Iraqi Children in Algeria and Israel

Iraqi Children in Algeria and Israel
Good SamaritanBy Wafaa

The Prophet Muhammad said, “When a person practices charity, it should be so secretly that his left hand does not know what his right hand has given”. Meaning nobody knows how much he has given in charity. Another famous Arabic proverb states, “it is as if you’ve done a bad deed when you do good and announce about it.” Such notion makes it hard for those, who follow it or simply live with such tradition, to excel in selling themselves (as the term often used in the USA), in marketing, promotion and propaganda. Precisely why Arabs and Moslems don’t do good in these practices compared to people elsewhere in the world. So when they attempt to promote their good deeds (or anything else for that matter) or commit propaganda, they are easily caught up in the action, and often challenged. I mention this in the hope that those, who wear the daily fashion of harshly criticizing Arabs and Moslems for not doing much, or “the right thing,” have some understanding of why that seems so, but not necessarily true. I began with the Prophet’s hadeeth (saying) to give this societal norm a historic, not religious, dimension. Generally Arabs and Moslems are not articulate in selling themselves (or promoting their causes), in deception and propaganda. Therefore the good they commit is hardly noticeable. Another reason is that their side of the story is highly censored. Since we live in a world that worships and follows material whereby the mighty countries with massive armies and advanced technologies rule and have most of the say, the Prophet Muhammad’s instruction and the Arabic saying are no longer practical. I conclude so also because of my recent findings about good deeds committed by Algerians and Israelis in providing care for IRAQI children who have acute medical conditions. This research offers some instances of censorship.

When doing a search using Google and typing “Iraqi Children in Algeria,” one finds less than seven websites none of which are by major or well-known media outlets or organizations! The list’s top source by the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) provided only two paragraphs about the subject of welcoming three Iraqi children in May (2008) and offering them medical tests in preparation for surgeries in Algeria. The second link reported about the matter in four lines. The third was by Echorouk Online, which provided a report of twenty-one lines with a picture, for a change. The fourth link was by Lexisnexis.com showing an article published by The Sunday Times (London), written by Ali Rifat in Amman and Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv on May 25, 08. This was the most detailed article, but only one-third of its details were highlighting Iraqi children’s treatment in Algeria, the rest focused on Iraqi children who received medical care in Tel Aviv. I will evaluate this article later.

Then on another Google page, one finds two additional links giving information about the news of Iraqi children’s medical treatment in Algeria; one by the forum.e-dz.com and the other account published in The Washington Times and written by Ben Lando. This article provided the most details on the subject. It is a strongly recommended article to read on the subject matter of Algerians’ Good Samaritan. That is it!

Yet when Googling “Iraqi Children in Israel,” one finds sixty articles dating back to March 2007, being covered by major media outlets such as the Boston Herald, Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and ABC News as well as on the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs plus two video clips on Google and Youtube. The mountainous propaganda about Israel’s Good Samaritan is evident not only in the number of news reports written and the writing style, but also in the extensive details they provided.

The 36-second Youtube clip by Infolive.tv begins with the narrator stating, “Coalition forces continue battle al-Qaeda in IRAQ suffering daily casualties,” then shows footage of an Iraqi child in hospital bed and concludes with his mother speaking in Kurdish (with English subtitles) thanking the organization that helped her son have surgery at the Holon Wolfsen Hospital. The Youtube propaganda clip was posted on October 16, 2007 and indicates that it has been viewed 362 times. The video clip was posted under the title “Two Iraqi Children Suffering from Heart Disorders Treated in Israel.” People posted utterly hateful and insulting remarks underneath the clip about Arabs, Iraqis and Moslems and over praised Israel.

No such Youtube or Google video clips are found about the Algerian Good Samaritan toward Iraqi children!! Instead I found a clip entitled “MSF: Surgery for Wounded Iraqis,” which was posted on Youtube in November 2007 by someone in Belgium! The clip, which was viewed by only 182 viewers, reports about Iraqi wounded individuals being treated by Iraqi, Jordanian and foreign doctors in Amman. The clip has no comments posted underneath it despite that it was allowable to post comments!!

I was perplexed by the article published in The Sunday Times (London), which I mentioned earlier being written by Ali Rifat in Amman and Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv on May 25, 08. I found it again on the http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ website. Not only two-thirds of its details focused on Iraqi children’s medical treatment in Israel, but also its title, first paragraph and conclusive quote were propaganda-geared and startling to read! Its title is, “Iraqi mothers deny their sick children Israeli heart operation.” The verb ‘deny’ has a negative connotation and is criticism provoking. The fact that two-thirds of the article’s information highlighted children’s medical treatment in Israel and their Good Samaritan makes more sense if the title had been 'Iraqi mothers chose Israeli heart operation for their sick children.' This title is more suitable also because only three of the fourteen families chose to head to Algeria instead of Israel. The remaining eleven families were suddenly removed from their apartment and placed in a church until their departure to Israel!! In other words, when three families chose Algeria over Israel, they made a mistake, how could they? The first paragraph of this Sunday Times article reads “The parents of Iraqi babies with congenital heart problems are facing a dilemma: should they allow their children to be treated in Israeli hospitals when they have been brought up to believe that Israel is their mortal enemy?” It is not really their mortal enemy, but they have been brought up to believe so! This is the intended message from this paragraph. In other words all the atrocities committed by Zionists since the forceful establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and even before that year, toward Arabs are insufficient to consider Israel an enemy! As if to indicate that their anomosity is the product of brainwashing and propaganda.

Then Uzi Mahnaimi (in Tel Aviv) continues in the second paragraph stating, “hostility towards the Jewish State in Iraq is so strong that many parents refuse to travel to Tel Aviv for the life-saving hole-in-the heart surgery.” Since Uzi reported in present tense (“hostility….. is so strong”), I was not sure what “hostility towards the Jewish State” he was trying to convey! Israelis have been nesting in northern Iraq and roaming all over the country, so what hostility he means! They have even rebuilt some of their religious sites since Baghdad fell to US occupation forces. They have trained Kurdish militias who caused the death of thousands of Iraqis mostly Arabs, not to mention assasinating Iraqi scientists!! The term “Jewish State” rings another troubling bell. Non-Jewish Iraqis have lived with Jews for thousands of years and no anomisoty has been reported against Jews in IRAQ (or in most Arab countries) until the forceful establishment of Israel. Had he used the terms ‘Israel’ or ‘Zionists’, his sentence won’t be highly debated.

Additionally why wasn’t Ali Rifat alone sufficient to report about the patients in Amman heading to Algeria? Why the inclusion of a co-author (Uzi Mahnaimi) was inevitable for the article to be published? This comes as a reminder for the times when I used to give lectures about Palestine and a couple of times I was pressured to have someone with me present the Jewish/Israeli viewpoint even when such a practice was not done before with other lecturers! The Sunday Times should have covered two different stories about the Iraqi patients; one by Rifat to tackle the news about Iraqi patients who chose medical care in Algeria and one by Mahnaimi to cover those receiving treatment in Israel. It is a shame that mainstream media outlets (in English and other languages) have not covered the news about these patients and their predicament. People elsewhere who are willing and able to help would arrange to receive Iraqis in acute medical conditions and treat them if they hear of their needs and see others doing so. So why the censorship?

Israelis’ Good Samaritan has an additional agenda, which is Israel’s interest in breaking the political barrier with Iraqis; the most ardent resistors to Israel in the region. How political and propaganda-geared is this undertaking?

1. The Haaretz correspondent, Yoav Stern, reports on October 27, 07 that Iraqi and Palestinian Children (from Gaza) were being brought to Tel Aviv for heart surgery, yet at the same time Israel has been directly terrorizing and killing Palestinians in Gaza as well as participating in the killing of Iraqi scientists while training Kurdish guerillas to kill other Iraqis mostly Arabs! Double standards and patronage.

2. Simon McGregor-Wood’s report, on December 11, 07 for the ABC News, reads, “Israeli charity saving Iraqi children one heart at a time,” while Israel has been collaborating with the USA-UK forces in their killing of more than one million hearts!! In the same article, one also reads “the children are made to feel at home. They are given doughnuts and candy, a traditional gift for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.” So just in case Iraqis didn’t know about Hanukkah, they need (along with thousands of readers) to be reminded of it and psychologically connect it with the Good Samaritan! Not to mention that Hanukkah has no historic or religious significance and was created to be commemorated around and to imitate Christmas and for celebration in Hollywood movies, TV series and the news.

3. When Algerians welcomed three Iraqi children for heart surgeries in May 2008, their Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not publish the news on their website because they don’t do propaganda well and don’t intend to turn their Good Samaritan into a political campaign. Yet the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a report on their website on October 11, 2007 entitled, “Two Iraqi Children to come to Israel for emergency heart surgery.” The Israeli government was so eager to tell the world about their good deed that this report was posted on their website on the same day Iraqi children arrived in Tel Aviv!

The Legality of This Undertaking:

The Iraqi Parliament’s Health and Environment Committee has called for an investigation. The Health Ministry claims it didn’t know of the organizations or the project providing heart surgeries to Iraqi children in Israel. Additionally some of these Iraqi families were told that the surgery was to be performed in a European country, but after arriving in Amman, they found out that they would be traveling to Israel for surgery! Why mislead the families?

One of the Iraqi children, Sara, would need regular medical attention. While in Jordan with her mother, a group of Iraqi doctors helped the mother and two other families to find other options. Algeria responded immediately. So they moved three of the families to a three-room apartment from the one provided by Brothers Together, a Christian group. This move was unsettling to the international coordinator of Brothers Together. The Washington Time’s Ben Lando reported that Brothers Together transported 80 or more children to Israeli hospitals. Despite that this group has not registered with the Iraqi government to work as a nongovernmental organization in Iraq, or with the World Health Organization, they arrange for the medical treatment, the visa to Amman and provide accommodation! The projects and activities of any humanitarian organization are bound by international law. The fact that they did not register with the Iraqi government and that there are no diplomatic relations between Iraq and Israel, these so-called charitable organizations have been functioning illegally.

According to a reliable source, the Iraqi Ambassador in Jordan, Saad Al-Hayane refused to sign a Death Certificate for a child that died following the surgery in Israel arguing that there are no diplomatic relations between Iraq and Israel.

Alternatives and Lessons:
Iraqis should only be treated in Arab and Islamic countries as well as in countries that have had no military presence in IRAQ such as China, Cuba, India and Russia. All have excellent medical services. Countries that have been participating in the destruction of IRAQ and the killing of Iraqis; the USA-UK-Iran-Israel collaborative or those provided military forces to participate in the killing of Iraqis and the robbery of the country’s treasures (such as Holland, Japan, Korea and many others) must be banned from offering any health treatment to Iraqis, thanks for the patronage and double standards. Israel has had its long history of terrorism and human rights violation not just against Palestinians, but also against their own Jewish community mainly those who came to Israel from Arab and African countries. When it comes to health, charity and medical treatments in Israel, the following is of importance:

1. Upon arrival at Tel Aviv airport in the 1950s, Arab Jews were sprayed with DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane), which is a synthetic pesticide; a chemical with a long controversial history and was banned two decades later. The purpose of the spraying was to disinfect them from germs! The Israeli government did not welcome Jews coming from Europe and the USA the same way!

2. In a scandal unknown to the world, many infants of Yemenite Jews upon arrival to the “promised land” in the 1950s have disappeared. Some were told that their infants have been sick and died in hospital, but the parents never received their bodies or death certificates. The news of the graves of Yemenite Jewish children found empty were covered in few newspapers in August 1997, but worldwide mainstream media did not cover this scandal. The later findings were that these babies were sold to Europeans for adoption! Had the babies been Ashkenazi (western) Jews, the investigation of their disappearance would have been held immediately and without court orders.

3. In another scandal unknown to the world, Moroccan Jewish children received poisonous radiations without their parents consent. “In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba flew to the USA and returned with 7 x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army.” The ministry of health tricked the parents by pretending to take the children to school trips. The parents were later told that the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. Shortly after the doses given 6000 children died. Others developed cancer that killed them over time. Those who lived suffered from epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's disease and chronic headaches. More extensive details about this disgraceful project can be accessed in sources below. When “The Ringworms Children” documentary film by director David Belhassen was shown in August 2005 on Israeli TV, it was aired simultaneously with the highest-rated TV show of the year, the finale of Israel's talent-hunt show: "A Star Is Born." The next day, the photo of the newly born star took up half the front pages. There was not one word about "The Ringworm Children" in any paper, or on the Internet! Had those deaths been by Ashkenazi Jews, an annual commemoration would have been featured in mainstream media and people worldwide would have heard of it just like in the case of holocaust.

4. Israel has had many instances of sending the wrong food to the occupied territories. On July 28,1997, the Washington Post reported, “There is substantial evidence that unscrupulous Israeli merchants, working in cahoots with Palestinian profiteers, sent tons of spoiled flour to the West Bank and Gaza last spring. And large quantities of canned baby food, shipped from Israel to Gaza under the label of the Milk Industries Group in Afula, Israel, turned out to be relabeled soy formula whose expiration date had passed.”


These examples should be a lesson and a reminder to Iraqis in general, particularly children under occupation, to never take medication, games, food or gifts from strangers even if they seem nice especially from US military personnel, never mind illegal organizations that mislead patients about even the core matter; the location of their medical treatment! Among the USA’s charities during the embargo on Iraq were many instances of donating expired food and medicine! That is how the industrial west and Israel operate with people from the world they call Third! Knowing that most of the patients who received medical treatment in Israel since 2007 have been Kurds, an extensive campaign to educate the Kurds and others in northern IRAQ about the aforementioned issues is a MUST if Iraqis want to avoid being exploited and to prevent the division of Iraq and the stealing of its resources!




Source:
1. Iraqi doctors and Asma al-Haidari in Jordan.
2. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3998990.ece
3. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/29/hatred-of-israel-cuts-deep-to-heart 4. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/915228.html
5. Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel+beyond+politics/Two%20Iraqi%20children%20to%20come%20to%20Israel%20%20for%20emergency%20heart%20surgery%2011-Oct-2007
6. ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3708320
7. GoogleVideo: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1943335450928651086
8. Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdjTL_43qQI
9. Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ePGEurQxE0
10. Yemenite Jewish Children Scandal:
· http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9302/ym.htm
· http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7109/623/g
· http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124705
11. Moroccan Ringworm Victims: http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-genocide-ringworm-children.html. Haaretz and other sources that covered this story have removed the report from the Internet, probably due to pressure! Other sources on Moroccan Victims: http://zennobia.blogspot.com/2005/04/series-what-zionists-have-done-to.html
http://booksinternationale.pbwiki.com/The+Ringworm+Children
12. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/mideast/july/28/gum2807.htm
13. Hanukkah Notes: http://zanjabeel-saffron.blogspot.com/2006/12/hanukkah-notes.html

14. Brothers Together Organization:

http://www.shevet.org/whoweare.html (registered under the name Chevet Achim-Self description of staff)

http://www.shevet.org/pdf/2006saform990.pdf (The organization's registration form 990)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/december9/17.24.html (Its history in Israel)
http://www.shevet.org/ (collecting donations with Iraqi children's faces)

(C) Copyright by Wafaa, 2008

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