Who is holding Gazans hostage: Israel, Egypt -- or Hamas?

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip nine years ago. The world was ready to shower Gaza with help. In fact, Jewish American donors provided $14 million to buy the greenhouses Israeli had built in Gaza to shared with the Palestinians.

"The agricultural techniques Israelis developed could have made Gaza the Palestinian Riviera," wrote Gil Troy in The Toronto Star. "Had this experiment in Gaza nation-building succeeded, it could have encouraged a peaceful transition toward an independent West Bank state.

"Instead, claiming that not one inch of Palestinian land is free until all of it is freed, which means destroying Israel within pre-1948 borders, blinded by the totalitarian, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist Islamist ideology articulated in Hamas’s charter and celebrated in mainstream Palestinian political culture and street culture, Palestinian extremists trashed the greenhouses within hours of receiving them. By 2007 Gaza had degenerated into Hamasistan, an Islamist thugocracy."

Somehow Hamas succeeded in convincing Palestinians that Hamas is in fact menacing its neighbors because Gaza remains “occupied,” rather than laying the blame on Hamas failures.

Today, headlines constantly focus on the death toll in Gaza, as if this is the sole parameter of the war, as journalists fail to report the extent to which Hamas sacrifices its own people to inflame world opinion. Sent halfway around the world, in many cases, they largely fail to provide in depth reporting, investigating the events leading up to various tragedies they see on the street.

They do a good job of finding images of blood and gore and destruction, and interview victims about their personal tragedies. But you rarely hear a reporter ask Gazans to what extent they hold Hamas responsible for their plight.