What I take exception to is a meaningless obesity chart. Perhaps we can find something more factual and verifiable?
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.
'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now' - Middle East, World - The Independent
For the past year and a half, Israel, with the full backing and encouragement of the quartet of Middle East mediators (the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and Russia), as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even the West Bank-based PLO, has maintained an economic blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Generally it has allowed into Gaza only the equivalent of the UN minimum number of calories required daily for subsistence, multiplied by the 1.5 million or so population of the Gaza Strip, along with minimal medical supplies and fuel.
This economic-warfare strategy against Gaza has failed totally; indeed, it has proven counterproductive. Now is the right time for all involved to reconsider its usefulness and thereby raise a major contribution to long-term cease-fire efforts.
The purpose of Israel's economic blockade was to persuade Gazans, by reducing their lives to subsistence level, to somehow depose Hamas and join the peace process with Israel. It was paralleled by a program of accelerated economic investment in the West Bank, spearheaded by the quartet's emissary, Tony Blair, which was intended to persuade West Bankers of the benefits of peace. Sticks for Gazans, carrots for the West Bank.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15iht-edalpher.1.19391487.html
Now, we can play the routine semantics games, or listen to exactly what Stewart said and meant. Palestinians are suffering. And Krauthammer's flippant comment does not accurately reflect the conditions in Palestine, and Stewart was right to call him on it.