In following the world’s media, one gets the impression that the Israelis are doing nothing much to help the Gazan Palestinians in their hour of need.
In their “hour of need,” however, the Hamas terrorist group still can make room for continuing intermittently to shoot rockets into Israel. And at the beginning of April, the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, demanded that Israel furnish his group with ventilators and threatened that “If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis.”
That’s not the best way to behave toward a possible benefactor.
Meanwhile, Israel has transferred to Gaza 200 testing kits (each capable of testing 100 people) on March 13, and another 500 testing kits to Gaza on March 20, as well as 1,000 PPE (masks, gloves, hospital gowns) from its own stores.
Israel has also sent a PCR machine to Shifa Hospital in Gaza, that will serve to double the rate of tests carried out in the Strip. In early April Israel announced that it was also prepared to send ventilators to Gaza, if Hamas were willing to release the four Israelis – two soldiers and two civilians –whom it continues to hold. In addition to what it sent to Gaza, Israel has sent to the PA in the West Bank 1,000 protective suits for medical teams, and 100 liters of sanitizer gel. On March 25, an additional 3,000 test kits and 50,000 masks from the World Health Organization (WHO) were delivered by Israel to the PA.
Of course, none of these deliveries of equipment supplied by Israel itself, or delivered by Israel on behalf of the WHO, have had any discernible effect on the campaign by both Hamas and the PA to blame Israel both for starting the coronavirus outbreak among the Palestinians and for worsening it as well. It’s a crazy charge: Israel has an obvious stake in limiting the spread of the outbreak in Gaza and the PA territories, because its own citizens will be further at risk for contamination by their Palestinian neighbors. Typical of the outrageous claims made against Israel are those by Ibrahim Milhem, a spokesman for the PA, who on March 29 charged that Israeli soldiers had been spitting on Palestinians and contaminating ATM machines to purposely infect them with the coronavirus.
“The [Israeli] settlers are natural and exclusive agents for the coronavirus epidemic,” Milhem said. “They spread it through their touch and their racist and barbaric behavior that they are exhibiting toward the [Palestinian] citizens.”
Also on March 29, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh alleged that Israeli soldiers “are trying to spread the virus on car handles. This is racism and hatred of people who long for the death of the other. We will record this in the list of [Israel’s] crimes.”
So Israelis deliberately “touch” Palestinians; somehow “their racist and barbaric behavior” helps to spread the virus; they “spit on Palestinians”; they contaminate ATM machines (where? In Gaza, where there are no Israelis? In Israel, where other Israelis might use those machines?) to “purposely infect [the Palestinians] with the coronavirus”; they even “spread the virus on car handles.” The malevolence of the Jews is once again demonstrated in this coronavirus outbreak. Never mind that they have delivered, in March alone, from Israel’s own stocks, and from the WHO, at least 4,700 thousand test kits, 50,000 face masks, and thousands of protective suits to the Palestinians. What Milhem and Shtayyeh also fail to mention is that Israel has been training Palestinian medical personnel – doctors and nurses – to deal with coronavirus patients. Some have been trained at a facility set up at the Erez Crossing. Another group was allowed to leave Gaza for training at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon; medical staff from both sides have held conference calls together. And despite all this, the Palestinian spokesmen, both for Hamas and the P.A., continue to insist that Israelis are deliberately spreading the virus in Gaza and the West Bank. The U.N., ordinarily so critical of Israel, sees things differently. Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, has praised the coordination between the Israeli and Palestine authorities in reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, in April, Israel continues to help the Palestinians, this time with a mass testing lab.
Al-Monitor carried the story here:
The Gaza Strip has run out of coronavirus test kits but will soon have a new laboratory capable of conducting as many as 3,000 tests a day. Gaza Health Ministry Undersecretary Youssef Abu al-Rish said the 300-square-meter (3,229-square-foot) lab is expected to be assembled and equipped by April 16. The lab will be a joint effort of Beijing Genomics Institute and Israel’s AID Genomics.
Ayman al-Halabi, the labs department director at the Gaza Health Ministry, spoke with Al-Monitor, stressing the need for this laboratory, particularly since the ministry’s main lab in Gaza ran out of testing kits April 8. Since early 2020, the World Health Organization had supplied the Gaza Strip with 192 kits, with each pack able to perform 96 tests, including one kit from the Health Ministry in the West Bank, he said.
How many stories will there be in the Western media about this lab capable of the mass testing — 3,000 tests a day — that is now set up in the Gaza Strip? And of those stories, how many will bother to point out that the laboratory is a joint effort of Beijing Genomics Institute and Israel’s AID Genomics? And will anyone at all, on the Palestinian side, recognize this testing lab as a significant contribution by Israel to helping the Palestinians deal with the coronavirus outbreak? No Palestinian spokesman has ever thanked Israel for sending its own testing kits, PPE (masks, gloves, hospital gowns), or other medical equipment, both to Gaza and to the Palestinian territories, or for delivering similar equipment supplied by the WHO. Nor has any Palestinian spokesman expressed gratitude for Israeli help in training medical personnel from Gaza, nor noted the PCR machine, an advanced medical device used to detect coronavirus, that Israel delivered to the Gaza Strip in mid-April.
But several such spokesmen, both for Hamas and for the PA, have accused Israel of deliberately spreading the coronavirus among the Palestinians by spitting on them, or by coating ATM machines, and car door handles, with spittle. We all know such charges are absurd, though not for the BDS brigade that will always believe the worst about Israel. Israel’s desire to help its Palestinian neighbors is not just the product of a charitable impulse, but undertaken as well in order to prevent the spread of the disease back into Israel itself from Gaza and the PA territories. Even if recognizing Israel’s help sticks in the craw of Palestinians, could they not at least make a small effort at decency, by ceasing to make those preposterous charges about Israelis malevolently spreading the virus in Gaza and the West Bank?
Boromir's Horn says
It’s easy to understand why the muslims would feel this way, because that’s exactly what they would do.
gravenimage says
Yes–nothing but projection.
roberta says
It was reported that the USA has also given the Paleez 5 millon usd to fight the virus.
If these gifts were for ”humanitarian” purposes, it is a mistake by both Israel and the USA in my opinion.
The world is better off if the paleez are stewing in their own broth. They ”paleez” have proven this time and time again. They punish all good deeds.
I dont want them dead, I want them to be forced to join civilization. Coddling this bastards just does not help convince them that it is in their best interest.
islam is a sickness
mortimer says
Disagree. Islam is not literally a sickness, but it is a type of self-hypnosis. Hyperbole confuses our minds. Islam uses lots of hyperbole.
gfmucci says
Unfortunately, some of us in the US have a similar concern about items sent to the US from China.
mortimer says
SHOE-ON-THE-OTHER-FOOT TEST :
swap the word ‘Palestinian’ with ‘German’ to test if Milhem’s statement is genocidal …
Quote: “The [Israeli] settlers are natural and exclusive agents for the coronavirus epidemic,” Milhem said. “They spread it through their touch and their racist and barbaric behavior that they are exhibiting toward the [Palestinian] citizens.”
Swapped: “The Jews of Europe are natural and exclusive agents for the TYPHUS epidemic,” Goebbels said. “They spread it through their touch and their racist and barbaric behavior that they are exhibiting toward the GERMAN citizens.”
gravenimage says
Good point, Mortimer.
Lilith Weot says
Insert the word “ Moslem” “ for “Israeli “ and you have….the truth!
Frank Anderson says
I consider Dale Carnegie a collector and organizer of great wisdom. Of 22 years I have spent in classrooms as a student, the 16 weeks in the Dale Carnegie course may have helped me more than any other course or possibly degree. Among his teachings, was “Expect Ingratitude”.
Why would any person who has read at least ONE book on islam expect a muslim to extend gratitude or appreciation to a sub-human kafir for any “good deed”? It is not a “good deed” to a muslim: It is their right to plunder and force non-believers to support them while the sub-humans suffer.
mortimer says
Excellent reasoning.
Anyone who cannot negotiate or speak is not much better than a slave. Kafirs are not permitted to either negotiate with the Muslim overlords or express a grievance against discriminatory Sharia law. That is what the Armenians did in the Ottoman Empire and consider their fate. Muslims cannot tolerate complaints about Islam.
Here is the major part of our problem. Only 2% of our Western people have read a book on Islam. Most of them don’t read books. They are too busy texting. They get all their news about Islam by observation of Westernized Muslims and from whitewashed news scrubbed of any negativity about Islam.
Negative news about Islam seems to be the only thing that opens the minds of people to learn more about jihadism. We should all become teachers, learning rote formulas to quickly describe the problem of jihad. For instance: “Jihad is Mohammed’s method for expanding Islamic political rule. Jihad can be peaceful as well as military.”
Frank Anderson says
Mortimer, as with many subjects we agree. I can point to more or less a dozen high school classmates that I have talked into reading at least the first chapter of one book, Spencer’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, and more who read Gabriel’s Unfinished Battle. It can be done with patience. Once the first chapter is read, all seemed to have read the entire books.
Ray Jarman says
Frank & Mortimer,
I agree with both of you and especially about people not reading books. Just sit down in a barber shop, a servicing center, doctor’s office or other waiting areas and everyone is looking down at their phones in which most are playing some game and they look at me with my book like I am the strange one. It is amazing that with so much information available, people are more ignorant today than thirty or forty years ago.
Frank Anderson says
Ray, with my classmates, some of whom go back with me to 1955, I got the reading started by listening to them talk, and then asking a few questions about what they knew, and then because we meet every month buying a book and passing it around. All I asked was to read the first chapter. If they did not want to read further, I would not fuss. Every one read the book before passing it on. NOW they know instead of feeling. I would definitely place Warner’s Abridged Koran second in order if I had it to do over. All three are to me the finest introductory sources I can identify. This is one way to “light candles”.
James Lincoln says
Ray Jarman says,
“It is amazing that with so much information available, people are more ignorant today than thirty or forty years ago.”
Very true, Ray.
Say, 40 years ago, we had much less information available but it was of much higher quality. Journalists of top publications, for the most part, conducted due diligence and were held to high standards.
Back in the day, you could be fairly well informed regarding US and world events if you read, for instance:
The Wall Street Journal.
The New York Times.
Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report.
CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite.
The MacNeil/Lehrer Report.
And there were others.
NO MORE.
Just think about it:
Websites like Jihad Watch are necessary because the mainstream media is not conducting due diligence in their reporting. They even purposely lie by commission or omission to suit a leftist narrative.
Jihad Watch, and others like it, fill a gaping hole that the current mainstream media totally avoids – or totally misreports…
gravenimage says
Sadly this tends to be true, Ray and James.
Lilith Wept says
Have you read “ It’s all about Muhammed” by FW Burleigh? It’s one of the best biographies of Mohammed I’ve come across. The author doesn’t believe in Islam but unlike the other biographies I’ve read, he doesn’t make Mohammed out to be a saint or the antichrist . He lets the Islamic sources tell the story and they do an excellent job of demonizing Mohammed!
The Hadith are dense and repetitive and the majority of people aren’t going to read them. But, IMO, you need to understand Mohammed’s life , because he invented Islam, his lust for power and revenge are what made islam the awful ideology that it is.
And how can you understand the Koran, the difference between the Mecca period, and the Medina period , the concept of abrogation, how his own kin reconized him as a faker and a fraud, and the horrible things Mohammed did , unless you understand Mohammed’s life and what happened during his life?
Mohammed is the basis , the cornerstone .
So I recommend “ It’s All About Mohammed” . It’s a easy read and jts entertaining ( horrifying but entertaining) .
There’s Craig Winn “ Prophet of Doom” but the Christian slant will turn off some people. It is available as an online e book, which makes it easier for phone obsessed people…..And after reading Prophet of Doom many times now, I’ve discovered Winn made some errors, in his enthusiasm to convict Islam. Minor errors but still, enough to bother me .
I do recommend Prophet of Doom to Christians I’m trying to talk to about Islam, but I also recommend Burleighs book too, as it’s shorter and an easier read.
gravenimage says
I’ll check out those recommendations, Lilith.
James Lincoln says
Frank Anderson,
I also too took the Dale Carnegie course, 100% agree.
I was in the bookstore back in the 1990s and stumbled upon a book called “Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life in School–But Didn’t ” by Peter McWilliams.
Loaded with pearls, some of which I had not found anywhere else…
Ray Jarman says
James,
I would add to your list of missing information sources the “Encyclopedia Britannica” where I would as a kid look up a certain subject and become fascinated with the other subjects on the page. This cannot be experienced using online outlets which is a real shame. I am glad you mentioned MacNeil/Lehrer which I remember watching as a teenager.
James Lincoln says
Ah yes, Ray – the Encyclopedia Britannica!
I would spend hours reading it…
James Lincoln says
The so-called “palestinians” will hate the Israelis no matter what they do.
Hate, hate, hate – no matter what.
Maybe the Israelis should reconsider their benevolence…
Kerry Wade says
Yes, personally what they are doing is akin to handing a criminal the means to commit crime. Its suicidal and indicative of a lack of foresight. Do they really want to keep their enemy healthy? Its not compassion its aiding their own enemies.
DHazard says
Muslims could learn a thing or two from studying how the Jews turned their little patch of rock and sand, that nobody really wanted, into a thriving, bountiful country. They won’t. It’s too hard and requires planning and cooperation. Even the oil rich Muslim countries hire non-Muslim outsiders for all their construction projects and changing diapers.
gravenimage says
Israel Sends Medical Gear to Palestinians, Palestinians Accuse Israel of Spreading Coronavirus Among Them
……………..
No good deed, etc etc
God, I hate Islam.
notnolib says
Nothing but disgusting moon-god worshiping toodle-heads.