive much more humanitarian aid from the Israelis than they ever do from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. As with people the world over, of course they certainly do “deserve basic human dignity.” Unfortunately they get very little of that from their own leaders.
 
As I’ve pointed out numerous times, the “Palestinians” have been used as convenient pawns for decades by their devious leaders, essentially held hostage in the jihad to destroy Israel. If their people were self-sufficient and prosperous, the Palestinian Authority could no longer use them to garner world sympathy. Not to mention score billions in “aid” (that somehow never trickles down to those who need it the most).
 

Writing at the Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil describes the reality in the “Occupied Territories” ~

The regimes of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip never miss an opportunity to remind their people of the dire consequences that await anyone who speaks out against the leaders. The two Palestinian regimes have been forcing it down the throats of their people for many years.

 
 
Recently it seems the people themselves – despite their early indoctrination in victimhood and anti-Semitism- are finally figuring out that they’ve been duped. While Hamas has been fueling the violence on the Gaza border for the last few months there have actually been legitimate protests in the West Bank and Gaza ~

The streets of Ramallah and Gaza City showcase, yet again, that the Palestinians’ true tragedy over the past five decades has been failed and corrupt leadership — one that keeps dragging them from one disaster to another; one that never offers them any hope; one that has been radicalizing and brainwashing its people; one that steals large portions of the financial aid provided by the international community, and one that has brought them nothing but dictatorship and repression.

 
While attacks on Israel are encouraged, any activism against the corrupt leadership itself is swiftly supresssed ~

Like most Arab regimes, the PA and its leaders have zero tolerance for any form of criticism.
 
Ask Palestinian journalists, bloggers and pundits in the West Bank and they will tell you (in private and anonymously; they would like to save their skins) how the Palestinian Authority cracks down on them and imposes severe restrictions on their work. In the past year alone, at least 11 Palestinian journalists and political activists have either been arrested or summoned for interrogation by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. The charge: voicing various forms of criticism against the Palestinian Authority or one of its senior officials, including, of course, President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas heads the Palestinian Authority, but he’s at odds with Hamas, the terrorist organization that pretty much runs things in the Gaza Strip. The people themselves are caught in the middle of their power struggle. Abbas ruthlessly deprives the people of basic necessities in a devious attempt to get them to rebel against his enemies in Hamas. Instead, many of them are finally realizing that he – and Hamas – are the problem ~

(On June 13th) hundreds of Palestinians were staging a peaceful demonstration in the center of Ramallah to call on Abbas to lift the sanctions he had imposed on the Gaza Strip a year earlier. The sanctions, which severely aggravated the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip, included firing thousands of PA civil servants and cutting off social assistance to many families. Abbas has also refused to pay for the electricity and medical care that Israel supplies to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip […]
 
What was supposed to be a peaceful protest turned out to be one of the most violent clashes between Abbas’s security forces and demonstrators, whose only crime was that they were calling on their leader to lift the sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip […]
 
On instructions from Abbas, dozens of Palestinian policemen, both in uniform and civilian clothes, attacked the protesters with brute force, using clubs and tear gas. More than 44 protestors were arrested and 20 injured. The brutality, however, did not end there. Palestinian policemen later raided hospitals and medical clinics in Ramallah to arrest injured Palestinians suspected of taking part in the peaceful protest.

Of course, news of these protests isn’t supposed to reach the west because it shows who the real enemies of the Palestinian people are, hint: not Israel ~

At least five Palestinian and foreign journalists were wounded during the police assault, while many others had their cameras and other equipment confiscated […]
 
It is one thing to shout chants against the US and Israel, but it is a completely different story when a Palestinian shouts chants against his leaders. Such a Palestinian would be lucky indeed if he winds up in hospital with only with a broken limb.

In a development that was either ignored or condemned by most of the mainstreams, President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was in the Middle East last week to discuss, in general terms, a White House peace proposal with Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt (the Palestinian leadership declined to meet). In a strategy that they have been employing to a certain extent with Iran and North Korea, the administration is wisely attempting to take their message directly to the Palestinian people.
 
Kushner spoke with an Israeli newspaper last week as the trip was winding down. Here were some of his comments ~

“You deserve to have a bright future, now is the time for both the Israelis and Palestinians to strengthen their leaderships and re-focus them to encourage them to open up toward a solution, and not fear trying.”
 
“A lot has happened in the world since this conflict began decades ago,” he said. “The world has moved forward while you have been left behind. Don’t allow your grandfather’s conflict to determine your children’s future.”
 
The international community, he added, “is getting frustrated with Palestinian leadership and not seeing many actions that are constructive towards achieving peace. There are a lot of sharp statements and condemnations, but no ideas or efforts with prospects of success.”
 
“It’s time for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to stop using the people of Gaza as pawns,” he said. “The narrative of victimhood may feel good for the moment and help you grab headlines but it doesn’t do anything to improve lives.”

 
All true. And all precisely aimed at the beleaguered Palestinians themselves.

 
Perhaps the reality of all this is too complex for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow leftists to grasp. After all, the mainstreams only offer up the latest sensationalized headlines to advance the myth of Palestinian victimhood and paint Israel in the worst possible light ~ Palestinians say 2 killed at Gaza border as 5,000 protest ~
 
 

Since March 30, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have launched countless kites, balloons and inflated latex condoms bearing flammable materials, and occasionally explosives, into Israeli territory, sparking near-daily fires that have burned thousands of acres of farmland, parks and forests […]
 
(In the last three months) at least 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, dozens of them acknowledged members of terror groups.

The UN constantly condemns Israel for incidents such as this – for merely defending her borders against unprovoked aggression. In the meantime, they totally ignore the many ways Palestinians violate International Law. This recent article, from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, details the many ways that this latest violence on the Gaza border violates a host of international laws, including:
 

• By initiating, encouraging, and supporting mass pollution of the border area through the organized stockpiling and burning of tires, the Palestinian leadership is responsible for repeatedly creating caustic clouds of carbon pollution. This act is damaging to the health of the Palestinian civilian demonstrators themselves, as well as the residents of Israeli communities in the vicinity of the border. (Where’s the outrage from environmentalists?)
 
• Incendiary kites and balloons have ignited vast swathes of agricultural land in Israel, destroyed crops, and endangered Israeli residents. The International Criminal Court Statute defines as a war crime “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”
 
• From the viewpoint of international humanitarian law and accepted norms of humanity, placing Palestinian civilians, and especially women and children, at the forefront of violent demonstrations and attacks on the border fence as human shields to conceal the presence of Hamas terrorists is a violation of several international treaties protecting children and prohibiting their involvement in warfare.
 
• Weaponizing kites and balloons by attaching explosive devices with the intention that they will explode upon landing or when found by Israeli civilians is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, notably the 1997 Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings. Moreover, the 2001 Conventional Weapons Convention prohibits the use of incendiary weapons.

Care to comment Ms. Ocasio-Cortez?

 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related:
Why should Palestinian aggression be consequence-free?
The latest Gaza grievance march
Gaza “March of Return” – week 2
Palestinians Tortured by P.A. for Preventing Terror, Saving Israelis
Palestinians: How to Achieve a Better Life
It looks like leftover Obama “MIddle East experts” would prefer war to a Trump-led peace
Comments on Jared Kushner’s interview in Al Quds
The Death of Abu Thuraya: What Really Happened? A tragic Pallywood tale ~

On Dec. 15, 2017, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a double amputee, was killed near the Gaza Strip border’s border with Israel during violent clashes with Israeli forces. Palestinians claimed that he was killed by an IDF sniper, but CAMERA’s new in-depth examination raises many questions about the version of events released by Palestinian news sources.