De Israelische Terreur 1112

De Nederlandse pers mag dan wel hypocriet zijn, de Israelische pers kent nog journalistieke maatstaven.

Israel's compassion in Haiti can't hide our ugly face in Gaza

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143313.html

Israel's compassion in Haiti can't hide our ugly face in Gaza

By Akiva Eldar

Who said we are shut up inside our Tel Aviv bubble? How many small

nations surrounded by enemies set up field hospitals on the other

side of the world? Give us an earthquake in Haiti, a tsunami in

Thailand or a terror attack in Kenya, and the IDF Spokesman's Office

will triumph. A cargo plane can always be found to fly in military

journalists to report on our fine young men from the Home Front

Command.

Everyone is truly doing a wonderful job: the rescuers, searching for

survivors; the physicians, saving lives; and the reporters, too, who

are rightfully patting them all on the back. After Deputy Foreign

Minister Danny Ayalon became the face we show the world, the entire

international community can now see Israel's good side.

But the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible

tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the

ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza. Only a little more than an

hour's drive from the offices of Israel's major newspapers, 1.5

million people have been besieged on a desert island for two and a

half years. Who cares that 80 percent of the men, women and children

living in such proximity to us have fallen under the poverty line?

How many Israelis know that half of all Gazans are dependent on

charity, that Operation Cast Lead created hundreds of amputees, that

raw sewage flows from the streets into the sea?

The Israeli newspaper reader knows about the baby pulled from the

wreckage in Port-au-Prince. Few have heard about the infants who

sleep in the ruins of their families' homes in Gaza. The Israel

Defense Forces prohibition of reporters entering the Gaza Strip is an

excellent excuse for burying our heads in the sand of Tel Aviv's

beaches; on a good day, the sobering reports compiled by human rights

organizations such as B'Tselem, Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of

Movement, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on the situation in

Gaza are pushed to the newspapers' back pages. To get an idea of what

life is like in the world's largest prison, one must forgo "Big

Brother" and switch to one of the foreign networks.

The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the

unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo

planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza. The

missiles that Israel Air Force combat aircraft fired there a year ago

hit nearly 60,000 homes and factories, turning 3,500 of them into

rubble. Since then, 10,000 people have been living without running

water, 40,000 without electricity. Ninety-seven percent of Gaza's

factories are idle due to Israeli government restrictions on the

import of raw materials for industry. Soon it will be one year since

the international community pledged, at the emergency conference in

Sharm el-Sheikh, to donate $4.5 billion for Gaza's reconstruction.

Israel's ban on bringing in building materials is causing that money

to lose its value.

A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of

injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint prevented 17

people from passing through in order to get to a Ramallah hospital

for urgent corneal transplant surgery. Perhaps they voted for Hamas.

At the same time that Israeli psychologists are treating Haiti's

orphans with devotion, Israeli inspectors are making sure no one is

attempting to plant a doll, a notebook or a bar of chocolate in a

container bringing essential goods into Gaza. So what if the

Goldstone Commission demanded that Israel lift the blockade on the

Strip and end the collective punishment of its inhabitants? Only

those who hate Israel could use frontier justice against the first

country to set up a field hospital in Haiti.

True, Haiti's militias are not firing rockets at Israel. But the

siege on Gaza has not stopped the Qassams from coming. The

prohibition of cilantro, vinegar and ginger being brought into the

Strip since June 2007 was intended to expedite the release of Gilad

Shalit and facilitate the fall of the Hamas regime. As everyone

knows, even though neither mission has been particularly successful,

and despite international criticism, Israel continues to keep the

gates of Gaza locked. Even the images of our excellent doctors in

Haiti cannot blur our ugly face in the Strip