No Israeli Good Deed Goes Unpunished
It’s been years since Israel has had such a good public relations week. The Jewish State established the first field hospital in Haiti after the earthquake. Nathan Guttman reported for the Jewish national weekly newspaper, The Forward,
Three days after the earthquake, Port au-Prince’s general hospital was of little help to the sick and injured seeking care. Dozens stood outside the closed facility, where guards kept them from entering. Medical treatment – if wrapping a crushed limb in bandages and sending the patient off qualifies as medical treatment – was given outside, on the pavement amidst shouts and weeping.
The Israeli hospital, located on the grounds of a soccer field near the city’s airport provided a much different experience. Although its wards were no more than army tents with folding beds, the field hospital has advanced surgical facilities, X-ray and imagery machines, and a full staff of professional doctors and nurses from Israel’s top military and civilian hospitals.
The assembled press from around the world has been impressed. A CNN report on the hospital has been widely distributed on the Internet by organizations that support Israel. 'I’m just amazed,' the CNN reporter, Elizabeth Cohen, declares in the story. 'This is another world,' she says, in comparing the Israeli facility favorably to another makeshift hospital. Later in the piece she asks how it could be that the United States did not set up such a hospital while the Israelis 'came from around the world.'
“In Europe, Israel’s image is defined by the Goldstone Report [a highly controversial UN Report authored by South African judge Richard Goldstone in which Israel was accused committing war crimes in last year’s war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza], so news items like those coming from Haiti can definitely help change that image,” an Israeli official told Guttman. But Guttman is skeptical about its aid to Haiti having anything but a short-term impact on Israel’s image.
“The last time positive news reports about Israel peaked was in August 2005, during its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. That attitude was short-lived and eventually gave way to widespread criticism over Israel’s policy in Gaza.” Similarly, “During the first Gulf War in 1992, public diplomacy experts marveled at the outpouring of international sympathy for Israel while it was under attack by Iraqi missiles. Shortly after, however, Washington did not hesitate to pressure Israel in agreeing to attend the Madrid peace conference.”
To understand much of why Israel so quickly falls out of favor, one just has to look of the reaction of two of the country’s own columnists to Israel’s efforts to help Haiti. Larry Derfner wrote in his Jerusalem Post column:
The Israel field hospital in Haiti is a reflection of something very deep in the national character. But so is something that is summed up in the word Gaza. It’s the Haiti side of Israel that makes the Gaza side so inexpressibly tragic. And more and more the Haiti part of the national character is being dwarfed by the Gaza part. Gaza too is a matter of life and death – not just for the people who were trapped in the rubble there not long ago, but for Israel. When will this big hearted-nation stop being heartless to the people of Gaza.
Similarly, in Israel’s most prestigious daily Ha’aretz, Akiva Eldar wrote, “A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint [between Gaza and Israel] prevented 17 people from passing through in order to get to Ramallah [in the West Bank] for urgent corneal transplant surgery.” Then Eldar adds wryly, “Perhaps they voted for Hamas.”
Of course, there is one big difference between the Haitians and the Arab residents of Gaza. The Haitians have not conducted a hundred year war to kill and wound Jews and Israelis in Palestine as well as Jews in the rest of the Arab world. The decade-long missile assault launched collectively by the residents of Gaza on the civilians in Sderot and other communities of Southern Israel is just the latest manifestation of that war. Eldar knows very well that Gaza’s people voted for Hamas because they support this war against the Jews. Derfner knows that in the absence of the assault on Israelis and Jews, not only would Israel put no restrictions on the residents of Gaza, but it would bestow the same generosity that it has on the Haitians. But why should you consider such pertinent matters as the relentless Arab assault on Jews and Israel, if you’re determined to use your column to defame your country and contribute to the unjust international vilification of Israel?