In an interview with Don Imus, Ron Paul calls for the US to abandon Israel, calls Gaza a “concentration camp,” and recites a litany of anti-Israel talking points, including the canard that Israel is starving the people of Gaza.

One of the biggest influences on the modern Republican Party sounds just as loony as the most radical leftist writing for Counterpunch. Loonier.

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Some facts for Congressman Paul: Gaza may be a broken society mired in poverty, but nobody is starving to death in Gaza. And even the Washington Post, hardly a pro-Israel propaganda outlet, acknowledges this: In Gaza, a complex, dysfunctional way of life.

Once an exporter of fruits and other goods, Gaza has been turned into a mini-welfare state with a broken economy where food and daily goods are plentiful, but where 80 percent of the population depends on charity. Hospitals, schools, electricity systems and sewage treatment facilities are all in deep disrepair.

Yet if you walk down Gaza City’s main thoroughfare — Salah al-Din Street — grocery stores are stocked wall-to-wall with everything from fresh Israeli yogurts and hummus to Cocoa Puffs smuggled in from Egypt. Pharmacies look as well-supplied as a typical Rite Aid in the United States.