Repaying Israel’s kindness with terror - by Stephen M. Flatow

Israel permits Arab residents of Gaza—enemy territory—special permits so that they can receive medical care in Israeli hospitals or to carry out business transactions in Israel, and they use those privileges to assist terror cells.

One of these couriers of death
was 53-year-old Na’ama Mikdad

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
27 November '18..

Israel gives the Palestinian Arabs self-rule in large sections of Judea-Samaria, and they use it to promote terrorism.

Israel releases Palestinian terrorists from prison as a gesture, and the newly freed prisoners resume engaging in terrorism.

Israel permits Arab residents of Gaza—enemy territory—special permits so that they can receive medical care in Israeli hospitals or to carry out business transactions in Israel, and they use those privileges to assist terror cells.

Anybody notice a pattern here?

This week’s discovery of a huge Hamas terrorist network in the Palestinian territories is chock full of disturbing lessons.

(Continue to Full Column)

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror,” has just been published and is available at Devonsquarepress.com or Amazon.com.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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New Falsehoods Uncovered in Gaza Cancer Patients Article - by Tamar Sternthal

...In short, far from “Fighting fake stories with real ones,” as a New Yorker advertising banner which appears at times on top of the severely flawed Gaza cancer patient article boasts, the esteemed publication is churning out fake stories of its own. CAMERA has contacted editors to request corrections on these points. Stay tuned for an update.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA..
12 July '18..

Since CAMERA compelled The New Yorker to correct the false claim earlier this month that there are no MRI machines in the Gaza Strip, the media watch organization uncovered additional falsehoods which require correction in the June 28 article (“Many Gazan Women Are No Longer Able to Enter Israel for Cancer Treatment,” Ruth Margalit).

First, the article falsely alleges: “since the beginning of 2018, with no announcement of a change in policy, more than half of applications for medical permits from Gaza have been turned down or left unanswered, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, or P.H.R.I., a nonprofit organization that represents many of these patients.” PHRI provided The New Yorker with false information, and The New Yorker unfortunately passed on PHRI’s inaccurate information to readers without any qualification or clarification. This false information is likewise repeated as fact in the prominent photo caption at the top of the article (as well as in a widely retweeted New Yorker tweet).

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Where Syrians flee towards hospitals of the ‘enemy’ - by Fiamma Nirenstein

...Their home is in flames. We know it; we see the frightful wounds on the bodies of Syrians cured by Israelis in the Galilee. Israel cares for Syrians with its incredible therapeutic power and good will, but it can’t bring them home. In that respect, the best of human intentions and common sense sometimes clash. The right choice, however, is that man remains a friend of his fellow man, at his best, even in war. That’s what Israel believes.

Fiamma Nirenstein..
JNS.org..
09 July '18..

The strong winds in the Golan Heights blow pain and come from tent cities in which displaced Syrians are clustered together a few meters from the steel-and-barbed-wire fence with Israel. We are close to the villages of Bir Ajam and al Briga, and yet we could literally be anywhere on the Golan border that is carefully patrolled by Israeli soldiers.

The 1974 Israeli-Syrian armistice includes a small empty area. Now, tens of thousands of people are coming—around 60,000 Syrians are said to be piling up along the Israeli border with hundreds of thousands on the move. The battle of Deraa, now won by Assad, and a little further north in Harah and Quneitra, where on Friday the rebels took the initiative, is uprooting the population from the south and forcing them into homelessness. Wounded and hungry, they have the misfortune of having Syria as their homeland. Calls for help come from those who are not only fleeing the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but also Hezbollah and the Iranians who are sweeping without pity across their land, as they also seek shelter from last week’s Russian airstrikes. The world again says and does nothing; only Israeli piety remains.

And so, the theme that currently besets the world—that of refugees knocking at Israel’s door—is being played out towards refugees who until just the other day have been enemies. Desperate people are turning up now amid the oak trees of the Golan to request help from their long-standing enemy. Their side has become the main war zone. On Friday, the clash hit Quneitra, and if the Iranian forces were to gain the upper hand, living alongside the Israeli northern border, Israel could not sit by and watch.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Treating Syrians at Ziv Hospital - Honest Reporting

...All patients are given a summary of their medical treatment when they return to Syria. The summary is written in Arabic, on plain paper, with nothing on it to indicate they received the treatment in Israel. I suspect the Syrian doctors know where patients were treated. Injured people could not have found the sophisticated treatment in their home country’s collapsed medical system. And they could not have afforded care in Lebanon or Jordan.

Honest Reporting..
29 Ocotber '17..

The following guest post was written by Yehudit Reishtein, who took part in a special HonestReporting field trip in October 2017 to hear about and meet with Syrian patients being treated in Israel’s Ziv Medical Center.

Healthcare in Syria is almost non-existent after six years of civil war. Fares, an Arabic-speaking social worker at Ziv Medical Center in Tsfat (Safed), cited a few illustrative statistics: “Their medical system is 70% destroyed. About a million people live in the border areas, but there are only seven doctors.” One doctor for every 143,000 people? The number was shocking.

We were on an HonestReporting field trip to learn more about how Syrian casualties were receiving care in Israel. Ziv’s program has evolved in response to a need.

When the civil war started in March 2011, the IDF had a policy of watchful waiting. On Saturday, February 16, 2013, seven badly wounded Syrians crossed the border into Israel. IDF medics evaluated them and then transported them to the nearest hospital. Ziv doctors were called to come in for an emergency. They had no idea who the patients were or what the problem was until they reported for duty and met the wounded Syrians.

Syria has been at war with Israel since May 1948. These wounded men were our enemies. But the doctors did not hesitate—an injured person is a person in need of care. The men were treated. When they recovered, the IDF took them back to the border and sent them home. Since then Ziv Hospital has treated more than 800 patients who have made their way over the border.

We were instructed not to take any photos. Photos could endanger the men and their families. We never learned any patient’s name. All newspaper and TV stories about treatment of Syrians in Israel change patients’ names and either blur their faces or photograph them from an angle that does not reveal their identity.

(Continue to Full Story)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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A country I can assume the best of and be correct - by Forest Rain

...There was no fuss on the news because it was obvious. Why make a fuss? Of course we would help. That is my Israel, a country I can assume the best of and be correct.

Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
20 October '16..

What assumptions do you make about your country?

This past week I caught myself making a dramatic assumption about my country, Israel.

I was watching the news about Hurricane Matthew with Tal, Lenny’s eldest son (18 years old). We saw images from the US, mostly of flooding. Pity for the people whose homes were damaged welled up inside me. As difficult as that situation was, it was the images from Haiti that took my breath away, giving new meaning to the word “devastation”. It looked like the winds had peeled the homes from the ground, spun them around in the air and flung the pieces in every direction.

Quietly Tal asked, “We sent them aid, right?”

“We must have” I answered. “If we haven’t done so yet, we’ll send help soon.”

What an assumption! We both recognized people in desperate need and automatically assumed that our country, tiny Israel, would send Haiti help from half way around the world.

It doesn’t matter that we are far away.

It doesn’t matter that the people of Haiti aren’t Jewish. Our nation doesn’t have much of a connection to theirs. It’s not a location Israelis tend to frequent. Israel doesn’t even have a resident embassy in Haiti.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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What their choice of health care providers says about terrorists and their lackeys

...As the Rajoub clan settle down in one of the delightful family rooms on the Tel Aviv campus of Assuta tonight, they are probably laughing themselves silly at the witless, hypocritical fools in Europe and elsewhere who do Palestinian Arab bidding with greater gusto and enthusiasm than it gets from people living in our region, and with far less to gain from doing it.

Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
14 August '15..

We developed a real antipathy to certain expressions that some reporters and editors like to use when describing the conflict in our area. One of the most offensive is "two sides of the same coin". We hear it a lot. The idea: as bad as we say the other side are, our side is no better. And our arguments and justifications sound just like theirs.

It's self-evident that the "two sides, one coin" cliche obscures far more than it clears up. We object whenever we hear it.

When a person considers the hideous allegations - genocide, apartheid, racist - routinely hurled at Israel and its people, it's evident that this is being done in at least two different ways. One of them is what the Arabs - not only, but principally, the Palestinian Arabs - do. When the extravagantly wild allegations of war crimes and conspiracies come from them, it all looks and feels like psychological warfare. They themselves, at multiple levels of their society and culture, are deeply engaged in terror. Thus, there's a strategic imperative to be able to hurl something no-less-noxious back at their opponents. So we get, for example, the lunatic and deeply offensive claims about how Gaza is the world's largest concentration camp, its people subjected to genocide, and how Israeli chewing gum is loosening Arab girls' morals.

The other, often expressed in more sober terms, is carried out by Westerners, increasingly in the guise of BDS, the boycotting, divesting and sanctioning campaign waged by elements deeply hostile to Jews and to Israel in North America, Australia and Europe. A close look at what many of the BDS groups say, and in whose company they say it, leads quickly to the realization that there is not much new there; they are engaged in the world's oldest hatred. The passions motivating BDS usually map to deep, visceral and tragically familiar hatreds.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 

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From a NYC Highrise on Fifth Avenue, Human Rights Watch’s Disaster Effort

...But the real outrage is his disdain for Israel’s humanitarian efforts that are saving lives after the earthquake and avalanche. Roth sits in the HRW office in a NYC highrise on Fifth Avenue sending out his demeaning tweets. At the same time, Israelis are on the ground in Nepal, treating the wounded and searching for more bodies in the snow and the ice.

Yarden Frankl..
HonestReporting.com..
27 April '15..

One might think from the name that “Human Rights Watch” is an organization dedicated solely to monitoring human rights conditions around the world. But long-time readers may be familiar with a few examples we have documented that show the organization to be obsessed with bashing Israel and employing individuals with very questionable judgement.

There was the human rights “expert” who enjoyed collecting Nazi memorabilia (and bashing Israel.) There was the Human Rights Watch Director who went on a fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia (with one of the worst human rights records) and returned to pen a piece for CNN trashing Ariel Sharon — within hours of the death of the former Israeli Prime Minister.

And now — when Israel has rushed a medical team to help the victims of the earthquake in Nepal — comes a Tweet from the current Executive Director:

Kenneth Roth @KenRoth · 23h23 hours ago

Kenneth Roth retweeted Israel Foreign Min.

Easier to address a far-away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one of Israel's making in Gaza. End the blockade!

Kenneth Roth added,

Israel Foreign Min. @IsraelMFA

IDF delegation numbering 260 medical & rescue crew members will depart on Sunday night for #Kathmandu. #IsraelinNepal

411 retweets219 favorites

The obvious fact that there is a partial blockade of Gaza (humanitarian goods are allowed in) because of the terrorist group Hamas’ efforts to rearm is completely lost on Roth. Nor is the fact that Gaza is blockaded by Egypt on one border. No, for the Executive Director of this group — in theory dedicated to fighting human rights abuse — the situation can be summed up in a simple, Twitter-friendly slogan: “End the Blockade!”

An Appreciation of the Miracle of Israel

...We knew many cared about the plight of the Syrian people Assad and ISIS are killing with total abandon, but who would have thought Israel, Syria’s pronounced enemy, would care enough to reconstruct the face of an unknown Syrian. Who would have thought, given the hate spread against Jews, their empathy towards people who hate them would deliver such humanity. This is the miracle of Israel in our midst, and the face of Mohammad reconstructed denies the haters the spread of their lies.

Farid Ghadry..
Times of Israel..
17 February '15..

I read a BBC story about an Israeli medical team headed by Dr. Yoav Leiser who reconstructed the face of an injured Syrian at the Rambam hospital in Haifa. Against a background of savage killings, beheadings, and barrel bombs, it is hard to describe the hope such an act of compassion injects into Syria’s theater of death and destruction.

We knew many cared about the plight of the Syrian people Assad and ISIS are killing with total abandon, but who would have thought Israel, Syria’s pronounced enemy, would care enough to reconstruct the face of an unknown Syrian. Who would have thought, given the hate spread against Jews, their empathy towards people who hate them would deliver such humanity. This is the miracle of Israel in our midst, and the face of Mohammad reconstructed denies the haters the spread of their lies.

I doubt if Mohammad, the pseudo name of the injured Syrian patient, wrote the hospital or Dr. Leiser and his brave team asking for a new face. I doubt even more that Mohammad could have foreseen living a normal life if he remained untreated. The fact the hospital offered to reconstruct his face is testimony to how lucky Syria and Syrians are to find Israel as their neighbor to the south. A blessing Assad has done his utmost to keep Syrians from that knowledge.

What makes them crazy in Gaza? Israelis tending to sick and injured Gazans

...Just one more small, under-reported and soon-to-be-forgotten story from the war waged by the Islamist terrorists against their own.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 August '14..



First, the good news.

The Erez Crossing, a passenger and cargo terminal built by the government of Israel to serve the needs of the hapless Palestinian subjects of the dark Hamas regime, is still functioning. People, including those seriously injured or ill and in desperate need of the medical and other care that Israel's modern facilities can provide, are able to pass through it and get to where they want to be in Israel, even in these very difficult days of war.

The less-good news is that Erez came under rocket barrage yesterday (Sunday). Despite this, the cross-over remained open for emergency medical cases thanks to the dedication of the Israelis who operate it.

Some 50 people were scheduled to use the Erez crossing Sunday, but Kamil Abu Rokan, the Director of the Crossings Point Authority of the Defense Ministry, and General Yoav Mordehai, the Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), closed the crossing to all traffic except for life-saving cases after the barrage... Two Gaza females were evacuated “20 minutes ago” (Sunday) via the crossing for life-saving surgery in Israel... Other taxi-drivers were on hand, “as always,” to transport emergency patients. [Times of Israel]

Barrage?

(Continue)

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Opting for humanity in an ocean of savagery

...MICHAEL HARARI: We don't know. All we heard was, through other people that came back, that another family that had also gone back had been targeted because they'd been across to us, treated in Israel. They come from across the border that was never porous and suddenly there's a little crack in the border. And people who have been taught to be your sworn enemies come across and they realise that we don't have horns. Within a few weeks we're sitting, having coffee together. And this is a drop in the ocean compared to the carnage on the other side, but something about the paradigm of the Middle East has changed for me just by playing a very small part of it in a small hospital.

Israeli impact on Syrians: Syrian girl (R),
with Israeli girl and Israeli medical clown in
Safed's Rebecca Sieff Hospital
[Image Source: New York Times]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
12 May '14..

As wars tend to do, the ongoing carnage in Syria provides insights into the nature of the combatants, of their friends and allies, of the news reporting industry, of the multilateral institutions that struggle to do something positive in the face of such hideously negative events.

More than 100,000 human lives have been forcibly, violently ended since it began in early 2011, and many times that number have been severely impacted in the Syrian kill-frenzy. More than 9 million Syrians (out of a total of 23 million) have been displaced, many of them fleeing their country for refuge elsewhere.

It's strongly arguable (though denied by the fighting parties themselves) that this is a war with a strongly religious foundation to it. It overwhelmingly involves Moslems: Shia groups side by side with mainly-Alawite government forces, backed by (Shia) Iranian technical, logistical and military support and with the involvement of (Shia) Hezbollah forces - all fighting to save the al-Assad dynasty's stranglehold on power. Against them, a variety of mainly Sunni rebel groups trying to destroy it and end Bashar al-Assad's rule.

We have no particular argument with the many Moslems who argue that their faith is "the Religion of Peace". It's a desirable aspiration, and if it's true, even better. Nor would we want to disagree with the way a prominent Moslem political figure put it in a 2002 speech:

Islam... is a religion of peace. However through the centuries, deviations from the true teachings of Islam take place. And so Muslims kill despite the injunction of their religion against killing especially of innocent people.

So if it's helpful, let's think of the savagery unfolding daily in the killing fields of Syria as the work of deviants. But then where does that leave the rest of us? What decent and good things can be done?

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out!
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The Disparity of Israeli Concern and Arab Apathy

...The myth may continue of Arab brotherhood and solidarity. The destitution in Yarmouk shows hollow this is. Meanwhile, Syrians seeking medical assistance continue to enter Israel and receive treatment. Only the uninformed, biased bigots of the BDS movement seem to be unaware of this.

Dr. Michael Curtis..
American Thinker..
09 March '14..

The contrast could hardly be greater. Israel has helped to alleviate the suffering of Syrians, while the rest of the world speaks about that suffering but does little to relieve it.

On February 18, 2014, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, even visited wounded Syrians at an Israeli field hospital in the Golan Heights. On March 5, 2014, Chris Gunness, spokesman of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), spoke of the profound suffering of civilians in the Palestinian camp in Yarmouk in Damascus and of the widespread incidence of starvation, malnutrition, and absence of medical care in the camp – but little relief has come from Arabs.

Since 1948, Syria has been at war with Israel, having refused to sign an armistice agreement to end its attack. Nevertheless, Israel has been aiding individuals fleeing the civil war in Syria that has so far cost at least 130,000 lives and perhaps two million who have fled their homes. More than 700 wounded Syrians – men, women, and children – have entered Israel to be treated for war injuries in the Golan Heights military field hospital, including wounded fighters who had been turned back when trying to enter Jordan and therefore went to Israel. Individuals needing further treatment have been airlifted to hospitals farther south in Israel with specialist facilities. Besides this medical attention, other Israelis, including the actress Natalie Portman, have donated funds and clothing to Syrian women and children.

Not surprisingly, the biased groups and individuals in the media, academia, mainstream churches, and trade unions, who, out of professed concern for the Palestinians in the West Bank, advocate boycott of the State of Israel and its personnel, have totally ignored this extraordinary Israeli aid to suffering enemies, even if only nominally enemies. What is surprising is that these same people have also said or done so little to alleviate the plight of suffering Palestinians caused by the brutal and indifferent treatment by Syrians in the camp in Yarmouk. Once again, their behavior reveals their hypocrisy and shows that the true nature of their actions is to act against Israel rather than on behalf of the Palestinians.

A light unto (African) nations

...To the haters, this is not merely irrelevant - it is vital that such news be minimized or ignored. The haters invariably pretend that hundreds of projects like these do not reflect well on Israel but in fact are evil themselves, as they are meant to whitewash Israel's supposed crimes, which is its main reason for existence. In reality, the true evil lies in the hearts of the haters. Even Christians who pretend that they are demonizing Israel out of their abundant love.

Elder of Ziyon..
03 March '14..

If you read the literature from anti-Israel Christians, one of their themes is that Israel is illegitimate because it is acting more like a tyrannical Pharaoh than like a "light unto nations." They are saying that Israel's actions make it illegitimate as a nation since it is not fulfilling its Biblical mandate. (See the essay on this page by Stephen France, for example.)

This is of course wrong for many reasons. One is that they are saying that Israel falls short of standards that no nation has ever lived up to, but Jews must act to a standard that anti-Israel Christians define and therefore will inevitably fall short.

However, I would submit that Israel is a light unto nations, just people who hate Israel don't want to be bothered with the facts.

This amazing article from Israel21c lists 22 ways that Israel has been helping Africans in recent years.

1. Malaria, the most devastating disease in sub-Saharan Africa, claims the life of a child every 30 seconds. Researchers at the Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are dedicated to helping Africa wipe out this disease just as Israel did in the 1940s.

In December 2013, the university’s Hadassah Braun School of Public Health hosted an international conference of malaria experts to formulate a new strategy for African nations. Representatives from Gabon and Zanzibar were there to see what conclusions they could bring back home, where anti-malaria efforts have been only partially successful.

2. In 2011, a team of Israeli neonatologists went to Kumasi, Ghana’s second-largest city, to train local doctors and nurses in advanced, low-cost methods to address the city’s high infant mortality rate. The doctors, sent by the Alliance for Global Good in cooperation with MASHAV, also established two new neonatal units in Kumasi’s sole hospital.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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Knowing who true friends are would be a good place to start

...Those who have abandoned my people in our time of need, and especially those who have sided with our oppressors, have no business whatsoever preaching to a refugee about from who, where and how they should seek the life saving medical treatments and sustenance that they do.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu visits an
Israeli hospital caring for Syrian wounded.
Alas, it is no exaggeration to say that
Israel has done more for Syrians in
the south of the country than all
the opposition political groups put together

Aboud Dandachi..
From Homs to Istanbul..
20 February '14..
h/t Elder of Ziyon..

The Syrian National Coalition recently released a statement denouncing what it perceived to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media exploitation of Israel’s medical care for wounded Syrian in the Golan area.

Calling it “nothing more than a publicity gimmick”, the statement from the SNC’s media center went on to say that “the Israeli entity stood against the Syrian uprising from the start”, and that wounded Syrian civilians were “forcedly [sic] taken to Israeli hospitals and are being employed today for marketing their political agenda”.

This one press release by the SNC may very well prove to be one of the most self-damaging statements ever released by a political organization. Not only did the SNC fall into a trap by reacting hastily to goading from its opponents, but by denouncing an act of charity that has saved so many Syrian lives, even from a country that has historically been an adversary to Syria, the SNC has very much called into question the Syrian political opposition’s ability to engage in any post-conflict reconciliation with those communities that stood with the regime during the war. If you can’t even bring yourself to say thank you to medical aid from Israel, how on earth are you ever going to bring yourself to meet the greater challenge of living and let live with those Syrians who fought for the regime over the years. To say nothing of the vindication of those parties very much against any sort of help to the Syrian opposition, whom those parties see as potential adversaries in the future.

Alas, the SNC’s position is by no means an isolated one among the Syrian opposition. Indeed, the coalition probably felt compelled to make a denunciation along these lines to maintain its credibility among the rank and file activists. This one statement is going to have some very far reaching repercussions, especially with respect to any further aid the opposition can expect to receive. Who in their right mind is going to provide MANPADs and advanced anti-tank missiles to an opposition that can’t even reconcile itself to medical aid from a perceived adversary. Frankly, this regrettable episode has demonstrated that the Syrian political opposition still has a lot of growing up to do.

The idea that any Syrian should feel apologetic for seeking medical aid from an Israeli hospital is yet one more morally bankrupt notion in a conflict that has already laid bare the moral shortcomings of many formerly esteemed parties and movements. What would the detractors of such aid have a wounded Syrian do? Bleed to death in the name of a none-existent “resistance”? Why do the SNC and other opposition figures care in the slightest what the opinions of the pro-Assad camp are on this particular issue? Anyone still supporting Assad at this point is clearly irredeemable.

This is a regime that has targeted Red Crescent volunteers and murdered a British surgeon for giving the exact same aid the Israelis are providing wounded Syrians. Dr Abbas Khan was rightly hailed as a hero, and Israel’s contribution to treating hundreds of needy Syrians deserves no less praise and appreciation. The pro-regimists have no moral standing or high ground on this issue whatsoever. Far from condemning Benjamin Netanhayu for visiting wounded Syrians, the Assad supporters’ time would be better spent asking where their beloved leader has been hiding out these past months. It is shameful that Angelina Jolie has made more visits to Syrian camps and refugee hospitals than Assad and Asma have combined.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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How to “Cleanse” Context From a Gaza Story

...By omitting the relevant context – Hamas and Palestinian terror – and downplaying the medical treatment that Palestinians receive from Israel despite the security situation, Miller cynically uses the story of a sick Palestinian child to ensure that Israel is portrayed as being solely responsible for Gaza’s poverty. Once again, in the eyes of the media, it’s all Israel’s fault.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
19 February '14..

In a five minute report for the UK’s Channel 4 News, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Miller focuses on a Palestinian child with a brain tumor as a hook on which to hang Gazan suffering on Israel.

He does so primarily by omitting relevant context that could serve to portray Israel as anything other than the sole party responsible for every misfortune that has befallen the residents of the Gaza Strip.



The mask slips, however, when Miller reveals his true bias against Israel. Narrating on a five-a-side soccer tournament (at 3:17 on the video), he says:

Teams are named after the hometowns from which previous generations were cleansed sixty-six years ago and dumped here. Yafo, which Israelis call Jaffa, are playing al-Majdal, or Ashkelon.

Miller has casually tossed in the false charge that Israel “ethnically cleansed” Arabs during the War of Independence. In reality, as the Jewish Virtual Library points out:

The Palestinians left their homes in 1947–49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.

Perhaps Miller believes he is proving his point when he states that Israelis call Yafo, Jaffa. In fact, the Hebrew for Jaffa is, like the Arabic, Yafo. The city of Jaffa which is now part of the Tel Aviv municipality has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs. Jews also lived there before the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

But what of the things that Miller leaves out from his report?

Three-and-a-half year-old Abdel Karim al-Dalo, suffering from a brain tumor, is held up as an example of how Gazans are prevented from receiving life-saving medical treatment by Israel’s blockade.

Miller does not state the obvious – that Abdel Karim is still alive as a result of two previous operations carried out in an Israeli hospital. In fact, the IDF estimates that that some 100 Palestinians seeking medical care travel into Israel each day through the Erez Crossing:

Although Palestinians can receive medical treatment in Gaza, many turn to Israeli hospitals for more advanced care. “It is important to note that there are 27 hospitals in Gaza. Gaza’s population has the ability to receive medical care on site,” Maj. Tariq explained, adding that Israeli hospitals can handle complex health problems that Gazan hospitals are incapable of treating.“When a child is sick, injured and needs prompt treatment, we take all precautions and measures so that the child can pass through the crossing as quickly as possible,” Maj. Tariq said, explaining that all Gazans in urgent need of medical care receive the highest-priority treatment at the crossing. “IDF soldiers ensure that an ambulance arrives and brings the patients to a nearby Israeli hospital, where they receive necessary medical care,” Maj. Tariq added.

Why would there be a delay or a denial for an entry permit into Israel?

This article is continued on Page 2

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From the deep darkness of Syrian Arab-on-Arab savagery, pin-pricks of light in northern Israel

...The humanitarian chain that got the woman from her home village under heavy shellfire to the boundary fence and then to hospital links guides in Syria to Israeli Army paramedics on the frontier, to the doctors and nurses in Tzfat. For the woman, every step in the process worked perfectly, perhaps because it has become a well-trodden path. She was the 177th person to make to the journey to the emergency room in what has become one of the most extraordinary subplots of Syria's agonising civil war.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 November '13..

A small, almost inconsequential, BBC report from Tzefat, an ancient city of some 32,000 and a renowned center of Jewish scholarship and mysticism, focuses a little welcome attention today on the Ziv Medical Center for the work its good people do in the face of the Arab-on-Arab savagery being done just a short distance away in Syria.

ZMC was established as a small clinic in 1910, later re-named in honour of Lady Rebecca Sieff, which is pronounced Ziv in Hebrew, and eventually expanded greatly as Tzefat itself grew. It is a government-owned and -operated medical center with 316 hospital beds, incorporating clinics, units and institutes, research laboratories and a nursing school. It now hosts the new Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bar-Ilan in Zefat, engaged in the education and training of future physicians.

The victims of Syria's war finding care in Israel

By Kevin Connolly | BBC Middle East correspondent, Tzfat | 25 November 2013

In the maternity unit at the Sieff Hospital in the Israeli city of Tzfat, the safe arrival of every baby feels like a minor miracle. But on the day we visited, there was one little boy among the row of newborns who will one day have quite a story to tell. That is, if his parents ever decide to tell him.

(Continue)

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(Video) Why? He said it was because they were poor and their needs were great

...What the people of Bogo needed was good, solid medical care. They were already living in poverty when the typhoon decimated their fragile infrastructure. I asked the IDF Surgeon General in charge why they chose Bogo.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman..
NBC News Chief Medical Editor..
17 November '13..

MACTAN, Philippines -- I’ve always been fascinated by how well the Israeli Defense Force, otherwise known as the IDF, delivers emergency response medical care in extremely poor conditions. My first experience with the IDF was in Haiti after the devastation of the earthquake there. They were remarkable then, triaging and treating patients in the midst of the devastation.

I wondered if they had found their way here -- so we set off to find them. And when we did, it was in a place we least expected.

The IDF had selected Bogo, a small village on the northern island of Mactan, to establish its emergency response center. Bogo had been hard hit by the devastation but it hadn’t attracted as much attention as other towns. It was definitely off the beaten path.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I knew we had found the IDF medical team as soon as we arrived at the hospital where they were working. A fence surrounded the grounds; soldiers were stationed at the entry and sharp shooters were visible from rooftops. Security is of paramount importance to the Israelis and they will survey potential sites for days to before one is selected.

Syrians in Israeli Hospitals - A legacy of terror meets up with compassion

...I’ve touched a few times in this series on the theme of Israel as a light of democratic decency and progress that, nonetheless, has a leper-like status in the Arab and much of the Muslim world, to a large degree in Europe, and elsewhere. The theme is nowhere more sadly evident than in the fears of these Syrians—first, on finding themselves in dreaded Israel; then, on realizing that this “transgression” could get discovered back home. The Israeli hospitals, of course, keep accepting these patients and treating them regardless. One has to be who one is.

P. David Hornik..
PJMedia.com..
15 September '13..

It’s reported that since Syria’s civil war erupted two and a half years ago, over 120 Syrians have come to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment. They appear to come mainly to Ziv Hospital in Safed, in the upper Galilee, and to the Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, also in upper Galilee on the Mediterranean coast.

The Syrians are described as “very badly hurt, with gunshot wounds and blast injuries, and receiving life-saving treatment.” They somehow make it to the Israeli border, from where the Israeli army transports them to the hospitals. Although predominantly civilians, often women and children, one report cites a Syrian patient who appears to be a “rebel fighter”—meaning he could well belong to a jihadi group that wants Israel destroyed.

Syria as a whole is decidedly hostile to Israel, having been in a state of war with it since Israel was established in 1948. If the situation was reversed—if Israelis were savagely killing each other en masse, which has never happened and never will—there is scant chance Syrian hospitals would accept wounded Israelis, even less that Syrian soldiers would bring them there for treatment.

Nevertheless, Dr. Calin Shapira, deputy head of Ziv Hospital, told Agence France-Presse that no wounded Syrians who come to Ziv are turned away:

It doesn’t matter where they’re from…. It’s important to give medical aid regardless—this is a principle of the medical profession.

Syrian wounded who come to Israel are in desperate need. A Syrian woman told French NGO Médecins Sans Frontières that in her country “there are no medicines, nowhere to go, no hospitals. Medicine has become a rare commodity.” Fifty-seven percent of Syria’s hospitals have been damaged in the fighting—some most likely deliberately targeted by one side or the other—and 36 percent have stopped functioning.

Once they find themselves in Israel, the Syrians not only have to cope with their medical conditions—but with their terror over being where they are.