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Friday, November 16, 2012

Where the media elites stay

The New York Times' Jodi Rudoren and al-Guardian's Harriet Sherwood are staying at Gaza City's al-Deira hotel, which I have reported on before as the Grand Palace. This is from Rudoren's Facebook page.
At the Al-Deira Hotel in Gaza City, the lights keep going on and off, and we've heard about a dozen F-16 strikes over the last six hours, most not seemingly terribly close, though the terrace restaurant is off limits, just in case. Hamas triumphantly declared that it had downed an Israeli drone, which the IDF denied. A blogger staying here excitedly reported that the ground invasion had begun, whi
ch the IDF also debunked.

We only spent a few hours on the streets today, since I got here so late. It was dark and empty, mostly, really "a ghost city," as our cab driver put it. We visited a marketplace in the older part of town, normally bustling on a Thursday afternoon but today most of the shops were shuttered. There were a few vegetable sellers, and a kiosk doing brisk business in battery-operated radios and lights, since the electricity is sporadic. Some kids kicked a soccer ball in the street. My favorite quote (tomorrow's kicker today!) was from the owner of a sweet shop, Mohammed Elmzaner, who said, "Who will think of eating sweets in these bitter circumstances?"
Funny how they never hesitate to roll out the sweets for a terror attack.

And this morning, during Egyptian Prime Minister Kandil's visit, Rudoren writes:
Despite supposed ceasefire during PM visit, we just heard an F16 in #GazaCity. Then again, there have been rockets to #Israel all morning.
Over at Israellycool, Brian from London explains that Rudoren and Sherwood are probably safer than any Israelis
When the missiles from Gaza are raining down on Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel where is the safest place for a darling luvvie international journalist to run to?
Why “Concentration Camp” Gaza City of course!
They know the IDF knows how to “bullseye a wump rat” and carefully pick targets while Hamas is lucky if it can pick out a city.
They are confident while the bombs may fall within meters of their pampered, luxury accomodation, the IDF wouldn’t be stupid enough or incompetant enough to blow up the entire world’s media (though don’t think a few of us in a darker moment haven’t dreamed this).

...

No, its definitely safer than say, Ashdod or Ashkelon or even Rishon LeZion or Tel Aviv now that all of those massive cities have taken indiscriminate incoming fire.
So as we can see from their twitter and facebook musings, the media all scurry off to Gaza and write “human interest” pieces on the poor schlubs who Hamas are murdering. Yes, Hamas murder eveyone killed in Gaza, didn’t you know that?
Read the whole thing.  

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