http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6034520/the-worlds-first-gourmet-starvation-experience.thtml

The world’s first gourmet starvation experience

As the latest absurd flotilla of fools – eight boats carrying no fewer than 700-800 activists — stages another confrontation with Israel to draw the world’s attention to the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza, Tom Gross writes a timely piece pointing out that Gaza’s shops and markets are full. In a piece of particularly happy serendipity, Gaza’s first Olympic standard swimming pool was inaugurated yesterday.  But as Gross writes, the western media dutifully pump out the party line that Gaza is starving:

What they won’t tell you about are the fancy new restaurants and swimming pools of Gaza, or about the wind surfing competitions on Gaza beaches, or the Strip’s crowded shops and markets. Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live a middle class (and in some cases an upper class) lifestyle that western journalists refuse to report on because it doesn’t fit with the simplistic story they were sent to write.

… If you pop into the Roots Club in Gaza, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, you can ‘dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu’. The restaurant’s website in Arabic gives a window into middle class dining and the lifestyle of Hamas officials in Gaza. And here it is in English, for all the journalists, UN types and NGO staff who regularly frequent this and other nice Gaza restaurants (but don’t tell their readers about them).

And here is a promotional video of the club restaurant. In case anyone doubts the authenticity of this video, I just called the club in Gaza City and had a nice chat with the manager who proudly confirmed business is booming and many Palestinians and international guests are dining there.

But according to Greta Berlin, of the Free Gaza Movement, the flotilla intends to

break the blockade of the Gaza Strip and tell the world that Israel has no right to starve 1.5 million Palestinians.

Surely the world’s first gourmet starvation experience?