[News] Israel's PR exploitation of Haiti aid

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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.



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