As I write, 200 Palestinians are unable to receive kidney dialysis, because for "security reasons" the Israeli military won't allow them to travel to medical centres.
Give us a break, Mr. Said.. Without dialysis, they're dead within 1/2 a week. And unless these 200 patients have suddenly lost their kidney functions, they apparently have been able to obtain such treatment in the past.
Now the Israelis might not be permitting them to obtain dialysis at Israeli hospitals, but maybe this is to force the PA to pay more attention to caring for their own people, rather than relying upon the very Israelis they seek to destroy. But I have little reason to believe that Israelis will permit Palestinians to die for lack of dialysis care. That would be a PR nightmare that no Jewish politician would wish to bear responsibility for.
Besides there are other facilities available that are non-Jewish:
elca.org
And as we can see from previous Palestinian propaganda, this argument has been used before:
1997 (where 100 Palestinians were apparently "blocked" from receiving dialysis, and who much surely be dead now, right?):
upmrc.org
csf.colorado.edu
And just on December 6th this accusation was made by another Palestinian physician about 200 patients facing death due to lack of dialysis treatment (I guess they must have died that week, and 200 more were discovered by the time Said wrote his article):
palestinemonitor.org
Just ridiculous "heart-wrenching" and inherently transparent disinformative propaganda.
Sure, there may be delays due to having to be screened through security checkpoints (which might take hours), but that only means they should arrive two hours earlier (just like US airline passengers now have to do in order to board a commercial aircraft). It's not that they are being prevented, but that they are facing extra delays. Delays brought about by the fact that such patients, possessing their unique medical identifications, also give them unprecedented access that other Palestinians might not receive.
The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967
And this is also patently false. Because it wasn't until 1989 that Jordan disavowed all claims to the West Bank, after annexing it in 1948. And it was only several years later that a peace treaty was arrived at between Jordan and Israel. Thus, given that this was territory captured as the result of a Jordanian attack upon Israel, it was NOT illegal, but a rightful conquest of war.
So, if anything, they could only claim that the "occupation" has been illegal for the period since Jordan and Israel made peace. And during that period, we've seen meetings at Oslo, Wye River, and Camp David attempting to resolve the issues of creating a Palestinian state, a bare 7-8 years worth of "illegal" occupation.
And Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli civilians are "terrible and stupid", but Israeli assassinations of those Hamas leaders who perpetrate them are called "murders". The only "murders" that legally occur (according to international law) in wartime are targeted attacks against civilians. That's murder. Killing combatants is not.
This is why it's very hard to put any faith in the analytical "objectivity" of Said.
At least folks like myself can restrain our emotions sufficiently to recognize that this is a battle between national wills, with intransigence and reactionarianism persisting on both sides. But I also know that Israel is a democracy, which means that it's government is a reflection of the national will of the people that elected it.
I can't quite voice the same opinion about the PA.
Hawk |
