Two types of disasters

My guest for to-day: Gideon Levy

What would have happened, heaven forbid, if the tsunami had struck the coast of the Gaza Strip? It’s a safe guess that Israel would have gone out of its way to proffer aid. Aid delegations would have left immediately for Gaza via the Erez checkpoint. Physicians, medicines and blankets would have made their way to Jabalya refugee camp and military correspondents would have reported from there with pride about the humanitarian operation mounted by the Israel Defense Forces. Every Palestinian child pulled from the ruins would have received deeply felt coverage in the media, hotels in Tel Aviv would have competed in making offers of shelter to those left homeless by the disaster and Channel 2 would have organized a marathon to raise funds for the new refugees.
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How many children killed

Two articles on the same subject – thanks Ruben.

(translated by TOI-staff from Yediot Aharonot)
Confirmed and confessed, B. Michael
Yediot Aharonot, 15/10/2004

Between Sept 29 and Oct 15, fifteen days in all, I killed thirty children. Two children per day.
Two dead children per day is more or less four bereaved parents per day. Why more or less? Because some of them were brothers. So, two dead children for one pair of bereaved parents. Perhaps that’s better, because these parents are bereaved anyway, so they are just bereaved twice, and another pair of parents is released from being bereaved. But perhaps it is less good, because to be bereaved is worse than being dead, and being twice bereaved is twice worse than being dead. So I don’t really know what to decide. Lees verder

One Out of Every Nine

Een artikel van Gideon Levy, opgestuurd door Trees

One out of every nine women gets breast cancer. There are doctors who say that statistic has worsened lately and now stands at one out of every eight. The disease is particularly violent in younger women and the primary growth in the breast spreads rapidly to the liver, the lungs, the bones and the brain. Is there anything worse than being a young woman with cancer whose chances are slim? It turns out that there is – being a young Palestinian woman with cancer whose chances are slim.
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Fatma

Fatma Barghout is 28. Ze heeft kanker. Ze is een van de 11 kinderen van een wiskundeleraar die zijn brood verdiende met lesgeven in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabië. Tien jaar geleden kwamen de kinderen terug naar Gaza. Ze kregen geen identiteitskaarten omdat hun ouders op dat moment niet in Gaza waren. Ze kwamen Gaza binnen op een bezoekersvisum voor een maand dat nu al vele jaren verlopen is. Nu horen ze bij de tienduizenden Palestijnen die geen enkele papieren hebben, geen paspoort, geen identiteitsbewijs, geen voorlopige verblijfsvergunning, niets.

Fatma met haar moeder
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Hussam

Opeens maken wij Israëli’s ons zorgen over Palestijnse kinderen, schrijft Gideon Levy. Nu het een jongen is, Hussam Bilal Abdu, 16 jaar, die bij een checkpoint is gepakt met een riem met explosieven om zijn lichaan gebonden. Maar het lot van Palestijnse kinderen raakt ons alleen als het ons uitkomt, als het in ons belang is, en als wij het niet gedaan hebben.

Hussam

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