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Developed by:
| August | 09 |
| 2006 |
A correspondent has sent me the words of the latest Save the Children Fund mailout, dated 2nd August.
Here's the headline:
Please help the children of the Middle East.
That seems entirely proper.
Here's how it begins:
As you know, the catastrophic destruction of the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza has put children in extreme danger. We must act now. In Lebanon alone up to 800,000 people - around a quarter of the population - have been forced to flee their homes. Nearly half of them are children. As you read this, thousands of children are sheltering in schools and office buildings. Others are trapped at home. They are frightened. They have no food, running water or electricity. Medical and hygiene supplies are in short supply, making the spread of diseases a real risk.And so on.
But it seems that the title of the mailout was a misprint. It should have read
Please help the non-Jewish children of the Middle East
because not once in the mailout is there a mention of Israeli children sheltering from Hezbollah rockets or Hamas suicide murderers.
But then they're Jewish kids, and they don't count.
I checked what SCF's site has to say. No mention of Israel until the end, when it says this:
IsraelSave the Children focuses its response where communities do not have the capacity to respond. In Israel, the government has excellent systems already in place to respond broadly throughout the country to the urgent and immediate needs of children and families.
Save the Children’s history in the regionSave the Children has worked in the Middle East since 1949, when health services were provided to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Today we support a wide variety of programmes in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories. We aim to change for the better the lives of children with disabilities, refugee children and economically destitute children. Our work in recent years has been focused on responding to emergency needs in the occupied Palestinian territories and responding to other emergencies, such as the current crisis, as they arise.
Now that would be interesting, if it was in any way true, and SCF indeed operated only in areas where there was no worthwhile government and which lacked what they describe as "systems already in place to respond broadly throughout the country to the urgent and immediate needs of children and families".
In which case, how is it that, as the SCF puts it:
Our work today is focused on communities of high social need in five regions: London, the Midlands, the North West, Yorkshire and the North East.
What it amounts to is this: the only children SCF will not help are children in Israel.
Dress it up how you like, but that is explicit and open anti-semitism, pure and simple.
MessageSpace
I'm sure the Americans will provide more of their generous bounty. On the back of the next arms shipment, perhaps?
The Israel-right-or-wrong brigade can be hilarious at times.
"Save the Children has worked in the Middle East since 1949, when health services were provided to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon."
In the 1940s and 1950s Israel was a very poor state and had to cope with refugees from all around the world - countless traumatised Holocaust survivors from Europe and 800,000 refugees from Arab lands who had been stripped of all their possessions and ethnically cleansed (many of these last were compelled to exist in terrible conditions in tent cities). So where was this organisation then?
An anti-Semitic AND evil organisation. Just like the International Red Cross which turned its back on the Jews of Europe as they were murdered in their millions.
"In Israel, the government has excellent systems already in place to respond broadly throughout the country to the urgent and immediate needs of children and families." -- Save the Non-Jewish Children Fund
So that is why we have Holocaust survivors in Israel running soup kitchens for needy families....
'Despite rockets, Rachel Marom, 76, has no intention of closing her Haifa soup-kitchen. Declares: As long as people are hungry, I can't leave
Rachel Marom from Haifa has no time to waste. Despite massive rocket barrages hitting her city, she continued to feed 150 to 200 people a day in the soup kitchen, 'A meal for all those in need' that she runs in the Neveh Sha'anan neighborhood. The shortage of food in the area is making her job difficult.
Determined nevertheless, Marom, aged 76, refuses to stop distributing daily meals, providing savory dishes of meat, rice, noodles and vegetables to guests of the soup kitchen, old-folks homes and needy families. "I open the soup kitchen every day, even on Tisha b'Av, and when there were people here when a siren when off, we simply went to the shelters," she says.
Since the onset of the fighting, the soup kitchen, which relies on leftovers from local events, has been struggling to stay abreast. "Nowadays, such events don't take place, so we're no longer receiving food from them," Marom elaborates. "At times like these, of course there is a food shortage, so we buy more and have less donated. In order to buy supplies, I use monetary donations that were given to me in the past, but, at this time, the donations have also decreased."
In spite of this, she is not giving up. Even constant calls from family members living in central Israel, to come join them, have not persuaded her to leave. "I can't leave and I can't close this place," she insists. "There are people who need food, families with children for whom we provide meals on a regular basis."
What keeps her going? "When I was a little girl in Auschwitz, I experienced what it is to be hungry, and this is a trauma that will never pass," she explains. "In order to prevent the children that we feed from experiencing such a feeling, we send them food home. They don't need to know where it comes from – the important thing is that they won't be hungry." '
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3288662,00.html
You can see a video at the above link.
The Israel-right-or-wrong brigade can be hilarious at times.
Why is it the Israel-wrong-no-matter-what crowd refuses to see that Israeli children have no culpability and they suffer too. Humanitarian agencies supposedly put politics aside to help victims of circumstances -- hence the help to British children where one would assume the parents, if not the generous governmental safety-net would be able provide aid.
Smug retorts simply display the callous attitudes of those who pretend to be morally superior, having taken the side of those who deliberately put both Israeli and Lebanese children in harm's way.
I have seen correspondence with Oxfam and also CARE International to the same effect - that the money raised from their recent banner adverts headed "Crisis in the Middle East" etc goes entirely to Lebanon.
Do we actually know to whom it goes in Lebanon? There are some very unfortunate precedents of NGO money ending up in the wrong hands and little if any going to the supposed recipients.
I repeatedly asked Save the Children whether they channel money through Hezbollah (NYTimes suggests that it is prevailing practice in Lebanon). Never got a response.