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Heaven On Earth
Shrinking, Densely populated Gaza: The Trope of the War
If there’s a major trope that virtually every media “talking head” and anchor has repeated — ad nauseam — it’s that a) Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth, and b) you can’t bomb without killing LOTS of civilians. Somewhat like Annie Lennox, the very sight of airplanes bombing Gaza means “absolute” “horrific” “carnage” in which innocent women and children” are “inevitably” on “the receiving end.”
Martin Kramer has an excellent and witty blogpost on the misrepresented size of Gaza and its population density.
Last week, I was listening to a podcast of an interview with Professor Rashid Khalidi on a Chicago public radio station. I had downloaded it in great anticipation, and it got off to a great start. Khalidi, a Palestinian-American, is the Edward Said Professor at Columbia, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, author of a well-regarded book on Palestinian identity, and the man whom Obama said reminded him of “my own blind spots.” (He was never a PLO spokesman in Beirut—don’t believe anything you read by those people.) Khalidi was smoothly guiding me through the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians at his customarily rapid clip, and I felt I was in good hands. If you can’t believe what Rashid Khalidi says about Palestine… well, who can you believe?
And then, four minutes and twenty seconds into the interview, it happened. Khalidi was explaining how Israel knew “every inch” of Gaza. After all, he said, “the Gaza Strip is about ten or eleven miles by two.”
I spewed a mouthful of coffee all over my keyboard. The Gaza Strip is over six times larger than Khalidi’s “ten or eleven miles by two.” Not an order-of-magnitude mistake, but approaching one. Khalidi’s estimate would make Gaza four times more densely populated than Singapore (in fact, population density in Gaza is somewhere over half of Singapore’s). Did Khalidi think that was possible? I wondered. Perhaps it was a mere slip. But then, eight minutes and forty seconds into the interview, came this: Israel was using battlefield weapons “in the most heavily populated area on earth.”
No, not him too! Too many of my idols have been toppled! Juan Cole, who thought that Israel’s Jenin operation (April 2002) had provoked 9/11 (September 2001)… Joel Beinin, who insisted that $100 billion in total aid to Israel make a trillion… Sara Roy, who wrote that the average Gazan consumes half a ton of flour a day… So many champions of Palestine have been martyred by math and chronology! But Rashid Khalidi had been my rock—ever-reliable, academically impeccable.
Do I expect too much? “You can’t swing a cat in Gaza,” Rashid added. “You can’t throw a stone without hitting somebody.” I imagine this isn’t literally true. And if we allow this license for words, why not for numbers?
Why not?
Indeed, why not? Because, like Pallywood, it’s just one more coffin nail in the civil society based on any basis in reality. If Obama thinks that a man as intellectually dishonest as Khalidi can help him identify a blindspot, then he’s exchanging an area of ignorance for a toxic narrative. To paraphrase Twain, “If you don’t listen to Palestinian sources, you uninformed; if you listen to them you’re disinformed.” As the perils of post-modernism.
Read the rest of the blogpost and register you’re estimates of comparative population density.
And for something even funnier (academics’ sense of humor, even when they have one, can be pretty dry), try this from the global conspiracist, Elder of Zion (HT/Caecilia):
There are so many tropes being used I don’t know that I’d have subtitled this “the” trope of the war; otherwise a fitting riposte to Khalidi. If anything, over-kind.
That Obama thinks well of Khalidi and likewise thought well of Said and others in the “Orientalist” mold is a source of truly great exasperation. It’s certainly a sure indicator, an absolutely sure indicator, that Obama is all too ready to surf the zeitgeist and triangulate, rather than think and act in a more clear headed fashion when the costs and stakes warrant it.
Elder of Ziyon has an amusing video on this topic: ‘How crowded is Gaza’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2HQpzCGf0A&feature=channel_page
It was rather easy to verify the population density of the Gaza Strip, Singapore, and Hong Kong by crunching the numbers at the CIA World Factbook. Using the numbers provided there, I come up with the following people per square kilometer values:
Gaza Strip: 4167
Singapore: 6750
Hong Kong: 6736
I was surprise to see that Singapore edged out Hong Kong. I would have supposed HK was the denser populated.
then he’s exchanging an area of ignorance for a toxic narrative.
but that’s exactly the risk of ignorance. and that is precisely what obama brings to the presidency: ignorance. that is why he’s dangerous: because those around him can fill his head with all sorts of nonsense that he is incapable to discern.
Another thing not reported, is that besides the tunnel/border stuff, the battle is only in Gaza City.
Perhaps the clans in the other areas of Gaza decided to sit this one out.
Glad you enjoyed it Mr. Landes: Elder has more.
And thank you for sharing your theories, which I find very interesting and challenging indeed.
Respectfully,
Caecilia
If you want to see the complete picture go to the Gaza Strip Google Satellite Map:
http://www.maplandia.com/gaza-strip/
Center the map on Gaza City and zoom in to the highest magnification that the map supports. Even in this population center there are parks where miltary bases could have been placed.
Now drag the map to just outside Gaza City. Huge stretches of farmland or brush that are all empty. No buildings at all.
It’s a canard that the Hamas terrorists have to hide behind children because there is no space for military bases.
Gordon,
It is also a canard that Gaza is densely populated.
Hamas hides behind women and children, not because it needs to but because it hopes that the human shields will deter the Juice from hitting back.
Not just content with using UNWRA and schools they went and used BBC and Reuters office building as a shield as well.
[...] given how often the media told us that Gaza was the most densely-concentrated population in the world, and that an aerial attack could not help but cause great collateral damage to the civilians, we [...]
I stumbled on this entry in June of 2010. The Gaza Strip is the 6th most densely populated country in the world.