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Monday, January 18, 2010

From the Israeli MFA: Israeli aid arrives in Haiti, field hospital set up

...The Israeli delegation landed in the capital of Port-Au-Prince on Friday evening (15 January) and established its operation center in a soccer field near the airport.

Two teams, comprised of search and rescue personnel and canine operators from the IDF canine unit were sent out on rescue missions. The first team was sent to the Haiti UN headquarters in order to assist in rescuing survivors. The rescue teams are working in cooperation with local authorities in order to reach disaster struck areas where survivors can be located and assisted...

Video and photos at the link.

The Israeli hospital is the largest so far set up:

The Forward writes: In Haiti, a Poignant Rescue Mission Amid 'We Love Israel' Cheers

Here's video of a new baby...his name is Israel:

The Israeli MFA has a Flickr stream, here.

isrealinhaiti.jpg

On Sunday night (17 January) a resident of Port-au-Prince gave birth to a son at the Israeli field hospital. As a token of appreciation and gratitude, his mother decided to name him Israel in honor of the country that helped her. (Photofeed: IDF)

Americans are reminded that the Red Cross web site is here.

Amazing video from CNN(!):

CBS (or is it Sky? Description says CBS, video says Sky):

10 Comments

Here's more:

Video:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=9591907

Text:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/haiti-earthquake-mother-delivers-baby-disaster-zone/story?id=9587264

Stories like this are very moving especially in the midst of such a disaster.

But - what scares me as much as the earthquake is the future.

Haiti and places similarly poor and afflicted won't magically disappear once the cameras turn away. This mother's story - the high maternal and infant mortality rate - is not uncommon. People are hungry all over the world and there doesn't seem to be a rational plan to deal, long range, with human and environmental catastrophe. We couldn't even cope well with Hurricane Katrina and that afflicted a major American city.

If ever there was a time to refocus our efforts on humanitarian causes, find a way to talk to each other and work together in spite of our differences, it's now.

I was sick and saddened this morning to read, in counterpoint to the Haiti disaster and the heartwarming stories of international cooperation, a massive attack on a market building in Kabul.

People are capable of such goodness. What can we do to tip the balance in favor of life?

The US isnt doing to badly either.

What a clever ploy! Imagine Israel sending all those doctors, nurses and EMT's to Haiti just to harvest organs!

And the US is using this crisis to extend its imperial military control of the country and its vast resources!

Belgian's stay true to form...

Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Earthquake victims, writhing in pain and grasping at life, watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after a Belgian medical team evacuated the area, saying it was concerned about security.

The decision left CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta as the only doctor at the hospital to get the patients through the night.

CNN initially reported, based on conversations with some of the doctors, that the United Nations ordered the Belgian First Aid and Support Team to evacuate. However, Belgian Chief Coordinator Geert Gijs, a doctor who was at the hospital with 60 Belgian medical personnel, said it was his decision to pull the team out for the night. Gijs said he requested U.N. security personnel to staff the hospital overnight, but was told that peacekeepers would only be able to evacuate the team.

He said it was a "tough decision" but that he accepted the U.N. offer to evacuate after a Canadian medical team, also at the hospital with Canadian security officers, left the site Friday afternoon. The Belgian team returned Saturday morning.

Israelis should not feel proud, says Akiva Eldar, in this article.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143313.html

Can anyone count the many lies contained in his report?

What a schmuck.

He said it was a "tough decision" but that he accepted the U.N. offer to evacuate after a Canadian medical team, also at the hospital with Canadian security officers, left the site Friday afternoon.

Yes, like so much European UN involvement whether in Rwanda , whatever, they always evacuated.

I think it was on CNN that the reporter was commenting on the quality equipment the Israelis have in their field hospital for surgery etc., and said something to the effect and they brought it from the other side of the world.

(That sh***y little country!!)

Noga,

I suppose he has to copy Plocker on YNET
What about Gaza?

and the stupid git writes
Hence, a truly powerful reason is required for stretching our resources all the way to Haiti, when many children in Gaza, a driving distance from central Israel, require urgent hospitalization.
forgetting completely that the hospital the Israelis set up in Gaza had to be removed and replaced by a Jordanian field hospital because Hamas wouldn't permit the people there to have access to the Israeli mission.

More on the Israeli hospital from CNN:

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/01/more_on_the_israeli_field_hosp.php

Thanks to Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic.

As to the situation in Gaza - there's no real equivalence is there yet people are trying to create one.

Clearly the situation in Gaza requires a lot of work, a lot of help. As neighbors Israel and Egypt could both do more I think, though Egypt is very poor and Israel is threatened - actually maybe both states are threatened - by extremists. This includes at least one Israeli hospital which was treating a woman from Gaza, who tried to blow it up. Egyptians have been injured and even killed by people from Gaza, and other extremists, on more than one occasion.

I don't think though that locking people into Gaza is a tenable solution to the problems of the people there. It's time to start considering real alternatives.

Regardless - trying to say that Gaza = Haiti is absurd. It totally overlooks both the scope and scale of the Haitian tragedy and the state of war between Gaza and Israel which is completely unnecessary.

It's a choice, it was a choice after the Israeli evacuation of Gaza, for that matter warfare was a choice in 1948. But to continue a war against Israeli civilians but also to destroy valuable infrastructure in Gaza, to put money and effort into war rather than building a state and creating an economy after the Israeli withdrawal was just a sin.

I have never been comfortable with certain aspects of the Israeli government's reaction to the Gaza situation. The election of Hamas wasn't good but the people of Gaza are still human beings and I do think there were some poor choices made after the withdrawal, perhaps a softer approach would have been more productive over the long term.

However, that still leaves the hardcore anti-Israel groups and individuals. I was talking to a friend last night about Ireland (she's Irish), who pointed out that The Troubles lasted for hundreds of years and also that truces and peaceful conditions were often completely shattered by a few individuals who decided to blow something up.

Even under the best of circumstances and with goodwill on the part of a large majority it was still impossible to create a real peace and it's still very fragile, there are signs of nascent unrest even now.

So - could more be done to protect and help the children of Gaza by Israel? Perhaps - maybe even probably - but the government of and militant groups within Gaza, which have continuously refused to try and make peace with Israel, bear responsiblity also, and also must deal with the fact that attacks on Israeli civilians have brought harm to Gaza.

Had those attacks not occurred the situation would be completely different.

This isn't even including the civil warfare, violence and oppression within Gaza which has also hurt a lot of people. In this Israel cannot be held responsible, period.

More than a week after the earthquake, our wonderful military hospital ship USN Comfort finally arrived in Haiti this morning, bringing much-needed relief for the overburdened medical facilities already on the scene. However, to paraphrase NBC's Nightly News, Israel's rapid, competent response is the gold standard for how to respond quickly to a major catastrophe, creating the not only the first field hospital in Haiti, within 48 hours of the quake, but the best field medicine available: How to help quake victims.

For some perspective on Haiti, check out Bill Whittle, Cliff May and Col. Austin Bay on PJTV's National Security Review: The Manmade Disaster in Haiti.

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