Fisking @Oxfam: How important is the Palestinian olive harvest to its economy, and how much damage do "settlers" cause?

Oxfam put out this infographic:

Is the olive harvest season essential to the Palestinian economy?

Let's look at some of the statistics.

How important is agriculture to the Palestinian economy? 

In 2016, agriculture contributed 3.16% of the Palestinian GDP. Which means that the olive harvest contributes less than one percent of the Palestinian economy.

If Oxfam cares about the Palestinian economy so much, they should be insisting that the PA stops paying terrorists and their families - an amount that is more than double the total olive oil revenue!

Let's do the math. 

This means that each family's income from olive harvest is on $1480 a year. 

The average Palestinian income for one worker is over $20,000 a year. 

Which means that these 100,000 families are either starving or they make most of their money doing other jobs, and the olive harvest is a sideline that they only work on a small amount of the year. (In most cases, the husband has a regular job and the wife will spend a few weeks a year on the olive harvest to supplement their main income.) 

At any rate, olive oil isn't the critical economic powerhouse that Oxfam pretends.

Now, what about the supposed huge number of vandalized trees by "settlers?" Oxfam claims 1475 trees damaged this year. 

There are about 8 million fruit bearing olive trees in the territories. If 1475 of them were destroyed completely, that would come out to total damage worth of about $27,000. 

The research and design for this poster probably cost Oxfam more than $27,000!

If you look at the categories of damage listed, you can see that most of the alleged damages still would allow harvesting of some olives, so the real damage is even less. The number of fruit bearing trees cut down completely is probably zero, since olive trees are extraordinarily difficult to cut down or uproot.

And Oxfam is relying on lies to even come up with these figures. In tiny, tiny type, it says - absurdly:

No, Oxfam, the actual incidents are definitely lower. The Palestinian Authority deliberately lies about the attacks by settlers - for example, often claiming that religious Jewish settlers are cutting down olive trees on Shabbat, or showing photos of obviously pruned olive trees and pretending that they were cut down by Jews. 

The number 1475 is highly exaggerated, which means that the total damage from "settlers" is minuscule compared to the total yield.

And one more thing: even with all the terrible Israeli restrictions and settler violence alleged, somehow the olive crop last year broke all records. 

This poster is a perfect example of lying with facts. Oxfam doesn't say anything that is not truthful here, but it gives an impression of widespread, massive damage to the Palestinian economy by "settlers" and Israel that is completely false.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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