Will the Western media show these images?
All notes below by Tom Gross

Please scroll down below for photos of the new shopping mall that opened today in Gaza. I have also attached new photos and film of Gaza’s hotels, beauty spas, swimming pools, beaches and street markets -- images the BBC, New York Times and others refuse to show you.

Meanwhile, Hamas are deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents, in order to fool gullible Western journalists and politicians who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged “humanitarian crisis.”

(Photo of a new mall that opened today, July 17, 2010. If there “are no building materials allowed into Gaza” how did they build this shopping center, or the new Olympic-size swimming pool pictured below?)

Two days ago the EU pledged tens of millions of EU taxpayers’ euros to add to the hundreds of millions already donated to Gaza this year, much of which has been misused to procure arms.

UPDATE, Sunday July 18, 2010:

Some journalists who subscribe to this list have asked me for a quote. You are welcome to use the following.

Political and media commentator Tom Gross said:

“On a day when (because EU Foreign Policy Chief Baroness Ashton is in Gaza) the BBC and other media have featured extensive reports all day long on what they term the dire economic situation in Gaza, why are they not mentioning the new shopping mall that opened there yesterday?

“When leading news outlets mention the so-called humanitarian flotillas from Turkey, why do they omit the fact that life expectancy and literacy rates are higher, and infant mortality rates are lower in Gaza than corresponding rates in Turkey? Have they considered that perhaps the humanitarian flotillas ought to be going in the other direction, towards Turkey?”

WHAT HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE?

Last year, this website revealed to a Western audience pictures of the bustling, crowded food markets of Gaza that the Western media refuse to show you. Earlier this year, I reported the new Olympic-size swimming pool of Gaza (no shortage of building materials or water here) and the luxury restaurants, where you can “dine on steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu”. (Over 300,000 people have viewed photos on that webpage since May, according to my website monitor.)

Now I want to draw attention to the fact that this morning, on the day that the EU again criticized Israel (but not Egypt) for supposedly oppressing Gazans, on a day when the BBC TV world news headlines again lead with a report about how “devastated the economy in Gaza is,” an impressive new shopping mall opened in Gaza (photos below, followed by a selection of other photos from Gaza).

Will those Western journalists who write stories about “starvation” in Gaza and compare it to a “concentration camp” report this?

Instead of reporting on the mall opening, the British-based international satellite broadcaster Sky News reported today “The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire.”

NEW GAZA SHOPPING MALL

Photos from Saturday, July 17, 2010:

More photos here.

Here is a news report in Arabic on the opening of the mall from today’s Palestine Times. (Click on each of these thumbnails to view the full photos.)

This is the official website of the Gaza mall. (UPDATE July 22, 2010: Warning note: Some browsers have reported that there may be a virus attached to the Gaza Mall site if you open it, but many others, including mine, have not found this to be the case. In any event, so many people have been directed to the Gaza mall website -- www.gazamall.ps -- from this website that the mall’s website’s bandwidth has been exceeded so currently you will be unable to access the site in any case if you open it. I have posted a screenshot below, translated from Arabic.)

UPDATE, July 20, 2010

More pictures of the mall here, here, and here from The Palestine Times.

And this video of the mall has today gone up on YouTube. (The captions that have been added to this video are not mine, nor do I approve of all of them.)

The mall is being widely featured in media throughout the Arab world, for example here (courtesy of AP), but why the continuing silence from Western media who subscribe to AP and who continue to cover “the situation in Gaza” day after day without mentioning the economic progress there?

The mall includes a supermarket, international clothing stores, a food court, beauty products, a children’s playground, a restaurant, and much-needed air conditioning. The mall is not only for Gaza’s elite. Tens of thousands of shoppers from Rafah to Beit Hanoun have already visited the site within a matter of days, according to Palestinian press reports.

“There are international firms such as Adidas and Lacoste and Paris’ top selling perfumes,” said the head of the mall’s board of directors, Salah a-Din Abu Abdo. “Nevertheless, the local traders and businessmen are those running the business. I hope that in the future we’ll get merchandise from other foreign chains wanting to open branches here.”