NOVEMBER 2005

Dear Sir or Madam,

I wish to draw your attention to a matter concerning young and some older patients who are cases of Acute Leukaemia and are living in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. Such conditions have now been for some years treatable and in some 90% of cases are curable. It was found necessary by Mr. Yahia Abu Sharif of Jerusalem to open his "Maher Center for Children ; A Support Center for Children with Cancer and their Families". This is located in the King Hussain Hospital, Bethlehem, West Bank territory and I have visited this centre myself.

I saw there young patients who had lost the hair of their head. Thus it is clear  that they are receiving initial treatment by Chemotherapy to eliminate "cancer" precursor white blood cells in the bone Marrow. This is done as an Out-patient procedure  requiring repeated visits to Bethlehem for regular blood counts and also bone marrow samples to investigate the effectiveness of their treatment.These repeated visits by patients and their families can involve serious difficulties in passing through some check points within the West Bank, Gaza Patients face  more difficult problems as your recent communication to me shows.

The second stage in treatment involves a bone marrow graft from a healthy donor which needs to be immunologically compatible perhaps from a near relative. Banks of such material are available in certain centres and I am sure Israel is no exception to this.Unlike those Palestinians who have Israeli Passports who are entitled to the same treatment as Jewish Israelis, West Bank and Gazan "Citizens" such benefits are not available and must face the whole cost of all types of Medical treatment.

Israelis may state in their own defence of this unacceptable situation that treatment is possible in Israeli based Hospitals but the treatment requires much money. In such a War Zone as this, the responsibility for Medical treatment of Palestinian civilians is to the occupying power.

Although the establishment of Mr Yahia Abu Sharif's Centre can provide initial treatment simply by Tablets as explained above, an operation involving a bone marrow graft on the donor and recipient is essential and costly and no doubt beyond the scope of Palestinian hospitals. Help has been offered by the Italian Medical services.This centre came about due to Mr Yahia Abu Sharif whose 12 year old son died of bone cancer. Clearly the matter of Leukaemia is only one serious problem which Palestinians face and it is commonly and widely known that  patients with all manner of urgent medical problems for example acute Heart conditions and those women in the imminent stages of childbirth, are often seriously delayed at checkpoints.

Clearly the incidence of such cases and particularly in Acute Leukaemia requires the collection of data which, due to the necesarily rudimentary (and I am prepared to be criticised on this point!) state  of the Palestinian Infrastructure, such statistics may not easily be forthcoming. I would like to pass this point over to Mr. Yahia Abu Sharif who may know some answers, if anyone does. I have made some suggestions of sources of data, see the above distribution list. Also Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, and Dr. Radwan Barakat of Hebron, e-mails above may be able to help. There seems to be a cluster of Leukaemia cases in Hebron, is the Demona Nuclear reactor responsible? Perhaps a start could be made in collecting  date including  numbers of Acute Leukaemia patients' treated in such treatment centres of Israeli hospitals of different "ethnic" origins and a breakdown of where they come from including the Occupied Territories. How about a Chi square non-parametric statistical test?

Clearly various organisations need to be informed about this serious problem and the World Health Organisation, the UN, and UNICEF are but some to whom I do not have the facilities to direct copies of this letter appropriately since I work alone. I have repeatedly sent relevant details to the Office of the European Commission in Jerusalem and in Brussels but these were not answered, without even an acknowledgement!!I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. Please send reply to davidbethlehe27@gmail.com

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The Return and the Writer who was deceived:

Zionist Lies and the Truth  
Dear Charlie and Friends  
You raised very good points regarding the rubbish "Prof." Shmuel Kaniel wrote in his letter to the editor of Haaretz, but I am sure that you should have reminded the so-called "professor" when he writes such nonsense "never in the history of the world has there been a case of refugees returning to their homes after more than 10 years ." You should have reminded him that the ten years he is talking about and even the 57 years since he and his ilk stole Palestine is nothing but 1/200 of the 2000 years during which Jews were hitting their heads on walls and saying next year in Jerusalem.

What about the so-called right of return of the Jews to Palestine! A professor should be sensible enough to balance his words and study the history of Palestine he and his like the converted Khazari Jews claim the right of return. Tell him not to tell us the nonsense and the myths of "the chosen people" and the "promised land". They created a god and put words in his mouth. Those myths were copied from the Babylonian legends written on the Babylonian clay plates, and I guess that were stolen from Iraqi museums by Zionists just to try to cover the copied myths.    

Zionists stole the land of Palestine and practiced ethnic cleansing and the so-called professor writes: "Even today, a majority of the Palestinians want to throw us into the sea. This is expressed in the right of return. One could argue: These people want to return to their homes." If he doesn't believe me let him ask his colleague in the Bier Assabia'a, where they changed its name to "Bier Sheba University", and his colleague the historian Benny Morris who dug in the archives of the Hagana and its daughter the Israeli Occupation Army and documented the massacres and acts of rape - ethnic cleansing - his "most ethical army in the world" committed. Morris said that the acts that these gangs he documented, are nothing but the tip of the iceberg of the massacres committed, and he blamed Ben Gorion for not completing his crimes. Morris justified the Zionist ethnic cleansing crimes till the end to completely empty Palestine from its indigenous Arab population by saying the white Europeans should have new lands to settle in. He said that the Barbarians should be ethnically cleansed like the indigenous population of America to establish a great democracy!!!!

The Arabs had never spoke about throwing him and his Zionist friends into the sea, while Zionists said "let the Arabs go to the desert" to grill in its burning sands. No "professor" The good Palestinian Arabs accept to live together with the imported Jews who are already in Palestine in a democratic secular Palestinian state. They are good enough people not to pay the Zionists in kind and throw them in the sea.  

Another big lie is the following: "the posters published at the time by "the organized Yishuv" that pleaded with the Arab residents to stay." This lie was repeated thousands of times, and was defied in more times than that. I wrote a book, which is being printed at the moment entitled "Testimonies of uprooted Palestinians" the 50 or so testimonies out of hundreds I included in the book all without exception tell the "professor" you are a big liar, and every Zionist who repeat this lie is aware that he is lying. The ethnic cleansing of Haifa is too well documented to be lied about. It was conducted in cooperation with the British general who was the commander of the British troops in northern Palestine.  

As for his following lie: "Why didn't Vargas Llosa meet a Jew who fled from Iraq with nothing". Every body know why the well assimilated Iraqi Jews left Iraq in mass. To cut the story short, because Mossad agents threw bombs on their the holly synagogues of Iraq to frighten Iraqi Arab Jews to make them believe that their Iraqi Arab compatriots wanted to massacre them; so with the help of Nori Assaid, Iraqi PM a the time and his son it was arranged for their exodus, to make some money. Just for your information this PM was a British puppet.   Adib S. Kawar  
N.B If you have the E-mail address of the "professor" please pass him a copy of this

 
A source of shame?
letters@haaretz.co.il
Saturday, October 08, 2005 8:24 PM [eFreePalestine]

Dear Sir,   When your correspondents write claiming impressive titles they may well deserve, there has to be the suspicion that they are using the title to boulster up a weak case, as if a professor talking rubbish is somehow more impressive than the rest of the world doing so.   And so you have Professor Kaniel claiming that the Palestinians have no rights because "never in the history of the world has there been a case of refugees returning to their homes after more than 10 years ." What an utterly ridiculous concept! Somehow the professor ignores the fact that the rights are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(defied by Israel), in countless UN resolutions(defied by Israel) and in the undertaking given by Israel to UN on its admission(ignored by Israel). The Professor appears to be seriously claiming that people who defy the law for more than ten years should be rewarded. Hasn't the world had enough of this racism? If the refugees were Jews they would be welcomed with open arms.   I may of course be being unfair to Kaniel. If so I am sorry. It may be that Prof. is not a title but a first name unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world.
  Yours faithfully,   Christopher Leadbeater

         Nonviolent Resistance in Palestine, Znet, Patrick O'Connor,
October 17, 2005

The fact that thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of  Israelis are together employing nonviolent tactics similar to those of the US civil rights movement and the South African anti-Apartheid movement would come  as surprising and welcome news to most Americans. Americans are largely unaware  of the struggling but vibrant grassroots nonviolent movement in Palestine,  because the US corporate media prefers a simple, flawed story of Palestinian  terrorist attacks and Israeli retaliation.
In the US media, Palestinians generally aren't allowed to speak for themselves or to articulate their historical narrative. Israelis, however, are permitted to speak, to explain the Israeli experience and
even to explain about Palestinians. As a result, the Israeli story is known in the US while Palestinians are dehumanized.

The reporting by the New York Times, often cited as the standard for US media, typifies the problem. The Times publishes daily news articles on Israel/Palestine, including countless articles about armed Palestinian  resistance. However, the New York Times and the US media more generally almost  never report on what 99.5% of Palestinians have done every day of their lives  for the last 38 years, nonviolently resist Israeli occupation. Over the last three years the New York Times has published only three feature  articles on Palestinian nonviolent resistance. This despite the fact that Palestinians have conducted hundreds of nonviolent protests over the last three years throughout the West Bank against Israel's construction of the Wall on Palestinian land, and despite the fact that the Israeli army killed nine Palestinian protesters, wounded several thousand protesters, harassed and collectively punished villages that protested, and arrested hundreds of  protesters, including nonviolent protest leaders.

The most recent of those three Times articles, last Saturday's "At Israeli Barrier, More Sound than Fury" by the Times' Jerusalem Bureau Chief Steven Erlanger is a good case study of how Israel/Palestine is typically  misrepresented by the US media, and how Palestinian nonviolence is marginalized.  Only six words in the 1,138 word article are quotes from Palestinians, though the article centers on a Palestinian-led protest against Israel's construction  of a Wall cutting through the West Bank village of Bil'in. Erlanger seems to instead let Israeli protesters speak for the Palestinians.
Nonetheless, he still  quotes twice as many words from Israeli soldiers in Bil'in as from the Israeli protesters. Consequently, as is too often the case in US media, the explanations of the Israeli military dominate. A seemingly good-natured and oft-quoted Israeli General is the only individual who readers can get a feel for. Palestinians from Bil'in simply serve as scenery, and are never heard. Perhaps because they generally don't allow Palestinians to speak, the Times and the US media generally leave out the broader context. Erlanger omits 80 protests in Bil'in, three years of nonviolent resistance to the Wall in the West  Bank, the rich Palestinian history of nonviolent resistance and the Israeli military's brutal repression of nonviolent dissent. Instead Erlanger mentions only that there are weekly protests in Bil'in, and that "There were some injuries and numerous arrests, and one soldier lost an eye  from a rock." "Baton-wielding soldiers and police officers, whose use of  stun  grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas made it look as if Israel was repressing  dissent."

If allowed to speak, Palestinians would have cited evidence showing that   Israel clearly is violently repressing peaceful dissent in Bil'in and many other villages. Tens of protesters from Bil'in have been arrested, including protest  organizer Abdullah Abu Rahme. Abu Rahme was arrested three times for a total of  35 days, and has now been banned by an Israeli court from attending protests.
361 protesters have been injured over seven months in Bil'in. One young Palestinian man almost died after being shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet. Three Palestinians and an Israeli were seriously wounded when hit by teargas canisters fired from guns at close range. However, the only specific  injury that is noted in the article is one to the Israeli soldier who lost his  eye, the single most serious injury to a soldier during three years of protests  against the Wall.

The Times article does mention that Israel's construction of the Wall and settlements inside the West Bank in places like Bil'in violate international law according to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. However,  Israeli government responses to those positions are given equal space and  weight.

With the US corporate media's tendency to silence Palestinians, it is no  wonder that many Americans see Palestinians as the aggressor in the conflict, even though they live under Israeli military occupation. Alternative and non-US media are currently the only resources for Americans to learn about the Palestinian narrative and grassroots nonviolent resistance in Palestine Still, just relying on alternative media is not enough. The public needs to keep the pressure on the corporate media and newspapers like the New York Times  through letters and critical articles, until they accurately represent both sides of the story in Israel/Palestine.

Patrick O'Connor is an activist with the International  Solidarity
Movement (ISM).