Flour power

Is it too much to ask to do basic fact-checking before reporting on emotionally charged issues like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Apparently so.

The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." ...The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:

Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.

You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.

Without a doubt, plenty of average Palestinians suffer today, caught in the crossfire between Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas. Just like Israelis who simply want to live and let live. But between regular rocket and suicide bomb attacks by Palestinians, and collective punishment responses by the Israeli government, things there have long since reached the Dave Mason stage ("There ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys. There's only you and me and we just disagree.") With emotions hot enough already, it's ridiculous the Fourth Estate is willing to abet throwing more gasoline with such sloppy reporting. It's almost as if they want to be used for cheap propaganda...