Challah Hu Akbar
A few months ago, I selected the following from a piece by Evelyn Gordon.
It’s hard to argue with the Israeli diplomat who called Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian rights who accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” an “embarrassment to the United Nations” yesterday. But the problem isn’t that Falk lies, or even that he does so with the UN’s imprimatur. The real problem is the larger trend he represents: The self-proclaimed “human rights community” increasingly treats minor issues as indistinguishable from major crimes. What enraged Aharon Leshno Yaar was Falk’s demonstrably false claim that Israel practices ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem. The Arab population of Jerusalemquadrupled between1967 (when Israel annexed East Jerusalem) and 2008, from 68,600 to 268,600, while the city’s Jewish population rose by a factor of 2.5. Consequently, Arabs now constitute 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population, up from 26 percent in 1967. Since ethnic cleansing is normally meant to reduce the target population, if Israel were actually attempting such cleansing, it is surely the most incompetent ethnic cleanser in human history.
Now with that I show you a few examples as to Israel's ethnic cleansing...
A passenger on the Dignite/Al-Karama vessel, which attempted to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, takes food from a member of Israel's Navy.
Did you know Israel is paying for Arabs to have children?
Israelis already have a high fertility rate: an average of 2.9 children per family. Beyond the biblical imperative to be fruitful, some Israeli Jews remain concerned with replenishing their numbers in the wake of the Holocaust.
Demographics here are also political. Israel has historically focused on promoting Jewish birthrates to retain a Jewish majority and more recently as a counterweight to higher fertility rates of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have the same rights to state-paid fertility treatments as their Jewish counterparts.
A survey published by the journal Human Reproduction Update in 2002 showed that 1,657 in vitro fertilization procedures per million people per year were performed in Israel, compared with 899 in Iceland, the country with the second highest rate, and 126 in the United States, which trailed far behind European countries.
Or how about the Palestinians who have come to Israel for summer camp? Oh, did I mention they are the children of terrorists?
While Israel and the Palestinian Authority participate in a diplomatic battle as September looms ever nearer, 18 Palestinian children from the Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem arrived in Israel on Monday to take part in the "living color" summer camp together with children from Arab villages and cities in Israel.
The visitors have special "pedigree" – most of them are the children of security prisoners who were members of terrorist organizations, some of whom were even accused of attempting to kidnap soldiers.
Yet, if you read the rest of the article, these kids don't seem so interested in the whole peace thing....eh, neither did their parents.
How about the recent efforts of the Israeli group, Save a Child's Heart.
This is the second time that Haji Hamis from Zanzibar is visiting Israel: He first came here when he was 15 to undergo life-saving heart surgery at the Wolfson Medical Center through the Save a Child's Heart (SACH) association.
At the time he was living with his parents and six brothers and sisters in a small house in the village of Mondoli – he could barely walk and had trouble breathing.
After the surgery Haji was able to walk, run and play like any healthy child his age but now he has once again been brought to Israel with four other children from Zanzibar who need urgent heart surgeries, for an additional operation.
On the surface, Haji seems perfectly healthy and even jokes about not understanding why they brought him here again, but SACH's doctors who examined him on their last trip to Zanzibar made the decision – he needed another surgery.
Haji told Ynet that he was very happy to be coming here for the second time and was excited about going back to his family, his life and his job – which he put on hold to undergo the second procedure.
All public buildings in Israel are scheduled to have handicap access.
Justice Minister Yaakov Ne'eman has signed regulations ensuring equal rights for people with disabilities.
The regulations, which deal with making all of Israel's existing public buildings handicap-accessible, will take effect within six months from their publications.
How about the refugees from Africa enjoying some soccer?
As African migrants continue to pour in through Israel's porous border, many try to push them back out again. But some, specifically at the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) have been working on ways to improve their lives in Israel.
The ARDC, with the help of UN funding, has begun to hold various sportive events at Levinsky Park, near the central bus station in Tel Aviv. Many migrants gather there to engage in a friendly game of soccer.
Benjamin Hassan, who runs the center's community services, is a psychotherapist who only just emigrated from Gibraltar. "The new plan comes as a solution for the lack of positive and constructive activities for the refugee community," he said.
The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) has shown interest in the plan, and provided some of the funding. Thanks to the agency, those who made it to the park Wednesday received real soccer training, the likes of which would not shame any professional team.
Coaching the team was Benjamin Kamara, a professional soccer player from the Ivory Coast. "Soccer is a wonderful tool," he said. "It shows Israel's positive side to the refugees and the refugee community's positive side to Israel. On the field everyone can start together from scratch and introduce a new culture of sport rather than violence."
How about the 1,000 hearing aids that were provided to Palestinians a few weeks ago?
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