A stream of images of starving children in the Gaza Strip have captured the world’s attention, deepening anger over Israel’s actions in the territory and furthering its isolation among nations.
But the narrative is different inside Israel. The story of hunger in Gaza has hardly registered compared with other crises and tragedies: the grinding announcements of the deaths of young Israeli soldiers; the political upheaval over the exemption of ultra-Orthodox Jews from the draft and government’s efforts to fire key democratic and professional gatekeepers; the haunting videos of emaciated young hostages, one forced to dig his own grave on camera, after nearly two years in hellish captivity.
Worse than showing indifference, many Israelis deny the clear realities: that Gaza is in chaos and teetering on the edge of widespread starvation, and that Israel has played a major role in bringing about this terrible state.
The attitude is projected from the top. “There is no starvation in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has declared. In a news conference on Sunday he blamed Hamas and the international media for perpetuating a “global campaign of lies.” He added that “the only ones being deliberately starved” are the Israeli hostages in Gaza.
This sentiment is widely shared in Israel. A poll in late July found that almost 80 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that Israel is making an effort to avoid causing suffering to Gazans. The same percentage — though primarily on the right and center — said they are not troubled by reports of famine.
While indications are growing that the tragedy is starting to register among Israelis, the willful blindness of much of Israeli society must be discarded for Israel to begin pulling itself out of the quagmire in Gaza and repairing its own tattered image. The first step to resolving a problem is admitting there is one.
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The post Israel’s Pain Has Blinded It to Gaza’s Suffering appeared first on New York Times.
