Another tale of Israel refusing medical care for the Gazan people

Published on 9 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Israeli human rights group Gisha released this statement today:

Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel appealed to the High Court of Justice on behalf of Issam Hamdan against a District Court ruling blocking his exit from Gaza for emergency medical treatment.

·        The State refuses to allow him out of Gaza based on its claim that he may settle in the West Bank after treatment.
·        Mr. Hamdan requires immediate surgical intervention; suffers from severe pain and paralysis of his left side.
·        Israel will bear no cost for the treatment, to be performed in a Palestinian hospital in east Jerusalem, and admits that it makes no security claim against Mr. Hamdan.
·        Mr. Hamdan’s case is part of a new trend in which Israel blocks treatment for Gaza patients, even in the absence of a security claim.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010– Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement and Physicians For Human Rights-Israel filed an appeal today (February 9, 2010) in the Supreme Court on behalf of Issam Hamdan against a District Court ruling declining to intervene in a decision by the Israeli military to prevent him from exiting the Gaza Strip in order to receive emergency medical treatment.
Mr. Hamdan, a 40-year-old resident of Gaza, has been suffering for two years from severe back pain due to a protruding disk in the vertebra of his neck, which has caused the almost total paralysis of the left side of his body. Recently, the paralysis has begun to spread to his right side.Due to his deteriorating medical condition and the unavailability of appropriate treatment within the Gaza healthcare system, he was referred five months ago for emergency neurosurgery at a Palestinian hospital in east Jerusalem. The referral was supported by an Israeli specialist in orthopedic surgery from ShebaHospital in Tel Hashomer, who determined that without immediate surgical intervention, Mr. Hamdan is likely to sustain permanent damage.
For months, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) claimed that its refusal to issue a permit was due to the availability of the necessary medical treatment within the Gaza Strip – even though Palestinian and Israeli doctors determined that the treatment was not available there.Indeed, after Gisha’s Adv. Tamar Feldman filed a petition on Mr. Hamdan’s behalf to the Beersheva District Court, COGAT admitted that the treatment is not available in Gaza but instead justified its refusal with a stated concern that Mr. Hamdan would decide to settle in the West Bank after receiving medical treatment.
Mr. Hamdan has children and family in both Gaza and the West Bank. He has committed to return to Gaza, where he lives with his parents and his oldest daughter, of whom he has sole custody, after completion of treatment.He is also willing to commit to refrain from entering the West Bank, where his wife and four of his children live.
Judge Rachel Barkai, who presided over the case in the District Court, conceded that, “There is no dispute that at this time the petitioner needs surgical intervention unavailable in a Gaza hospital.” However, despite this and the fact that the State did not provide any evidence in support of its claim, Judge Barkai denied the petition anyway, writing that:“In balancing the values on both sides of the scales – on one hand, the need for medical treatment, and on the other hand, the concern that he will take advantage of his entry permit in order to relocate, the respondents’ refusal to permit the petitioner’s entry to the territory of the State of Israel does not justify judicial intervention.”
Judge Barkai also ruled that Israel bears no duty to concern itself with the welfare and healthcare of residents of the Gaza Strip.That determination contradicts the judgments of the Israeli Supreme Court,which expressly stated that Israel bears humanitarian obligations towards the residents of the Gaza Strip stemming from the law of combat, the control that Israel exercises over Gaza’s crossings, and the Gaza Strip’s dependence on Israel resulting from the long years of Israeli occupation in Gaza. The position of Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is that Israel also owes obligations to Gaza residents under the law of occupation.
“In light of the absence of any security claim whatsoever against approving the request, it is not clear to the appellant why the respondents refused his request and why the lower court rejected his petition, preventing him from receiving urgent and vital medical treatment,” Gisha’s Adv. Tamar Feldman wrote in the appeal. “The extended proceedings in the appellant’s case are prolonging his suffering and frustrating his chances of treating his serious ailment.”
Physicians for Human Rights–Israel is aware of two other cases of patients who, like Mr. Hamdan, have recently been refused permission by Israel to leave Gaza in order to receive medical treatment based on the claim that they may settle in the West Bank.This is a new phenomenon that reflects an escalation in Israeli policy toward residents of Gaza who require medical treatment.The policy violates the basic rights of patients to receive medical care, including in emergency cases, putting political considerations ahead of Israel’s duty to safeguard the health of residents of Gaza.

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The lunacy of American politics part 9721

Published on 9 February 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The “birther” movement in the US – those nutters who question Barack Obama’s legitimacy to be American President – has its roots in the so-called Left; a bunch of Hillary Clinton backers.

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Online technology isn’t the answer for Israel (hint: ending the occupation is)

Published on 9 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Is Twitter the answer?

A serious question asked in an article about how to improve Israel’s global image.

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Colombo shuns being welcomed into the civilised world

Published on 9 February 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Sri Lanka is experiencing a very public descent into further instability.

Today we receive news that the recent opposition presidential candidate, Sareth Fonseka, has been arrested for allegedly planning a military coup.

But the real reason may be this (via the Guardian):

Hours before his arrest, Fonseka, who himself has been accused of a range of human rights abuses during the fighting against the Tamil Tigers last year, had said he was prepared to give evidence at international tribunals investigating the 25-year-long civil war. “I am definitely going to reveal what I know, what I was told and what I heard. Anyone who has committed war crimes should be brought into the courts,” the BBC reported him as saying.

To make matters worse, the disenfranchised Tamils remain isolated and ignored by the leading political elites:

Jaffna is a city of ruins. Some are physical, like the overgrown jumbles of mold-streaked concrete where graceful buildings used to stand. But perhaps the biggest ruin of the Tamil Tiger insurgency against the Sri Lankan government is the very thing the Tigers wanted most: any hope of self-rule.

After 26 years of war that ended with a decisive government assault last May, Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority seems no closer to winning a measure of autonomy in a Sinhalese-dominated nation, and Tamil nationalism, the cri de coeur of the Tamil Tiger insurgency, seems all but dead.

“All of this armed struggle, so many dead and wounded, for what?” said P. Balasundarampillai, who leads the Citizen Committee in this city on the claw-shaped peninsula of the northern Tamil heartland. “In many spheres of public life our role is very much reduced. Economically we are weak, and politically we are weak.”

Perhaps most interesting is last weekend’s Sri Lanka’s Sunday Leader editorial, expressing typical bravery, passion and despair over the country’s direction:

Today paupers become politicians to become millionaires and billionaires. Post independence was a time that the little island of Ceylon was a respected citizen of the world, holding its own against the mightiest of nations. J.R. Jayewardene put the country firmly on the world map by eloquently arguing the case of pleading mercy for Japan at the United Nations.

The world nodding its assent to the stance taken by Ceylon at this historic meeting, was an indicator of the high regard the world had for little Ceylon. We were the toast of Japan and the civilised world. Nations were to describe Ceylon as the conscience of the world. What a great decline then, when 62 years later we are reduced to the status of a pariah state with the very same nations calling for probes on human rights violations on our own people and the lack of space for free expression. Yet we organise grandiose ceremonies at huge cost to the emaciated taxpayers to celebrate ‘independence’ as was the case in Kandy last week.

With all the infrastructure at our disposal post independence, when much of the world was in ruin, what did we Sri Lankans do to benefit our fellow human beings?

Did we, like Japan or the West, create anything for the benefit of mankind? After sixty-two years of independence what is our greatest boast when it comes to industry? It is the supply of undies for the West. We have never been able to attract more than half a million tourists to this country even at the best of times. For much of our post-independence survival we have depended on the British created plantations.

Japan, when Sri Lanka was pleading its case in the early fifties, was for all intents and purposes a wasteland, having been bombed to nothing, with two nuclear atom bombs leaving Hiroshima and Nagasaki frightening ghost towns that could not be inhabited for years.

This was also a time that none of the modern day gadgets that we are so accustomed to today had even been thought of. Man had yet to venture into space. It is fascinating to note that all the technology around us today was created post Sri Lanka’s independence and Sri Lanka’s contribution to this has been nil.

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Likud warns against expanding settlements while supporting a regime that backs expanding settlements

Published on 9 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Likud Minister Michael Eitan tells his settler brothers and sisters that Greater Israel is never going to happen (ignoring the fact that his government is currently working towards the time when it’s impossible to reverse the settlements; arguably, that’s already happened):

You can’t deceive all the time and speak about Greater Israel. It’s a dream that will not be able to be fulfilled. The vast majority is willing to make significant concessions for peace. Everyone wants an agreement. I tried to stop smoking 100 times, and I didn’t succeed. On the 101st try, I succeeded. We have to try again and again and again until we reach an agreement, but without conceding security or the crucial interests of the State of Israel. We have to choose between a state with a Jewish majority and a state with an Arab majority. I doubt whether we will have a Jewish majority in the state by 2020.

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The Daily Show is selective about Middle East outrage

Published on 9 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Jon Stewart covers anti-Semitic Hamas cartoons and worries about the kid’s education in Gaza. Fair enough, but can you even imagine the same show looking into US-backed, settler material that routinely demonises Arabs? Of course not:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Story Hole – Children’s Cartoons From Hamas
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis

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Sarah Palin’s violent vision of America’s future (and yes, Israel is involved)

Published on 9 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Following the recent call by Daniel Pipes that Barack Obama should bomb Iran to save his presidency, the Jewish writer finds a charming ally:

CHRIS WALLACE [FOX NEWS]: How hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

SARAH PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played—and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day – say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really [to] come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do, but – that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today I do not think Obama would be re-elected. But three years from now, things could change if—on the national security front …

WALLACE: But you’re not suggesting that he would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change. If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would, perhaps, shift their thinking a little bit and decide, “Well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he’s—than he is today,” and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.

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Obama will resolve marriage problems and global issues

Published on 9 February 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

“Serious” journalism at Politico:

At times, having Obama in the Oval Office is like having a really powerful Dr. Phil around.

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The New York Times and its Zionist blind spot

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The issue of New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, and the now confirmed state of his son in the IDF, is causing waves across the web.

The paper’s Public Editor comments:

There are so many considerations swirling around this case: Bronner is a superb reporter. Nobody at The Times wants to give in to what they see as relentlessly unfair criticism of the paper’s Middle East coverage by people hostile to objective reporting. It doesn’t seem fair to hold a father accountable for the decision of an adult son.

But, stepping back, this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side. Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.

I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong. But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.

The paper’s editor, Bill Keller, has a different take and it’s odd (he doesn’t see the need for Bronner to excuse himself from reporting on Israeli-led wars while his son possibly fights in those wars):

Readers, like reporters, bring their own lives to the newspaper. Sometimes, when these readers are unshakeably convinced of something, they bring blinding prejudice and a tendency to see what they want to see. As you well know, nowhere is that so true as in Israel and the neighboring Palestinian lands. If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary. So to prevent any appearance of bias, would you say we should not send Jewish reporters to Israel? If so, what about assigning Jewish reporters to countries hostile to Israel? What about reporters married to Jews? Married to Israelis? Married to Arabs? Married to evangelical Christians? (They also have some strong views on the Holy Land.) What about reporters who have close friends in Israel? Ethical judgments that start from prejudice lead pretty quickly to absurdity, and pandering to zealots means cheating readers who genuinely seek to be informed.

This line from Keller to the Public Editor reveals the problem:

Keller said that if Israel launched a new assault into Gaza and Bronner’s son were a foot soldier, “I don’t think I’d have any problem with Ethan covering the conflict.” It would be a tougher call if the son rose to a commanding role, he said, and if the son’s unit were accused of wrongdoing, Keller said he thought he would assign another reporter.

As Richard Silverstein notes, this ignores a key concern:

Israel conducts yet another war on Gaza in which Bronner’s son serves & the former can still remain objective and unconflicted?  The only eventuality that would cause Bronner to substitute another reporter (but not rotate Bronner out of Israel) would be an accusation of war crimes against the son’s unit and then only if the son were an officer?  And I’ve got news for Keller: the last Gaza war involved virtually all Israeli units engaging in savage acts that Goldstone has characterized as possible war crimes.  What the Times’ senior editor does not understand about Israel and its military strategy is that it has become all-out war against military and civilian targets.  And this is a global doctrine for the entire army.  It’s not a question of a rogue unit here or there.

Bronner’s friend Bernard Avishai is offended even by the concept of moving Bronner to another round:

If Bronner had been found to be ignoring compelling questions, or cooking the evidence in some sly way, you would have the right to explore his state of mind: whether some pay-off or family loyalty explains his lapses. But what if there are no obvious lapses? Why go ad hominem when there is no rationale for this? The sophomoric revelation that “we all have biases”–worse, that biases come from determined psychological states, explicable by families, or class, or tribe, etc.–is not enough to discredit arguments or the person who makes them. One son of a factory owner turns out Richard Arkwright; another turns out Fredrick Engels. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but transferring Bronner from Jerusalem for his son’s decisions borrows from the same grotesque epistemology with which people were transferred to the Gulag for their son’s decisions.

The message from Mondoweiss is clear: The ‘Times’ now owes it to its readers to assign an Arab-American reporter to Jerusalem

Personally speaking, the issue here isn’t so much Bronner or his ethics (though they aren’t irrelevant.) It’s the kind of focus the Times gives to the Israeli/Zionist perspective. Where are the anti-Zionist Jewish journalists? Would they even be considered? Of course not. Or the Palestinian writers? I remember asking Bronner directly in Israel last year why the paper didn’t employ more Palestinian journalists. He said they did and they would. Well, they aren’t bureau chiefs like Bronner. And we all know why.

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Palin shows her love for two key countries

Published on 8 February 2010 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: .

During the weekend’s Tea Party convention in the US, the Washington Post reported the following:

Sarah Palin had on three opera-length strands of pearls, two white and one multi-colored.  [O]n her lapel, a small pin with two flags – for Israel and the United States.

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Israeli madmen scream “Hitler was right”

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Sometimes even I’m shocked by the hatred shown by some Jews towards other Jews who dare protest or question the state of Israel.

Here’s a video from late December (via Richard Silverstein) that shows Jews (seemingly non-religious ones, too) shouting to protestors in East Jerusalem that “Hilter was right”:

Words fail me:

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How Israel is moving from a “democratic to fascist society”

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Israeli Didi Remez writes at his essential blog Coteret:

Sima Kadmon is senior political commentator at Yediot, second in stature only to Nahum Barnea. She devotes much of her Friday (February 5 2010) column to a methodical deconstruction of the motivation and methodology behind the Im Tirzu anti-NIF smear campaign. Kadmon adds domestic depth to Nahum Barnea’s exposé of the role mainstream Jewish-American leaders played in putting the brakes on the Knesset’s participation in the campaign.

Note how the column concludes with a quote from Meretz Chairman MK Chaim (Jumes) Oron, who was the first politician from the Israeli left to take a public stand on this issue:

“The transition from a democratic to a fascist society does not happen in a single move, Oron said upon emerging from the plenum hall.  It is done in several steps – some of which may go unnoticed, some of which we may share, and others may be initiated or not opposed by the government.  In the end, the society finds itself in a totally different place, and then everyone starts asking how it happened.

“I have a feeling, he said, that we are already on this slippery slope, and even more so over the past few weeks.  The powers that can stop this process have weakened.  This is a very critical moment, he said.  I hope it would make those who weep over the left’s defeat shake off their mourning mood and realize this is war.  This is a struggle for the future and shape of this country.”

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What happens in the Middle East

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East spread the message virally:

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The Hague may soon be seeing some Israeli leaders

Published on 8 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Trouble ahead for the Jewish state:

The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York said on Saturday.

A decision to bring the report on last year’s Gaza war before the court would follow a debate in the UN General Assembly over Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s response to the document last week.

Assembly president Ali Abdussalam Treki announced on Saturday that member states were drawing up a plan of action over Ban’s answer to the report, in which retired South African Judge Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.

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Anti-Semitism isn’t simply a weapon to silence Israel’s critics

Published on 7 February 2010 in Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , .

The issue of modern anti-Semitism – how common is it, what does it really mean and is it used to shield Israel from legitimate criticism – is a worthy subject of discussion.

Here’s Anne Karpf in the Independent arguing that society (and Jews especially) should be careful before throwing the term around:

Is the closed season on Jews over? Are English Jews facing rising levels of violence and abuse? Anthony Julius certainly thinks so. The lawyer, best known for representing the late Diana, Princess of Wales in her divorce, but also the author of a book on T S Eliot and anti-Semitism, has written a capacious history of anti-Semitism in England, Trials of the Diaspora, out next week. In it he expresses his “provisional judgement” that the situation facing Anglo-Jewry “is quite bad, and might get worse”.

Coincidentally, the report on anti-semitic incidents in 2009 by the Community Security Trust (CST), was published last week. At first view, it makes alarming reading, and seems to confirm Julius’s worst fears. CST recorded 924 anti-Semitic incidents in 2009, the highest annual total since it began recording such incidents in 1984, and – after two years of falling numbers – an increase of 69 per cent from 2008.

But peer closely and the picture is more complicated. The main reason for the surge, CST noted, was the unprecedented number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in January and February 2009, during and after the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Of course, this is no reason to rejoice: if someone is trying to thump you, the fact that they’re screaming that it’s revenge for what Israel is doing in Gaza isn’t going to make you feel a whole lot better. It didn’t help that during Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon, the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “I believe that this is a war that is fought by all the Jews.” If the Israeli government (wrongly) elides Israel with all Jews, it’s hardly surprising if anti-Semites do too.

…

We should never be complacent about anti-Semitism, but neither should we allow some Jews to exaggerate it, regard it as inevitable, use it to try and delegitimise criticism of Israel or see it as an altogether different kind of animal from other more socially accepted kinds of racism such as Islamophobia. Those who hate are rarely so discriminating.

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Israel as a “fascist state under the cover of Zionism”

Published on 7 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

How can we truly know what happened in the Gaza Strip without Breaking the Silence, and how can we know what is happening in the West Bank every day without B’Tselem? But Im Tirtzu doesn’t want us to know; it wants to cover our shame. That, to it, is patriotism, but in reality that is treason. How familiar the remarks sounded this weekend by Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadiq Amoli Larijani, calling for fighting human rights organizations in his country because they “confuse human rights with law and order.” Im Tirtzu and Maariv couldn’t have said it better.

If you will it, Naomi Chazan with the horn on her forehead is the beautiful face of Israel, infinitely more beautiful than Im Tirtzu, which tries to put horns on us all, the horns of a fascist state under the cover of Zionism.

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Israel can act how it wants during war, writes Zionist elite

Published on 7 February 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Giora Eiland, former chairman of Israel’s National Security Council, writes in Ynet that international law is “irrelevant” when the Jewish state behaves in Gaza.

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Dershowitz on Goldstone

Published on 7 February 2010 in Israel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Alan Dershowitz has concocted a response to the Goldstone Report over Gaza.

The Magnes Zionist blog dissects it and reaches a depressing conclusion; the Harvard Law Professor is incapable of finding any fault with Israeli actions.

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Washington sets its eyes on taking Iraq forever

Published on 6 February 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , .

If you believed that America was permanently removing itself from controlling Iraq, think again:

The State Department plans major increases in its Iraq mission, with hundreds more employees there and a stepped-up diplomatic presence outside Baghdad as the U.S. military prepares to leave later this year.

A new fiscal 2010 supplemental request asks for $2.1 billion for use in Iraq, the bulk going to set up two permanent consulates and three temporary “Provincial Development Teams.” The funding will enable another 129 State Department positions in Iraq, bringing the total to 664 by the end of this fiscal year. One consulate will be in Basra, one in northern Iraq. The PDTs will be along the Arab-Kurb fault line near Kirkuk, Ninewa, and Diyala, and $735 million in the supplemental request is designated for the security needed to protect civilians in the new outposts. The new presence around Iraq is described in the budget request as crucial “to mitigate ethno-sectarian conflict, to minimize the risk of instability, and to seize strategic policy opportunities.”

In other words, the occupation will continue indefinitely.

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Middle East news that falls through the cracks

Published on 6 February 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Sometimes its hard to keep up with the disturbing news coming out of Israel and Palestine.

So here’s a good summary of some recent reading:

- Evicted Jewish settlers from Gaza recently found any crimes from the 2005 withdrawal wiped clean from the slate due to a bill in the Knesset.

- Newsflash: some American Jews may be unhappy with increasingly divisive Israeli policies.

- Alex Kane writes in New York’s Indypendent newspaper about his recent visit to Gaza on the one year anniversary of the Israeli onslaught.

- Israeli econoists are alleging that Israel may have illegally withdrawn US$4 billion from Palestinians over four decades for welfare benefits for which they were never entitled.

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