{"id":25421,"date":"2015-07-08T06:40:56","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T14:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25421"},"modified":"2015-07-08T06:40:56","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T14:40:56","slug":"the-gaza-strip-its-just-that-dystopian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/08\/the-gaza-strip-its-just-that-dystopian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gaza Strip: \u201cIt\u2019s just that dystopian\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Blumenthal tells Glenn Greenwald:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for all I knew about the Israel-Palestine crisis, I was not prepared to come in to such intimate contact with so much human destruction. And to really come to grips with the fact that the Gaza Strip is an open-air prison, and it\u2019s not hyperbolic to say so. We\u2019re not just saying this for rhetorical effect.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In order to enter Gaza, you pass through the Erez terminal with your government press office credential, which means you\u2019re one of very few people who can get in or get out. And you wander down a long corridor, which is a cage, and then you arrive at a metal door at a concrete wall. The metal door opens, it shuts behind you, and you\u2019re inside what is effectively a walled-off ghetto.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You look down this endless wall, to your right, and you see a remote-controlled machine gun perched on the wall. That\u2019s the spot and strike system, which is operated by an all-female unit of Israeli soldiers in the Negev Desert, tens of kilometers away, by remote. And what they do is, they watch the buffer zone?\u2014?this 300-kilometer area that Palestinians are forbidden from entering inside the Gaza Strip. And anyone who enters who they determine to be a \u201cterrorist,\u201d they eliminate with the push of a joystick button from a remote-controlled machine gun. It\u2019s just that dystopian.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n