Responding to a recent report lamenting the current plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Barbara Kay points to some relevant facts about the radically improved conditions there under Israeli rule, a few effects of which endured even following Israel’s 2005 withdrawal:

[I]n 1967, when Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza began, life expectancy stood at forty-eight. By 2000, it had leaped to seventy-two, higher not only than in most Arab countries, but higher than in South America and some EU countries. In 1967, infant mortality among Palestinians was at about 157 per 1,000 births. In 2006 it was 21 per 1,000 births, significantly lower than in neighboring Arab and North African countries. Indeed, Palestinian infant mortality rates are now better than in Turkey and Bulgaria, and Gaza still ranks third in the world for natural population increase due to highbirth rates and low death rates.

As for poverty, a little context is in order. Gaza gets plenty of money. . . . But it doesn’t go toward infrastructure. It goes to expanding the public sector, rewarding terrorists and paying religious clerics to broadcast hysterical Judeophobia more or less full time. In spite of all this, Gaza’s gross national income per capita (GNI) is $1,760, which seems nugatory to us but isn’t for the region, where the average GNI is $1,593.

Nobody wants to be ruled by another country, and nobody wants to stop ruling the Palestinians more than Israel does. But if the subject of a report is life under Israeli rule, it is not too much to ask that the report reflect more than superficial knowledge, and provide objectivity and balance. Or is it?

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.