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Palestinian professor voices health concerns
Lecture series on medical problems in conflict begins
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A Palestinian professor told a crowd of Madison community members Sunday the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands have adversely affected health services of the Palestinian people.
The lecture was the first in a series discussing broader issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week, which will culminate in a lecture at the Orpheum Theater on Tuesday by renowned scholar Noam Chomsky.
In the kickoff lecture of the series, professor Rita Giacaman of Birzeit University in the West Bank talked about the consequences of the controversial occupation and how it has had a serious effect on the Palestinian health system.
According to Giacaman, the Palestinian health system is “not a system at all. It is composed of fragments of a system.” This is due largely to the Israeli policy of closure and separation, an “ongoing colonization by Israel,” she said.
She pointed to the 690 checkpoints within the West Bank and the Israeli-built separation wall in the West Bank area, an effort to “land grab” by Israel.
“Israel has been systematic,” Giacaman said. “It’s not just security or a bomb here or a missile there. [Israel has been] systematic about its work.”
These conditions block the movement of food and supplies, Giacaman said, leading to a lack of adequate health care for the Palestinian people.
However, UW history professor Jeremi Suri said he thinks calling the land grab by Israel “systematic” is going too far.
“That is overlooking how Israel is responding to violence from non-Israeli groups,” Suri said.
Suri said while the checkpoints do lead to a decreased quality of health services, but they cannot be blamed entirely because the checkpoints are established in response to violence committed by non-Israeli groups.
While the infant mortality rate has declined over the last few decades, it began to stall starting in 1990, corresponding with the start of Israel’s strict policy of closure, according to Giacaman.
She also showed statistics produced by the World Health Organization showing a low quality of life of the Palestinian people, the second-lowest rating of all countries measured.
Giacaman thinks the constant fear of becoming a refugee is to blame.
“We live in open air prisons,” Giacaman said. “We need to realize that the home front of the Occupied Palestinian Territory is the battlefront.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a subject of heated debate on campus, where last December an Israeli diplomat told community members a psychological “quantum leap” would be necessary to eventually accomplish peace.
“If any people really want peace with Israel, it’s Palestinians. They know the cultural and economic freedoms that they had. They know how much they have to gain, and we also know how much we have to gain, but the problem on both sides is psychological,” said Gershon Kedar, deputy consul general of the Israeli Consulate in Chicago.
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“These conditions block the movement of food and supplies,”
Also block the movement of bombs and murderers.
“If any people really want peace with Israel, it’s Palestinians.”
So there are some Palestinians who don’t want to drive all Jews into the sea? Who don’t teach their children that Jews are monkeys and dogs to be killed at every opportunity? Maybe they could convince the murdering thugs in Gaza to stop shooting rocket bombs at Jewish children, just as a start.
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington, ~page 269 of The 5000 Year Leap.
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests.” ~ George Washington
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Is this a medical problem? I know that bleeding people for their health was once practiced but thought that it had been discredited as proper therapy.
Hamas TV: Jews Drink the Blood of Muslims & Arabs
Jews drink the blood of Muslims and believe that God wants Jews to hate Muslims, according to a Hamas TV skit. Performed before a live audience at the Islamic University in Gaza, the segment features actors playing a father and son, in traditional Hasidic Jewish garb, discussing their God mandated hatred of Muslims. The skit opens as the father instructs: “We Jews hate the Muslims, we want to kill the Muslims, we Jews want to drink the blood of Muslims.” It is later explained that Jews wash their hands before prayer, not with water, but with Muslims’ blood: “We have to wash our hands with the blood of Muslims.”
Blood libels were a tragic part of Jewish history, as Jews were accused of using the blood of non-Jews for ritual purposes, especially the baking of Matzah for Passover. Blood libels created deep hatred and were an effective trigger for numerous pogroms and the murder of thousands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8IV6ZnzoDY&feature=player_embedded
Perhaps Palestinians would receive improved health care if the they didn’t send suicide bombers to Israeli hospitals to murder innocent women and children?