Palestinsk sjukvård och israelisk propaganda

I februari i år publicerade Richard Horton, läkare, författare till ett flertal böcker om modern medicin och chefredaktör för den tunga medicinska tidskriften The Lancet, efter ett besök i Palestina en artikel i tidskriften The New York Review of Books om krisen inom den palestinska hälso- och sjukvården under ockupation.

Det är en lång artikel, väl värd att skriva ut och läsa.

Back at Beit Hanoun Hospital, Dr. Suliman is still learning the lessons from some of the most recent vio-lent Israeli incursions into Gaza. In November 2006, following armed clashes between Palestinians and Israelis, he faced an incident that few pediatricians could have trained for. A little boy, no more than five years old, was rushed into the ER alive, but with charred lower limbs, a badly burned head, and loops of intestine hanging out of his burst abdomen. He had been the victim of Israeli shelling. The medical and surgical teams struggled to resuscitate him. At first, the young boy was conscious, moving his head from side to side. But after five days, he died.

[...]

There is now abundant well-documented evidence that Israeli policies have harmed Palestinians suffering life-threatening illnesses, including women who need twenty-four-hour access to hospital care. Patients with cancer have endured insulting indignities when trying to seek specialist treatment. Studies of perinatal and infant mortality show that checkpoints and military barriers frequently obstruct women seeking care during critical periods of labor and delivery. Israeli doctors do not to intervene in person to assist free movement of those in need of medical attention.

Som alltid när staten Israels övergrepp får en konkret beskrivning i medierna, har Hortons artikel mötts av en strid ström av kritiska repliker. Tidskriften har tagit in ett svar av Yair Amikam från det israeliska hälsoministeriet. Horton svarar i samma nummer. Det är ett glimrande svar, med en befriande självklarhet i sitt ställningstagande. Man önskar att fler vågade se, vågade berätta det de ser. Läs det!

Mr. Amikam's letter displays the now notorious propagandizing tactics used by other spokesmen for the Israeli government. He relies on the hope that most readers of The New York Review will not have visited Gaza and the West Bank. He trusts that non-Israeli and non-Palestinian readers will be skeptical of the deprivation and hardship that visitors repeatedly and consistently report. Israel is, after all, a prosperous and successful democracy. Surely Israel could not possibly allow such endemic poverty to persist within its neighbor, a neighbor whose land it largely occupies and controls? This systematic effort to mislead is part of Israel's campaign to manufacture a state of disbelief over the reality of life in Gaza and the West Bank. Only when one sees the tight networks of heavily armed Israeli checkpoints can one begin to understand how the Israeli occupation is choking life out of Palestinian communities; only when one walks through Gazan streets can one feel the tension brought about by Israel's military lockdown of this scarred ribbon of land; and only when one speaks with ordinary Palestinians in their homes can one sense the fear and hopelessness that occupation has rooted in Palestinian lives.

[...]

Israel's response to descriptions of Palestinian life appearing in the Western press is well known and well orchestrated. A network of correspondents is activated to discredit the offending writer and publication. For example, when my article appeared in The New York Review, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) sent a summary of the essay, together with tendentious rebuttals, to its "e-mail team," asking them to write to the editors and publishers of the Review to "repudiate the erroneous and biased account of Palestinian medical care." This call to action was sent out as a "CAMERA Alert." Steven Stotsky, a research analyst for CAMERA, asked correspondents to blind-copy their replies to the committee. A flurry of similarly worded e-mails then arrived at the New York offices of the Review.