Gaza Needs a George Orwell Now
Israel is barring independent journalists from Gaza, but The New York Times, relying on Palestinian correspondents there, reports that “Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.”
The Times account of how cruelly both sides are fighting underscores how badly we need reporting like George Orwell’s from the bloody Spanish Civil War in 1936. Orwell joined and fought for the democratic left against the fascist Franco, but he quickly found something his leftist readers didn’t want to know: Franco wasn’t the only evil enemy of freedom in Spain.
If a new Orwell informs us that Israel, although it’s hideously cruel and wrong, isn’t the only evil enemy of freedom in Gaza, will anyone want to know?
Leave a Reply