What's In a Smuggling Tunnel?

"An Egyptian Border Town's Commerce, Conducted via Tunnels, Comes to a Halt"
A12, Thursday 1/01/09
By Steven Erlanger

The issue of Rafah's smuggling tunnels is given some due attention here. Potato chips and cigarettes are popular consumer goods shipped to Gazan Rafah from Egyptian Rafah through these tunnels. "Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives."

An important point follows when a Rafah resident "said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing."

Erlanger airs a blatant lie when he quotes a man saying "people dig the tunnels out of hunger." Yet there's an implicit skepticism in Erlanger’s "he insisted". The man "then warned, 'when you don’t feed animals, they get angry and they bite you!" Sure.

Later on, more contrived talking points are aired when Erlanger says Gazans have "little patience for the Israeli argument that Hamas is an existential threat to the state or much of a threat to its citizens. 'Hamas has no planes,' Muhammad Ahmed said. 'What is a Hamas rocket compared to an Israeli bomb?'"

Hopefully this quote as well exposes either a deep lack of understanding or a steadfast commitment to propaganda.