[News] Israel's PR exploitation of Haiti aid
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Jan 25 15:26:48 EST 2010
Israel's PR exploitation of Haiti aid
Sarah Irving, The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11030.shtml
Despite logistical problems, the 12 January earthquake in Haiti has
seen much of the "international community" pull together to provide
food, doctors and other emergency aid for the already poverty-stricken country.
But the disaster has also provided apologists for the State of
Israel's human rights abuses an opportunity to try and grab high
moral ground. It was a chance remark by anti-Zionist Jewish comedian
Ivor Dembina that first alerted me to this. "There's this whole email
campaign going out, saying, 'Look at what Israel is doing, this is
what we mean by a disproportionate response,'" he commented while I
was interviewing him on 22 January for an Electronic Intifada article.
The email that Dembina mentions appears to trace back to Lynn Sharon,
an Israeli citizen who writes occasional short pieces on
English-language websites in Israel and churns out letters to the
country's newspapers. The claims it makes -- that "the Arab and
Muslim world" has donated "nothing" -- are demonstrably false, as
reports of donations and field assistance from Morocco, the United
Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia show.
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11021.shtml>Even
Palestinians in Gaza, living under Israeli blockade, have collected
donations for Haiti.
Sharon's article also opens with the disingenuous statement that
"Many countries and world leaders have accused Israel of responding
disproportionately to aggression from Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas
in Gaza." Few "countries and world leaders" have actually had the
courage to stand up and say any such thing, although many individuals
and organizations have. But the odd thing about this statement is
that it was former Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert who made the
phrase "disproportionate response" so iconic, in an attempt to appear
tough in front of hardline Israeli voters like Sharon herself.
"Disproportionate response" was, of course, the term Olmert following
Israel's attacks last winter in an attempt to win voter support
during last February's elections. It was a threat to Hamas that any
rockets fired would attract a repeat of the 22 days of death and
destruction that the Israeli military had just inflicted on Gaza. The
phrase "disproportionate response" became a byword for Israel's
insistence that it had a right to choose the scale of its military
actions against civilians, and for those actions to be on a
completely different scale of death and destruction than anything
Palestinian armed groups might inflict.
But the main thrust of Sharon's email, which was forwarded around
many list-serves and which has since been posted on blogs, news site
comment pages and as a "letter" to newspapers around the world, is
that "The US has sent supplies and personnel, Britain sent 64 firemen
and 8 volunteers, France sent troops for search and rescue. Many
large and wealthy nations of the world sent money. The Arab and
Muslim world -- nothing. Israel, a nation of 7.5 million people has
sent a team of 220 people that include medical personnel and has
established the largest field hospital in Haiti, treating up to 5,000
people a day, along with an experienced search and rescue team and
medical supplies."
The email then goes on to lambaste the United Nations, Judge Richard
Goldstone and anyone who criticizes Israel while letting other
countries accused of "crimes against their [sic] minorities," such as
"Sudan, China [and] Russia," off the hook.
According to analysis by foreign correspondent Catherine Philp in The
Times of London on 21 January, the paper was "flooded with identical
e-mails." The round-robin was incorporated into an article by Peggy
Shapiro on the widely-syndicated AmericanThinker site, which added
links to pages intended to support its argument. However, as of 25
January, the Guardian newspaper's statistics page it cited lists no
aid from Israel, but does include donations from the United Arab
Emirates and Morocco (Canada comes out way ahead in terms of dollars
donated per head of population). The carbon-copy email appears pasted
into the "comment" field of innumerable stories about help for Haiti,
especially ones reporting aid from Arab countries, such as an
extended feature on CNN's website.
On some Israeli and Zionist websites, the exploitation of the Haiti
tragedy for PR ends goes beyond the false "facts" of Lynn Sharon's
short article. Many cite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as
he conflates the wider Jewish community with the State of Israel by
declaring that "I think that this is in the best tradition of the
Jewish People; this is the true covenant of the State of Israel and
the Jewish People ... despite being a small country, we have
responded with a big heart." Commentators such as Arlene Kushner, a
self-proclaimed "expert on Middle East affairs," revel in the lack of
adequate medical care for earthquake survivors. "There apparently are
some other hospitals set up, but they are meager facilities," she
says, pleased to be able to claim that Israel had as of 18 January
established the only field hospital, despite the implications for the
sick and injured.
Mainstream reporting has also been touched by the Israeli propaganda.
Time magazine, Sky and Fox News, amongst others, have run footage or
features on the Israeli field hospital's work. This is, of course, as
legitimate a subject as any other part of the relief effort, and the
"disproportionate" coverage could be attributed to the fact that the
Israelis genuinely were one of the first teams on the ground
(although not the earliest: that claim goes to Cuba, the communist
state whose medical aid has been routinely written out of much
Western coverage).
The BBC was also notable for its coverage of the massive sums raised
from the British public for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC),
the coalition of UK nongovernmental organizations which pools
resources to prevent "competitive fundraising" in the event of a
major disaster. This was in marked contrast to the same time last
year, when the BBC determinedly refused to broadcast the DEC's appeal
for money to help the victims of Israel's bombing of Gaza. It was the
first time that the BBC had refused to air a DEC appeal since 1963.
A few media outlets have pointed out the discrepancies in Zionist
self-congratulation. The Times, in the same piece which noted the
slew of "identical" emails based on Lynn Sharon's article, also
highlighted the fact that at the same time that the Israeli role in
Haiti was being glorified, "Israel's image-burnishing efforts there
stand in marked contrast to the barriers it is now throwing up to the
same aid organizations it is sweating alongside in the rubble." Philp
was referring to the increasing denial by Israel of visas for aid and
development staff working in Palestine. The article was also one of
the few beyond news agencies or the pro-Palestinian press to mention
comments by Max Gaylard, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Palestine,
who stated that "We are deeply concerned about the current health
system in Gaza and in particular its capacity and ability to deliver
proper standards of health care to the people of Gaza ... This
adverse situation is not like Haiti. Haiti has been destroyed by an
earthquake. The circumstances [in Gaza] are entirely man-made and can
be fixed accordingly."
It is perhaps appropriate to give Ivor Dembina the closing comment on
this. "It's so cynical," he said of the Zionist email campaign.
"Zionists have realized that hate campaigns against their critics are
becoming ineffective, so they're going for positive PR, like this
whole thing about sending medical aid to Haiti. Obviously any help
Haiti is to be lauded, but it's such a transparent PR exercise -- if
they're so interested in helping people in humanitarian crises they
can go next door and help the people they've dropped bombs on."
<http://www.sarahirving.net>Sarah
Irving<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745330242&> is a
freelance writer from Manchester, UK. She worked with the
International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank in 2001-02 and
with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and
solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She now writes full-time on a range of
issues, including Palestine. Here first book,
<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745330242&>Gaza: Beneath
the Bombs, co-authored with Sharyn Lock, was published in January 2010.
Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977
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