Chuck Schumer owns the whole strategy of punishing Gazans for voting for Hamas:
“The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re gonna get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go makes sense. “
I think it's useful to have this on the table. The U.S. supports democracy in the Middle East, but if it leads to the wrong results, then the voters need to have their lives made as miserable as possible, short of starvation. Greenwald vents:
That's Chuck Schumer: suffocate Gazans; champion Bush national security appointees; punish those with insufficient devotion to Israel; serve Wall Street. And that, by definition, is the mainstream of the Democratic Party.