Dying and lying in Gaza

Until a few years ago Princeton, NJ is the place I spent the longest part of my life.  Since 2004, I have lived in Israel, but Princeton is my legal US address from which I and my family file taxes, vote, and to which we get notices for jury duty. 

Princeton is in the NJ 12th district, represented by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman. I receive her monthly updates about issues that she cares about, and how she’s allocating federal dollars to projects in the district. I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know a lot of things about Israel and the Middle East, studying at two major universities. Living here, I say I live in my own petri dish. 

I used to think that Representative Watson-Coleman was just misguided. I have lobbied her office and written to her as well. Except for one staff member responding once, I have never heard back. 

The ignorance which I used to attribute to her is clearly more than that.  She’s made it a point of not only walking out of or boycotting the Congressional address of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but featuring that as a major policy issue. It’s like she is spiking the ball in the end zone, after a fumble.  It’s one thing to differ with a sitting world leader.  It’s another to make that leader the epitome of evil and standing on her self-righteous hill for all to see. 

Last year Congresswoman Watson-Coleman disseminated a brazen lie, misrepresenting the number of deaths in Gaza since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and massacre. The number she quoted was higher than even the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry” was brazen enough to claim. I addressed it then, writing it off as simple ignorance, and being sucked into the propaganda fraud that the terrorist organization projects to the world. Of course, she ought to be intelligent enough to check facts before reporting them, and especially as a Congresswoman. 

But hey, what’s several thousand dead Gazans among friends if we can make Israel look bad, and in doing so conflate the number of people who have died of natural causes, the thousands of terrorists killed on October 7-8, 2023, and the tens of thousands targeted and killed since then. 

This week I received Watson-Coleman’s latest update. Under the heading “Famine in Gaza,” in 200+ words, the Congresswoman perpetuates numerous unproven allegations and outright lies. She should be ashamed. 

She claims that “Gaza is a humanitarian disaster beyond measure.” Does she forget humanitarian disasters and wars throughout Africa and Syria in the past two decades alone. Does she not remember famine so bad in Africa that the 1985 Live Aid global concert and $245 million campaign which sought to alleviate that? 

“Aid agencies have warned for over a year that a famine was coming, and now it’s here.”  Really congresswoman?  Where’s the famine is about as legitimate a question as “Where’s the beef.” Aid agencies and the UN perpetuated these claims, even the idea that if something didn’t change “14,000 babies would die” immediately. That never happened.  It’s the worst lie because it’s based on a fraud.

“The aid distribution system in Gaza is failing by design.” Come on Congresswoman. Have you been there?  Have you seen it? Do you know that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has provided more than 91 million meals since May 27 (for a population of 2.3 million)? That’s about 1.5 million meals a day. Sounds to me like working by design. Or that Israel has renewed air drops of food and humanitarian supplies right into Gaza, hopefully into the hands of the Gazans and not their Hamas masters. 

This Watson-Coleman lie really got me. “Aid trucks are stuck at the border...”  Congresswoman, I hope you’re not as unreliable in all your other work representing New Jersey’s 12th as you are on this one. The only aid trucks “stuck at the border” were nearly 1000 such trucks, ON THE GAZA SIDE OF THE BORDER. Until embarrassed to do something this week, the UN was literally letting the aid rot in the sun. 

On the Israeli side of the border, on one day alone this month, as many as 166 trucks entered Gaza, with 180 more scheduled. Even on the slowest days, as few as 29 truckloads are reported to have crossed into Gaza. Averaging the high and the low, that’s 97 truckloads per day, or 2900 per month.  

“Since May, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach aid.” It’s a war and indeed people are dying. That’s horrible. But how does she know that “Israeli forces” killed 1000 people “trying to reach aid.” It seems the Congresswoman is getting her “facts” straight out of the mouth of Hamas terrorist, believing them as gospel, and using the lies to propagate a fraud.  She should be investigated as an agent of a terrorist organization. 

My Congresswoman claims that there is “continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.” Of course that’s a baseless lie as well.  As grave as the human suffering is, and as tragic as the death of any one innocent civilian truly is, the population of Gaza in the context of a war to eliminate Hamas that’s deeply embedded among the civilian population, and return 50 hostages who have been in captivity for over 600 days, has not been ethnically cleansed.  There is no genocide. Even with the unproven Hamas death toll, there’s been a similar increase in births. The variable is 100,000+ who have left Gaza, which all Gazans should be allowed to do for their own safety and well-being. Getting civilians out of a war zone happened in Ukraine, Syria, and between African nations at war. Why is it that only Gazans are prevented from such protection in neighboring Arab countries?

The worst part of Watson-Coleman’s 200+ word diatribe, is that not once does she mention the hostages. Not once does she mention Hamas, her patrons of “truth.” Not once does she mention that Hamas has hijacked the distribution of aid throughout Gaza, and is opposed to the GHF aid because it circumvents their control. Not once does she mention that if Hamas had not started this war, conducted the massacre, and kidnapped more than 250 people, there would be no war, no suffering, and no allegations of starvation, ethnic cleansing, or other fraudulent claims that she perpetrates. 

The answer is as glaring as her lies. Because if you cannot blame suffering on the Jews, there’s no news.  As she notes in conclusion, we should not “have the privilege to look away.” Indeed Congresswoman. Your lies are in the spotlight for all to see, and your credibility is nil.