Well that grabbed your attention and may have brought you to this page under a false pretence.
I’m sorry.
The world, and especially the Arab and Muslim world, appears top believe, or at least promulgates the belief, that Israel is intent on the genocide of the Palestinian people. If it is, it is going about it an a very strange way.
For example, Israelity.com has an interesting, and may I say, heart-warming, article on a positive aspect of Israeli-Palestinian relations that you won’t hear or read about on the BBC or in the annals of Israel’s detractors.
The article, written in January 2009, describes how Israel “routinely” (which I infer means very frequently) admits patients from the Palestinian Authority into Israel hospitals AND Israel pays for the treatment.
Now, I also reported recently how the PA Health Minister has closed the door on the PA funding the transfer of patients to Israeli hospitals since Operation Cast Lead purely for political purposes. This decision will lead to the unnecessary deaths of Palestinians because the PA, Israel’s ‘peace partner’ places political gestures above the health of its own people.
But the Israelity story predates this and deals with cases where ISRAEL pays, not the PA.
This is not emergency assistance. Israel is supplying hospitals in Ramallah and Bethlehem (both inside the PA administered territory) with software developed in Israel called i-Rox. But most extraordinary is the fact that the software was developed in Bnei Barak, an ultra-orthodox town near Tel Aviv, by ultra-orthodox Jews, the very people who are often believed to be most extreme in their views on Palestinians and Palestinian self-determination. The company is deliberately and purposefully adding functionality to the software so that the Israeli and PA Health Ministries can share data for mutual benefit.
If you are sceptical, the Israelity article cites a World Health Organization PDF document (reporting for 2006-7) which states that 60,000 Palestinians from the PA authority controlled area were treated in Israel in that year and 20,000 actually hospitalised. It also mentions 5,000 Gazans receiving similar treatment of which 2,000 were hospitalised. The Figure includes 2,500 children being treated for long-term illnesses such as cancer.
The article concludes:
As far as Israel providing services to PA hospitals, “Public health laboratories at the Israel Ministry of Health continue to regularly provide assistance to the Palestinian Health Authority in the way of laboratory tests for poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, influenza and other viral diseases,” the report says. Israel – via the health funds and the Health Ministry – continued those tests throughout the year, “in spite of the fact that the Palestinian Authority delays or halts payments.”
Does this sound like genocide?
Does this sound like Israel targeting children? which is the mantra of the Hamas and many other detractors of Israel and Zionism around the world.
You can read the whole Israelity.com article here.