(Ha'aretz) Bradley Burston - I'd like to say a word of honor and thanks and, yes, pride for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives. They went there to save limbs from gangrene and amputation, stanch internal bleeding, relieve crushing pain. To deliver babies. To risk their lives, using jackhammers and hydraulics and their hands to make crawl spaces under tons of concrete and silt, going in themselves to pull children and adults to safety. For all the time that they've been working, however, people far away have been enraged by news reports of the Israeli rescue mission. The work of the Israeli medical team has become a kind of Rorschach for how people view Israel and Israelis. Most of the comment is supportive. But for a shocking number, the bottom line is simple: Israel, and Israelis, can do no right. The contention is that Israel sent aid to Haiti on purely cynical motives, harnessing public relations to divert attention from the Goldstone Report and other crises. The implication is that Israel, and Israelis, are constitutionally incapable of doing good for its own sake. It is nothing short of racism to maintain that Israelis can do no right.
2010-01-21 08:46:58Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive