If the situation were not so serious, it would be very funny.

Having advocated for Israel for more than a decade, I became very familiar with the narratives promoted by Gaza’s Arab leadership, activists, media outlets, and supporters around the world. These narratives were often presented without context and frequently accepted without scrutiny.

Before 2023, Arab governments, media outlets such as Al Jazeera, activists, diplomats, and advocacy groups relied on a remarkably consistent set of themes to describe Gaza to the international community. Following the implementation of the land, air, and sea blockade by Israel and Egypt in 2007, Gaza was increasingly portrayed not as a conflict zone but as a permanent humanitarian catastrophe.

The most prominent slogan was that Gaza was “the world’s largest open air prison” or even a “concentration camp.”

The argument was straightforward. Roughly two million Palestinians were supposedly “trapped” in a tiny territory with no control over borders, airspace, or territorial waters. Israel was portrayed as the prison warden, exercising complete control over movement and commerce while denying Palestinians their basic freedoms.

The second pillar of the narrative focused on economic deprivation.

The world was repeatedly told that Israel was deliberately impoverishing Gaza. Stories about calorie calculations and food imports were presented as proof that Israel intended to keep Gaza on the edge of starvation without quite crossing the line into famine. Unemployment figures were cited endlessly as evidence of economic suffocation.

The third pillar concerned infrastructure.

Viewers were shown reports about water shortages, electricity cuts, sanitation problems, and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)