Biggets threat to the west

Biggets threat to the west

Something bigger in the East

Are you planning to go to the territories under occupation? I ask, because I'd be interested to see what your thoughts were on some of the methods employed by the Israelis there in the name of security.

I've been at a conference on global health inequalities all weekend, and one of the sessions was run by a local medical ethicist and doctor who went to visit palestine and the occupied terroitories last year to investigate the state of healthcare provision.

These are intelligent and rational people, who were the first to acknowledge the threat of terrorism - indeed, they were in Tel Aviv when a bomb exploded in the bus station there. They described their outrage at some of the holocaust denial they encountered. They went to great pains to discuss the good work of some israeli organisations in the area. I absolutely do not think they could be in any way called anti-Semitic.

But they were scathing in their criticism of Israeli checkpoints, which is something I'd never really thought/heard about before. They found it impossible to plan times/journeys from the ever present possibility of a new random checkpoint, and they claim to have seen babies being born in the queue for these checkpoints and the women not allowed to pass in order to get the hospitals, and urgent blood transfusion services not allowed to pass. They pointed out that 30 health professionals in ambulances have been killed in the past few years in ambulances. They also described staying in Palestinian villages which had been recently walled off, with security towers sweeping the villages at night with bright lights.

They also visited the security wall and fencing, and in an entirely separate talk, the editor of the Lancet described his discomfort when he'd visited Palestine, and found that on Palestinian owned farmland, an electrified fence had been installed, along with signs warning of death to anyone who approached it - again, on Palestinian land without any consultation whatsoever.

None of them were in any doubt that we are witnessing a real and serious violation of human rights in the region, that should be at least partly avoidable. As they pointed out though, Israeli groups such as Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights, Jews for Justice in Palestine, the Israeli Commitee against House Demolitions are out there, and it is I find it disappointing that we do not hear more about their work.

It left me considering doing some voluntary work in the region at some point to see things for myself, and I would be extremely interested to see if you agreed with their assessment if you visit yourself

do you show the same concern about darfur?

fucking nazi.

did your medical experts fail to mention the thousands of Palestinian lives Israel saves every year.... if it weren't for the FREE health service Israeli offers Palestine (when the PA aren't blocking!) the death rates in Palestine would be unimaginable.

Yes they did. The majority of the weekend was around Africa; this was a one session sideline.

I was talking about your attention....

maybe israel shouldn't offer the palestinians any medical aid... we don't offer the French free healthcare!

? I signed several petitions this weekend for increasing aid to Africa, and have a history of giving where I can.

Maybe we shouldn't give aid to Africa by your reckoning?

there are many africans that don't want aid as it turns them into a charity state... but thats a different issue.

you vociferously oppose the israeli regime on this site... you've rarely raised human rights issues with any other states... I find it disapointing that you criticise a nation that spends millions (if not billions) on healthcare for the Palestinians and you single them out for human rights violations.

shame on you.

I don't accept that for a second and nor will anyone else.

I'm hugely supportive of health provision in the developing world, you'll find my name on numerous petitions regarding this throughout the world, and plenty of sponsored events for Make Poverty History etc.

The only reason I raise this issue on here in particular is because I know of not one person who does not oppose the dismal healthcare provision of Africa. I know of noone who supports states supporting human rights abuses in China. I can't think of anyone campaigning for keeping the death penalty in the US. Noone thinks the attitude of Saudi to women is justifiable.

I suspected, however, that you would entirely supportive of Israeli military action in Palestine regardless of the consequences to the civilian populace there. I wanted to know if you were going, as I'll be interested to see if it changes your mind. It's very clear that the 3 people I mentioned first who visited left shocked and appalled at what they had witnessed.

You seem an impassioned petition signer Andy. Keep up the good work God bless you.

About the best you can say petitions is that they may be fractionally better than nothing and probably don't hurt.

More and more UK medics are doing voluntary work in areas of human rights abuses though, might consider it in a few years. One of the guys who'd been is spending a month of his leave in Palestine next summer he was so shocked.

they should all be bombed

shot or tortured even the women ( who give birth 2 terrorist )

kids who grow 2 be terrorists

Andy Israel spends millions on Palestinian health in fact they had their efforts recognised when 2 hospitals were nominated for nobel peace prizes!

I can't think of another war in which one side has continuelly jumped to the aid of their enemies civilian population... the check points are there for security purposes... we can't get rid of them its a fucking warzone... but to say that the health system is a disgrace is shocking... we even nurse failed suicide bombers back to health!

I don't know for how much is spent, and I'm not sure if provision was cut when palestinian aid was multilaterally cut last year, but I applaud any efforts to improve provision of health care, and support efforts to improve it further

I think you do have to accept that the checkpoints are not helping the health situation - one recent study by a Danish group recently suggested that 18% of emergency department admissions were delayed specifically because of the checkpoints. Even if the checkpoints must remain, efforts could be made to make them quicker, and the process of getting permission from Israel to skip the queue for long term medical conditions could be faster - it currently stands at several months for these applications to be approved. It can't be right that pregnant women are being turned away from checkpoints because the soldiers on it think they're just fat and only allowed across when the baby is half way delivered. (apparently a true story)

I'm not sure if Newcastle is hosting this conference next year, but if we are and the session is run again then you would be more than welcome to come along and present the other side of this - I mentioned to the people involved that there would be people who would disagree with their conclusions, and they entirely agreed and said that they hadn't been able to find anyone to do so for the event.

I'm not doubting that the checkpoints slow healthcare down... however the checkpoints are the consequence of an intafada waged by the Palestinian people.... This is not comparable to the border between scotland and england... we're ina full scale war!

There are checkpoints in every warzone....I don't get what you're proposing as an alternative?

for you andy:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhWgZu6tcZU"]YouTube- Banned Speech: The UN Council That Created the Goldstone Report[/ame]

Let me know what you think after you've seen what's going on in Palestine; as I say, everyone who spoke on the issue at the weekend was appalled at what they had witnessed, and I do not think you can simply dismiss them as Nazi's on the basis that they think what they had witnessed 'wrong'.

Indeed, the active support of policies that lead to the denial of liberty, the denial of the right to self governance, the impingement of rights to property and prosperity to a people is something far far closer to what I understand by 'Nazism'.

I mentioned the entirely rightful repugnance of holocaust denial above, but didn't explain the context. It was not based on new documentary evidence, it was from a Palestinian man who the ethicist met - his wife had been killed by someone from an Israeli settlement taking pot shots on to the Palestinian land where she had been working. He could not understand how a people subjected to such wrongs in the past could be responsible for an occupation that led to such suffering in the present.

There is nothing anti-Semitic about the opposition of Israeli government policy and military tactics, any more than it is racist to oppose the policies and foreign policy of the US and the UK. I outlined above my staunch support for several Jewish groups - are they 'Nazis' too?

The UN has filed a number of human rights petitions against Israel, I think I posted a list of what they were for a while back, and I don't remember thinking any of them seemed particularly unreasonable. I do remember thinking that many of them had been ignored.

It is quite right that scrutiny on human rights exists, for all nations. There may be disproportionately many on Israel - if this is the case, provided the cases are valid, then that means that scrutiny should be increased on other nations, not that the world should turn a blind eye to violations in the middle east. Is it right that scrutiny is higher upon the developed world? No, standards should be identical - but one might reasonably expect Britain, or France, or Israel to be more willing and more able to respond to calls to end a human rights abuse by its soldiers than would terrorists in Darfur, or the government of North Korea.

You asked how I'd suggest improving the situation. In the short term, there needs to be a review of the necessity of road blocks, and where they are necessary then they should be sufficiently staffed to allow people to pass at reasonable speed, reducing inconvenience - 8 hour queues for a 1 day roadblock are simply not good enough. The process for medical dispensation needs to be sped up - the limiting factor is beurocracy on the Israeli side, and I would have thought that waiting a week or 2 for a permit to pass because of a medical condition would be more acceptable than the 3-4 months it apparently takes now.

In the medium term, there needs to be acceptance of the right of the Palestinian people to self determination and their own state - I've never known if you're one of the Zionists who opposes a Palestinian state altogether? I've always thought that a pretty indefensible position.

Visit the occupied territories and speak to the Palestinians there about what the occupation means to their daily lives. I am sure it is possible to reduce the number of violations of human rights that occur whilst taking the appropriate steps against terror and ensuring Israeli security.

You're a snake andy.

I didn't open a debate on whether human rights have been violated in Palestine, I'm positive they have (like they have in ANY 100 year conflict; be it the British in Ireland or the Amercans in Iraq) ... I opened the dialogue to discuss the obvious antisemitism/anti-Zionism within the UN.

There have been countless occassions where the Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrian, Lebanese have turned on the Palestinian civilians and commited sicken human rights violations; the arab states, the UN & the world remained silent as it wasn't Israel carrying out these crimes.

The Arab world and UN does not care for the lives of the Palestine... it is focused on driving the Jews into the sea.

Instead of evading the question.... why not admit their is a sickening bias within the UN which needs to be addressed.

Yeah, well I did open the debate on human rights abuses, as thats what I'd heard about.

I'm not a spokesman for the UN, and I have no particular affiliation to them, but I do think that you're far too quick to cry 'anti-Semite!!!!!'

The sum total of my study on the subject is reading a list of the things the UN had tried to pass resolutions on, and I couldn't see anything that seemed particularly justifiable.

As I say, if there are disproportionately many against Israel, then that means increasing scrutiny elsewhere, not giving Israel or any other country a quota of rights abuses it may perpetrate each year.

you're like a politician....