Israel prevented 17 sight-impaired Gazans from leaving for cornea transplant operations on time

*If this is something you can defend, you are incapable of caring.*

The Israeli authorities at Erez checkpoint this week prevented the exit of 17 sight-impaired patients, suffering from various eye diseases, from the Gaza Strip in order to undergo cornea transplants, a treatment that is not available in the Gaza health system. Because of this delay, the medical window of opportunity to perform the transplants for these patients was closed, because corneas can be transplanted only within the shortest time frame (24-48 hours after they are extracted from the donor’s body). The patients from Gaza whose exit was prevented will therefore have to wait for another donation, which may or may not happen.

At the beginning of the week Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-Israel) received an appeal from the Musallam Medical Center in Gaza. According to the appeal, a large group of 14 patients from Gaza, who were invited to Ramallah for cornea transplants from Sunday to Wednesday this week (January 3-5, 2010), did not reach their destination. Three other patients approached PHR-Israel separately. The group of patients includes some who were waiting weeks or even months for cornea transplants. The longest wait was 31-year-old S.A., who has been waiting for this operation for three years.

The main Musallam Medical Center in Ramallah this week received two deliveries from the US with dozens of corneas, donated by Tissue Bank International, an American organization that facilitates cornea and tissue transplants. Every year corneas are sent during Christmas break, during which such operations do not take place in the US, as a donation to the Palestinian health system, and dedicated especially to eye patients from Gaza.

The inquiry by the medical center in Ramallah raised the concern that the exit of the patients from Gaza was being prevented by the Israeli authorities, and accordingly PHR-Israel on Sunday made an urgent request to the DCO in Gaza, responsible for issuing exit permits to patients. In its appeal to the DCO, PHR warned that preventing the exit of the vision-impaired patients for eye operations this week will necessarily cause them to lose the opportunity for cornea transplants in the near future, if ever, because the corneas designated for the transplants have a very short expiration date.

Despite this request, the Israeli authorities prevented the exit of the 17 patients for the operation on time. Five patients were not given any answer; two patients were summoned to investigations by the General Security Service (GSS), scheduled for dates later than the cornea expiration dates; two requests were rejected; and eight requests were approved only after media intervention, but after the corneas had already expired.

This case, with its far-reaching consequences for the vision-impaired patients who now lost the opportunity to repair their eyesight, illustrates the many difficulties that face the residents of Gaza who need medical care that is not available in the Gaza Strip. The delays, apathy and rejection by the Israeli authorities, which every month curtail the access of dozens of patients to medical care, had particularly severe significance in this case, because prevention of these patients’ exit from Gaza caused the loss of the corneas (which can be transplanted within no more than 48 hours from the moment of donation). Now the patients will have to wait for another cornea donation, at an unknown time and likelihood.

Therefore, PHR-Israel strongly protests the blatant disregard of the Erez checkpoint authorities for the medical urgency of allowing the exit of patients for cornea transplant operations.

For more information, please contact Ran Yaron at ranyaron@phr.org.il or +972-54-7577696

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58061.shtml

Report: Carter escapes assassination attempt on visit to Gaza

Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that former US president Jimmy Carter was the target of a thwarted assassination attempt, according to Israel Radio.

Reportedly, there was a cluster of explosive devices stashed near a road he was scheduled to travel during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

The Jerusalem Post could not verify the report.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1244371114626

Army rabbi ‘gave out hate leaflet to troops’

*What would happen if it were the opposite?*

The Israeli army’s chief rabbinate gave soldiers preparing to enter the Gaza Strip a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and advising them that cruelty is sometimes a “good attribute”.

The booklet, entitled Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study Table for the Soldier and Commander in a Time of War, was published especially for Operation Cast Lead, the devastating three-week campaign launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire against southern Israel. The publication draws on the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Jewish fundamentalist Ateret Cohanim seminary in Jerusalem.

In one section, Rabbi Aviner compares Palestinians to the Philistines, a people depicted in the Bible as a war-like menace and existential threat to Israel.

In another, the army rabbinate appears to be encouraging soldiers to disregard the international laws of war aimed at protecting civilians, according to Breaking the Silence, the group of Israeli ex-soldiers who disclosed its existence. The booklet cites the renowned medieval Jewish sage Maimonides as saying that “one must not be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel”.

Breaking the Silence is calling for the firing of the chief military rabbi, Brigadier-General Avi Ronzki, over the booklet. The army had no comment on the matter yesterday.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of the Rabbis for Human Rights group, called the booklet “very worrisome”, adding “[this is] a minority position in Judaism that doesn’t understand the … necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/army-rabbi-gave-out-hate-leaflet-to-troops-1516805.html

Aiding and Abetting a Holocaust

Palestinians are being killed like insects not because of Hamas. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews in the past were killed (in Europe) for being Jewish, notes Tariq A. Al-Maeena.
A reader last week objected to my references of a ‘holocaust’ in this latest atrocity being carried out by the Israelis against civilians in Gaza, and specifically targeting children. May I remind the reader and other skeptics that this word is no longer exclusive to crimes of the past?

Cambridge Dictionary defines holocaust as “a very large amount of destruction, especially by fire or heat, or the killing of very large numbers of people” a situation that is currently in full force against Palestinians in Gaza.

Palestinians are being killed like insects not because of Hamas or because of Qaseem rockets or hand-thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews in the past were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians today are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted and treated like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every inhumane way?

Israel should face charges for War Crimes as bluntly stated by Professor Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Writing in “Israel’s Collective Punishment of Gaza”, she cites four specific violations carried out by the Israelis:

‘Israel’s air and ground attack in Gaza violates Geneva in four ways.

-First, it constitutes collective punishment of the entire population in Gaza for the acts of a few militants.

-Second, it targets civilians, as evidenced by the large numbers of civilian casualties.

-Third, it is a disproportionate response to the rockets fired into Israel.

-Fourth, an occupying power has an obligation to ensure food and medical supplies to the occupied population; Israel’s blockade has created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.’

UN Relief workers discovered four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, as reported by the Red Cross. Scores of other such horrific circumstances litter the Gaza landscape. How long can the world and specifically the US pretend that Israel is a civilized nation, immune from censure for their on-going butchery?

The NY Times reported that, “International aid groups lashed out at Israel on Thursday over the war in Gaza, saying that access to civilians in need is poor, relief workers are being hurt and killed, and Israel is woefully neglecting its obligations to Palestinians who are trapped, some among rotting corpses in a nightmarish landscape of deprivation.”

If Americans do wonder why the rest of the world detests US foreign policy and is accused as an implicit partner in this holocaust, then they should not look any further than the recent headlines: ‘US rejects Arab bloc’s ceasefire proposal.’ The US had objected to the proposal, which demanded an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip”, the lifting of Israel’s border blockade and the establishment of an international force to monitor the truce. Ever wonder the motive?

While the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, publicly condemned the Israeli attacks that had caused the deaths of four UNRWA workers, together with shelling a UN-run school that killed 40 people including many children earlier last week, and there are mass demonstrations in all parts of the world including Israel against this mass slaughter, US President Bush okayed the green light to the Israelis to invade Gaza with tanks and artillery.

In his weekly radio address, Bush held Hamas responsible for the latest violence, and proclaimed that ‘no peace deal would be acceptable without tougher action to prevent Hamas and other groups from receiving weapons’. Why? So that they could be sitting ducks? No mention of the carnage of civilians was brought up. And sure enough, barely hours after he spoke, on January 3, US supplied Israeli tanks rolled into the Gaza Strip.

A human being with no remorse and a perverted demolisher, he must have analyzed the vast wreckage around him at the end of his presidency strewn with colossal foreign policy failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and decided to go out in full fanfare – this time in Gaza.

Several years ago, he lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction to gather support for his illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. A few days ago, Israel employed a barely more credible excuse, the rockets as justification for its own barbaric shock and awe in Gaza.

While millions of Americans face home foreclosures, health care uncertainties, job and pension losses, none of these crises currently threaten the flow of their tax dollars to Israel’s war machine. It is their money that buys F-16 jets made by Lockheed Martin to drop bombs on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, the world is wondering where the spirit of America has evaporated so quickly to, the very spirit that brought the first black President to the White House recently? Why the silence and subjugation to a government that falls nothing short of aiding and abetting a holocaust?

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=29707