Just why is Israel's Government Press Office recommending a restaurant in Gaza — of all place?
The Roots Club, an upscale restaurant and club came to light when journalist Tom Gross highlighted a growing Gaza middle class not covered in the MSM. Gross writes:
Indeed the BBC and other prominent Western media regularly lead their viewers and readers astray with accounts of a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
What they won’t tell you about are the fancy new restaurants and swimming pools of Gaza, or about the wind surfing competitions on Gaza beaches, or the Strip’s crowded shops and markets. Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write.
Here, courtesy of the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, is a report on Gaza’s new Olympic-sized swimming pool . (Most Israeli towns don’t have Olympic-size swimming pools. One wonders how an area that claims to be starved of water and building materials and depends on humanitarian aid builds an Olympic size swimming pool and creates a luxury lifestyle for some while others are forced to live in abject poverty as political pawn refugees?)
Tongue in cheek, GPO director Danny Seaman sent an email to the foreign press corps recommending the restaurant for journos heading to the strip to cover the Free Gaza flotilla. Seaman told the Jerusalem Post of the angry responses he received:
“The same journalists who constantly point a finger at Israel were outraged by this. One journalist asked me in response, ‘don’t you have rich and poor areas [in Gaza] like everywhere else?’ I responded by asking her, ‘Why don’t you write about the affluent parts of Gaza?”
Is there a lot of poverty in Gaza? Yes.
Does the closure create difficulties? Undeniably.
Does Hamas bear any responsibility for the situation? Absolutely.
I wonder if Lauren Booth is on Seaman's mailing list.
