The Boston Globe offers a shocking statistic;
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.
It could be worse! “It’s a good thing the eeevil Zionists didn’t cut off the essential Stay Puft marshmallow supply.”
C’mon Kate, don’t get bogged down with details. After all, they’re just bringing to light how evil the Joooooos are.
And they say that North Americans have an obesity problem.
Maybe the rugs help them pass all that flour.
The more the pinkos and the terrorist sympathizers try to make the Palestinians sound like innocent surpressed people, the more ridiculous they sound and they wind up losing a lot of credibility, as if they ever had any in the first place.
Works out at about 270 cubic metres of flour per man, wooman and child per year.
Where do they put it all!
Doing the math, 90 tons works out to 0.12 lb per capita. As palestine is one of the youngest places on earth – probably half under the age of 12 – that doesn’t seem too bad. And considering the source the amount is probably grossly understated.
680000 tonnes per YEAR works out to 2.48 lbs per day which seems a little high.
40 years of occupation, or 40 years of territory won in battles instigated by enemies seeking to destroy Israel?
Perhaps the USA would like to get the ball rolling by returning territories won in battles against Mexico. California and Arizona would be a good places to start.
I tend to believe the flour use figures are real…this may be the second attempt by the diabolical Yiddish Militant Zionist scourge to kill the righteous hero workers of Palestine with over eating…flour is a formidable weapon…stuffing tons of Falafels down their necks until they explode without the help of a dynamite waist coat.
Evil bastards!
90 tons a day = 32850 tons a year. assuming that the 680,000 tons number is correct — and for a year that still seems like a helluva lot of flour — that would be a reduction of 95.2 percent, annually. (32850 being 4.8 percent of 680000). The math is still even if you allow for terrible sentence construction.
Swords into plowshares there Gazans, time to start growing your own HAHAHA
When you hate the Jews, there is no lie too big. There are stupid people who will believe this (as the propagandists know) and the attacks on Israel will be justified in their minds. Each person who adds another lie is participating in the coming final confrontation.
(No hyperbole intended in case KEvin is lurking.)
They would grown their own, Matt, if only they didn’t insist on wiping out the agricultural infrastructure the Jews left for them to support themselves.
Then again, those who do try to grow their own likely find it all trampled down or burned by the more radical ‘palestinians.’ Self-sufficiency is a bad sign that they could do things on their own, dontchaknow.
I am curious- has anyone been paying attention to satellite photos since the Israelis gave this land back to the faux ‘palestinians’? I’m betting it went from green to brown in a rush.
What this is is evidence that Leftists, including MSM Leftists, are stupid and don’t bother to conduct the most basic of plausibility examinations, nor fact verification, before they open their mouths or hit “publish”, etc.
It’s one of those gross exaggerations designed to demonize Israel, just like the doctored photo of the bulldozer in a post somewhere below this one.
This happens pretty much daily. It’s become an industry unto itself, this obsessive “demonize Israel” zealotry.
The fact that those who participate in this bizarre exaggerative demonization of Israel demonstrate such astonishing imbecility should indicate for the reasonable, normal person that there’s actually no evidence of badness on Israel’s part and that there’s apparently a Big Lie campaign ongoing against Israel, much like Goebbels’s Big Lie against the German Jews.
And those who willingly, brainlessly submit to being party to this Big Lie propaganda campaign are no better than those Germans who willingly submitted to the Nazi propaganda machine and followed the evil orders of the Nazi state apparatus during the Holocaust.
So why exactly is the Boston Globe publishing palestinian propaganda?
The really stupid thing about this is that our MSM seldom if ever makes any attempt to audit stories like this for facts and context.
Maybe if the Gazan’s didn’t need so much room to store flour, they might have an easier time negotiating boundaries for the new Palestinian state?
I encourage Israel to fling as many Matzah balls as necessary into Gaza to make up the difference.
If flour is used in the fabrication of the hundreds of qassam rockets Palestinians shoot at Israel every week,
then ok,
I believe they have a “need” for half a ton of flour per day per Palestinian.
Both the West Bank and Gaza have boarders on other (Arab) states. Why is incumbant on the jews to supply them with transport, power, supplies, water, food, etc.? Why isn’t it Jordan’s and Egypt’s fault?
Did Churchill supply Mussolini? Did FDR supply Hirohita?
Why do the Jews have to do jack sh*t for a group of savages who are trying to murder evey last jew and (in the pali’s own words) “drive them into the sea”?
Ha Ha!
No one has considered the REAL use of the flour….
Every hear of a Flour Bomb?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_bomb
“Let them eat,( 680,000 tons) of cake!”
So, where are Cam, John and Johnny Maudlin on THIS thread?
The kosher/halal Atkins diet might be in order.
The World Food Program site states that the daily requirement of wheat flour for Gaza is 450mt.
The weekly alltypes of flour requirements are 6069mt.
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/vam/wfp134969.pdf
I urge commenters to check out the tables in this site. It’s a short, 7 page, data-filled report.
It shows that the blockade has severely reduced the food available (as well as lowering the quality of foods).
With regard to a few other posters, suggesting that the 1.6 million inhabitants of Gaza could ‘grow their own’ – the land base won’t permit such a strategy. Gaza is 360 sq km, with 1.6 inhabitants. To compare, just the city of Toronto is 630 sq km with 2.5 million. The metro area is 7,125 sq.km, with 5.5 million. If we just refer to the city of Toronto, there is no way that its population could, on its land base, produce its own food.
Furthermore, as an aside, water access is controlled by Israel and restricted to personal use, not land irrigation.
As for the ‘other countries’ such as Jordan and Egypt assisting the people in the Gaza strip, what is being discussed is NOT Israel ‘helping’ the people in Gaza, ie, supporting them with Israeli tax dollars. That’s not the case. The money and supplies going to Gaza isn’t Israeli; it’s international aid. And, according to international agreement, Israel is the one who is supposed to pass on this aid to Gaza.
Now, I don’t think that anything is accomplished by endless blaming the Palestinians for ALL being Evil; and endless defining the Israelis as ‘just trying to defend themselves’. Such a simplistic binarism isn’t valid and won’t do a thing – absolutely nothing – to resolve the problem. And there are plenty of Israelis who are against the blockades and want the situation resolved.
I don’t think that blockades solve any situation. The British blockade of the New England ports didn’t stop the American Revolution. The German blockade of supplies to Britain didn’t stop them continuing on in WWII.
It has to be a two-state solution. As I’ve pointed out before, I think that the fault lines lie within both the Arab States AND Israel. The Arab States certainly didn’t want a civic political model in their midst (Israel); and don’t want an arabic civic model in their midst (Palestine). AND – to Arabs, who operate by tribal evaluations of people, the Palestinians, as a people, are the ‘lowest of the low’.
And Israel, on its part, should never have settled either Gaza or more importantly, the West Bank. It should have left that land base for the Palestinians, and essentially, confronted the Arab States with it. That is, ‘saying’ that – here’s the land for Palestinians. Now, agree to their having their own state’.
During Arafat’s lifetime, he wouldn’t want this as he’d lose power to the people in a civic model. And now, with the settlements in the West Bank, and with the Palestinians taken over by a very different agenda, the Islamic fascists, it’s a terrible situation.
But taunting Palestinians with ‘it’s your own fault’ – well, that won’t solve anything.
No one seems to have caught the other glaring inconsistency. First, the authors claim that closing Gaza’s “only power plant” plunged 800,000 people into darkness. Later, they claim the population is 1.5 million. So, what happened to the other 700,000? Are they blind and in permanent darkness? Or, are they lit by an inner light? Or, as seems more likely, the authors have no idea what the real population is, and just make the numbers up as they go along.
Otter,
An arial photo of the Gaza strip was shown a few days ago after the fence was blown down showing where the fence along the border between Egypt and Gaza had been breached (it did not show all of Gaza). The most interesting thing though was that you could clearly see that the Israeli side (right up to the border) was cultivated and blocked into squares of land whereas the land in Gaza (and in Egypt) was clearly not cultivated. So the Israeli’s were clearly bringing in water and irrigating, etc. to make their land productive.
To provide some perspective the capacity of the canadian flour industry is 9000 tonnes per day or
3,285,000 tonnes per year or dividing by 32 million pop = .102 tonnes per Canadian per year
An equivalent in Gaza at 1.5 million people should be…153,000 tonnes per year. And Canadians are told they eat too much flour
http://www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/display-afficher.do?id=1171901319253&lang=e
I cant believe they ate that much flour, effectovely 4 times the annual consumption of a Canadian. Is there another use for flour? Or was there something else inside the flour bags or are the numbers just wrong.
What might weigh the same by volume as flour?
or, once again the starting numbers are wrong
Praise be!
It’s the miracle of the loaves and fishes in reverse, or “the feeding of the singletude”.
ET. Nice little table. But using their figures,they figure EACH Pali needs 240.9 POUNDS of flour PER DAY. I call BS. Altough to cover their buttsNGO,s are reallygood at that) I notice they do say the figures are “guestimates”.
stephen, I think the numbers are wrong – that 680,000 tonnes of flour a day. As I said, the UN World Food Program, in its August 2007, Report 14 on Food Security and Market Monitoring in Gaza, says the wheat flour requirements are 450Mt or MT a day.
That MT or Mt is the question. Is this really a Weight Measurement, the megatonne, or one million metric tonnes? Or is it a Content Measurement ton, used to refer to the containers shipped by transport, ie, does one Mt equal 40 cubic feet?
The weekly Gaza flour requirements, according to the WFP, is 6069 Mt. I suspect that is a content measurement.
One of the writers is a Palestinian health worker, so you can understand the desire to spread disinformation. They other one is a Harvard Grad. So much for the Ivy League. ET’s stats are probably correct. Have you ever heard of an international organisation that wasn’t skimming? One pound of donated flour for the people, 9 lbs to sell.
I think we can all conclude that the ‘daily 680,000 tons of wheat’ if wildly off. The question, as I said, is the meaning of Mt also used as MT.
So, the daily requirement for 1.5 million is 450 MT/Mt per day.
That can mean Metric tons, a weight. Or Measurement ton, where one is 40 cubit feet.
The UNWFP, in another release, is informing us that ‘metric tons’ were shipped into Gaza. So, maybe their abbreviation in their Tables means that.
Whatever – the article shows, not so much the irrationality of thought when applied to the ME, but the irrationality when figures and numbers are introduced!
While I don’t approve of the lies, like this one, and the “candlelight legislature” photo, etc, what really irks me is the media that allow this kind of information to be diseminated.
ET, once again, raises some issues worth considering. This isn’t a clean Good Guys vs Bad Guys scenario. The Israelis MUST STOP BUILDING ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS, and need to tear down the ones that are there! And, of course, the Palestinians MUST STOP FIRING ROCKETS INTO ISRAEL!
Until these two things happen, nothing will improve.
It’s hard to believe anyone would be so stupid as to think firing a rocket into Israel would help the situation at all. It is clearly used, along with suicide murderers, as justification for retaliation. It’s the definition of “asking for it”. Beyond stupid.
ET:
Again let’s just THINK about this. Let’s take your #’s for Toronto and cut them in half (315 sq km & 1.25m people which compare nicely to the 360 sq km and 1.6m people).
I know Palestine does not look like Toronto. It’s not a concrete jungle. If you look at pics you’d know there is far more useable ground. But even in Toronto you could grow enough veggies to last a season! Use a kiddie swimming pool. Doubtful they are available in Palestine but a make shift box, ANYTHING to grow something in on your doorstep. International aid surely could include seeds.
But to do something for yourself defeats the purpose of being a victim.
Great post. The math is so far off it makes one wonder about the educational system these people were taught in. An example of another MSM headline that the people that only read headlines will be using that as a thought process. Just think when they take the guns from people in Canada. “It is just great to look at the future of the rights of the majority of people run by a minority of people with guns”. All because the Left Wing Government’s think that this is best for YOU!. Merle Underwood.
First, “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 comes out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.” Note the, “ almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per DAY.”
If that is true, they should have enough flour horded to last them six years. The globe said; “Although Gaza DAILY requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population ….” This is not a heavily populated country like India or China which would use that much flour. Toronto has a much larger population; do they use 680,000 TONS of flour a day? No. NOTE: This is imoprted and not produced there, it is a big differance, It is comparable to Sask, getting wheat to Toronto. It is not produced there but brought in – likre any other city, This goes directly into the “Durban II Conference on Racism” meeting. It is for propaganda purposes only to make the country of Israel as a “demon.”
“I feel that there was a type error as suggested by one of the people in comments area who said; ” I suspect that someone changed “pounds” to “tons” at one point. 680,000 POUNDS of flour would be 340 tons, which is about what Kramer says the real number is. Steven Den Beste : 01.28.08 – 10:43 am”
“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.”
I looked up what is being done to help those who needed help in the Gaza Strip. The article found at the following link tells what went there :
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2007/Humanitarian+supplies+transferred+to+the+Gaza+Strip+19-Jun-2007.htm
So much aide and not appreciated, It is like the dog that bites the hand that feeds it. Things like this are overlooked by the MSM because it does not sell papers or make good footage for their cameras. They even attack the convoy of aide, then why do the same people complain?
This is as comparable to the “man-made-global-warming religion” that the environmentalists are pushing. There is not the evidence that “mankind” is responsible for all the global warming to the extent they are claiming, many facts are not presented, and those that are, are eschewed to their beliefs. Tell them that they are wrong and they treat you like the “Durban II Conference on Racism” whose purpose seems to be to destroy Israel. Tell a lie long enough and people will believe it as a fact.
The point remains that there was no checking on the part of the paper.
Nobody does the simple math to see if it makes any sense, and I bet thos happens no matter what the story is. The difference happens when you are dealing with organizations that are quite happy to put out misinformation rather than try to do soemthing accurately being concerned that they may be called on it.
The 680,000 might be for the entire palestinian teritories, west bank included. The numbers are definitely wrong. The question is who will call the paper and the original authors on the whole issue.
Andrea – are you serious? The land base in Toronto could supply ALL the vegetables for the population?
No backyard garden (and they do exist in Gaza) could produce sufficient for a 1.6 million population. Or even your Toronto example. I suggest you come down from the Clouds.
Your reference to ‘being a victim’ has no relevance. We are talking facts.
Right, Merle – when many people see math figures, their minds screech to a halt.
For example, the wheat consumption by year in Pakistan is apparently 21 million tons. That’s for a population of almost 165 million. That’s about 7.8 tons per person per year. The Boston Globe’s numbers for Gaza would have 182 tons of flour per person per year! Whew.
I think the actual wheat consumption in Gaza is about 9.7 tons of flour per person per year. (that is, 450 metric tons per day times 365 days, into a population of 1.6 million).
Ah well. I love Boston; it’s beautiful and elegant and its newspaper, the Boston Globe is as thick as mud.
Jimbo, you ignorant sl*t – There are no Jews and no settlements in Gaza. There are just a million+ Palentinians living on permanent global welfare firing rockets at Israeli civvies. Israel should build their wall higher, and cut them off entirely – leave it to the Egyptians to care for them.
Yeah, two words: Hong Kong
BTW, did anyone notice that the authors uses metric in the original column (“tonnes”), but this changes to “tons” in the new one?
I swear, the MSM is the most innumerate force in the world today…
“I think the actual wheat consumption in Gaza is about 9.7 tons of flour per person per year. (that is, 450 metric tons per day times 365 days, into a population of 1.6 million).”
Your joking right? You can’t actually be serious with that number? You’re not actually suggesting that the average gazian consumes over fifty pounds of flour a day, are you? How much tea would you need to wash that down?
I can see why this number is realistic…they like to eat really really big ham sandwiches –everyday! Yea, that’s the ticket…
Israel offered to build a water desalination plant in Gaza prior to the handover and were turned down! If they’re short of Fresh water they have no one to blame but themselves.
sorry- you’re absolutely right. I would indeed come out to 53 pounds a day! But that wheat is also used to feed animals. And none of it is feeding my own incompetence at figures.
I’ll try to find out more data.
Re: “Jimbo, you ignorant sl*t – There are no Jews and no settlements in Gaza”
And the West Bank? Aren’t there 20 or so settlements Israel has promised to get rid of since 2001? Correct me if I’m wrong, please.
Jimbo,
As part of any final settlement, I’m sure Israel will give up settlements just like they did with Gaza.
Until then, I expect you to demand other nations responsible for starting wars who have lost some of their territory get it back. Like Germany.
When you start a war of aggression like Isreal’s neighbours have (5 times!) and when lose that war (5 times!) you don’t get back the land you lost. Except apparently when it’s Israel who now has it…
Re: “As part of any final settlement, I’m sure Israel will give up settlements just like they did with Gaza.” Posted by: Warwick at January 28, 2008 3:42 PM
I see your point. Israel already agreed to give up those settlements, years ago, and instead have expanded some of them. It’s a critical issue to the Palestinians, and it’s hard to see how we can move forward from here until there is significant movement on this.
That said, it sometimes seems the Palestinians worst enemy is themselves. One step forward, two steps back. The rocket attacks and suicide murders are understandably the repeated justification given by the Israelis for staying.
Back to the data. One decimal point out. It’s about 200 pounds per person per year. That ‘normal’ bag of flour we buy at the market is 5.5 lbs (at least the size I buy).
warwick, Palestine isn’t a nation and didn’t have a territorial sovereignty to govern or cede land. The issue is about the UN’s dealing with the land of the ME that was never a ‘nation’ but was administered by various other nations – such as the Ottomans and the British. The UN divided that land base into two suggested nations: Israel and Palestine. The second nation, Palestine, never saw ‘the light of day’.
As the folks at CanadianCynic have pointed out, substitute “pounds” for “tons,” then do a bit of math, and the issue seems a little more understandable and realistic.
As Kramer notes: “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.”
Well, interestingly enough, 680,000 pounds is equal to 340 tons, which is still enough to cause food shortages. Since Kramer notes this “story” has been circling upwards at an astonishing rate from an Egyptian newspaper to a Palestinian activist on the ground, it’s quite conceivable that either a mistranslation, or just piss-poor editing, contributed to this misinformation.
Thanks to the “Haha, there IS no food shortage in Gaza, those ingrateful buncha Muzzies!!” postings like this one, the truth of the matter gets buried under the spin (which is definitely the fault of everyone along the chain here).
So, with that in mind, is it still a laughing matter, Kate?
Jimbo,
Exactly right.
I would add that the territories wouldn’t even be occupied but for the Arab attempt at genocide (“kill all the jews and drive them into the sea” is their own words.) They – not Israel – started the wars that lost them their land.
Peace is easy. When the Palistinians want peace, peace will be had. Until then, not so much. In the mean time, the leftards and Arab stringers in the international media engage in the usual anti-Semitic propaganda and lies.
Isreal – although not perfect – has shown restraint no other group would or would be expected to show those who are trying to kill them.
ET, I think you mean to say that Palestine isn’t a “state” or a “nation state” – pretty hard to argue, however, that there isn’t a Palestinian nation.
Johny Ringo,
The Palestinian “nation” was a creation of 1967. There wasn’t a concept of Palestinian nationhood by the region’s Arabs before the failed genocidal war against Israel.
As it stands now though, the facts on the ground are that Jordan doesn’t want the West Bank and Egypt doesn’t want Gaza and the Arab states and PLO terrorists have succeeded in their national invention to the point where what was fictional has grown into fact.
Palestinian statehood is a given. The timing of which depends on when they can start to act like sovereign people and not vicious animals. When they start acting like a modern nation-state, they should get one. Not until then.
And given the lack of territorial continuity between Gaza and the West Bank, maybe a 3 state solution is in order.