The curly-haired perfume peddler performs a metaphorical fugue

In a story which suggests Hamas will benefit from the revolution in Egypt, Reuters correspondent Crispian (curly-haired) Balmer (perfume peddler) cheers on the terrorist group:

(Reuters) - Hamas is having a good revolution.
The unrest that has transformed the Arab world outside the tiny coastal enclave has boosted the standing of the Islamist group within Gaza and strengthened its position against the rival Palestinian Authority, which holds sway in the West Bank.
Hamas greeted the downfall of Egyptian former President Hosni Mubarak with euphoria, sensing that his departure would weaken Israel's stranglehold on the impoverished territory that has crippled its economy and confined its inhabitants.
Mubarak's exit has also deprived both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas of their closest Arab ally, leaving them suddenly exposed in a rapidly changing region.
"The next Egyptian government will never accept the suffocation of Gaza. There will be an end to the blockade and to the isolation of Hamas," said Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum.
"It will take time, but the future is looking good."Hamas, which does not recognize Israel, won elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006 and seized control of Gaza 18 months later after a brief civil war against Abbas's allies.
Since then it has survived an Israeli military onslaught launched after repeated cross-border rocket attacks and struggled to overcome a grinding blockade that has left 80 percent of the 1.5 million inhabitants dependent on aid.

True to Reuters' pattern of consistently demonizing Israel for the ills of the world, and particularly those of the Arab world, Balmer employs cheap metaphor and hyperbole to describe the situation in the Gaza Strip and lay blame on Israel.  Balmer delays for eight paragraphs -- and then offers bare mention of -- the rationale for Israel's embargo: "repeated cross-border rocket attacks".  We read that Israel has a "stranglehold" which has "crippled" and "confined" but nothing of the years of terrorized Israeli civilian communities which precipitated the military "onslaught".

Worse, Balmer's metaphorical fugue is entirely out of tune and out of time.  Despite Hamas' immutable mission to eradicate Israel and commit genocide against the Jewish people, and notwithstanding the hundreds of Palestinian rockets and mortars that continue to rain down on Israeli communities underscoring that mission, Israel has facilitated the delivery of over a million tons of humanitarian assistance to the Strip, accepted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Israeli hospitals for medical treatment, and accommodated the export of Palestinian staples like fruit, flowers, and textiles which contributed to economic growth of 16 percent in Gaza for 2010.  Data and photos from other information sources have shown us that life in Gaza is not as desperate as Reuters would have us believe.

Some however, like Crispian, continue to peddle malodorous balms and punk parlando.

The Lancet hyperbolizes; Reuters parrots

Reuters reports on a series of articles to be published in the Lancet medical journal tomorrow examining the impact of the Gaza war and blockade on the health of Palestinians living in the Strip.  We've not read the journal issue yet but here are some observations based on Reuters' summary and excerpts of the material.

Correspondent Kate Kelland writes:

Around 1,400 people were estimated to have died and many more injured during the Israeli attack on the occupied Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009. The health experts described the destruction of infrastructure, including homes, as "unprecedented."

Er, wake-up call for Reuters: Gaza was not "occupied" in December of 2008 and is not occupied now.

"Unprecedented" destruction.  Please.  The obliteration of Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans accompanied by the killing of over 1 million Jews was unprecedented.  Sherman's scorched earth policy during the American Civil War might be considered unprecedented destruction of civilian property.  One could certainly make a case that the instantaneous destruction wrought by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unprecedented.  But the Gaza war???  This is simply hysterical hyperbole.

Kelland continues:

Almost a third of the sample population was displaced during the war, while 39 percent of their homes were either completely or partly destroyed.

If we read that paragraph correctly, the Lancet is claiming that, based on its "random sample", about 13 percent of homes in Gaza were either completely or partly destroyed.

Yet, according to this article appearing in the UAE newspaper The National, a total of 3,425 homes were destroyed in the war.  How many more were "partly destroyed"?  We haven't seen any hard figures but let's say the number is over three times that of homes completely destroyed, or another 11,000.  That would make a total of just over 14,000 homes sustaining some level of damage.  Reuters is fond of reminding us that Gaza has a population of 1.5 million Palestinians.  With an average family household size of 6.5 individuals, there are approximately 230,000 housing units in Gaza.  14,000 homes represents about 6 percent of this total, less than half of what the Lancet is claiming.  Their sample data would appear to be significantly skewed.

Kelland continues:

Kholoud Nasser from the Ministry of Education in Ramallah, looked at Palestinian children's diets and the knock-on effects for their health and education.

In a study of around 2,000 children and adolescents, she found that one in four misses breakfast -- the main indicator of healthy eating habits -- while one in 10 is anaemic, and one in 17 is stunted. Around 2 percent are underweight and 15 percent are either overweight or obese.

Sounds devastating until you realize that in the US, studies show that more than one in three children misses breakfast.  And according to the United Nations, Palestinian children are among the healthiest in the Middle East.  Only Qatar has a lower rate of stunting across the Arab states and the Palestinian rate actually fell from one in 10 between 2003 and 2008 to one in 17 based on Nasser's more recent study. 

The pernicious propaganda continues unabated.

World yawns over Middle East conflict; Reuters panics

In a nearly hysterical op-ed loaded with dire warnings and hyperbole, Reuters Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald frets that the Israel-Palestinian conflict may be losing its audience.  That would obviously be bad for business at Reuters' Middle East bureau so Macdonald launches his arsenal of rhetorical WMDs to recapture our attention:

Here on the ground in this Belgium-size bit of Mediterranean coast a new war is raging, so far of words...

Their [Israelis who do not support "the two-state solution"] critics warn of "rivers of blood" in an "apartheid Israel" made international pariah if the two-state option dies.

Palestinians, too, are sounding more apocalyptic. 

He [Abbas] also warned this week that his people may turn to more violence if they are thwarted.

Yet time for agreement, many officials and diplomats concur, may be running out as frustration breeds radicalism all round.

Along the way, Macdonald reveals his own radical anti-Israel colors referring to Jewish "colonization" of Judea and Samaria and misrepresenting the particulars of previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements ("the partition goal enshrined in the 1993 Oslo accords") as well as getting the basic demography of the region wrong ("Israel controls a whole territory where Arabs may soon outnumber Jews").

But what really seems to panic Macdonald is the loss of global interest in the conflict:

As world attention wanes, perhaps with the lack of televised bloodshed and the glacial pace of U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to get the sides back to even "proximity talks", Israelis and Palestinians are watching anxiously to see whether the 20-year-old "peace process" will now live, or die.

Well, there's always agitprop to increase circulation.