In Further Efforts To Keep Israel 'Racially Pure'...

ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
edited March 2013 in A Moving Train
Just when you thought you'd seen and heard it all:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/fe ... ves-israel

Ethiopian women in Israel 'given contraceptive without consent'

Israel's health ministry is investigating claims that Ethiopian immigrants have unwittingly had Depo-Provera jabs for years



Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 February 2013



Israel's health ministry is investigating claims that Ethiopian women are being injected with a controversial contraceptive without their knowledge or consent.

Thousands of Ethiopian women are said to be receiving shots of Depo-Provera every three months in Israeli clinics. The contraceptive stops menstruation and has been linked to fertility problems and osteoporosis.

Yaakov Litzman, Israel's deputy minister of health, who has previously denied the practice, will lead the inquiry, a spokesperson announced on Wednesday.

The phenomenon was uncovered when social workers noticed the birth rate among Ethiopian immigrants halving in a decade. An Israeli documentary investigating the scandal was aired in December and prompted a popular outcry.

It revealed that women were started on a course of contraceptive jabs while still in transit camps in Ethiopia, some without being told they were being given birth control and many having no idea of the side-effects. When they eventually arrived in Israel, doctors continued the treatment unquestioningly. But the critical question remains unanswered as to who instigated the policy, with neither Israel nor Ethiopia willing to claim responsibility.

Sava Reuben, an Ethiopian who has lived in Israel since 1984, interviewed more than 35 women from her community for the film and found that 25 were still receiving contraceptive shots from healthcare providers.

Reuben spoke to one woman who believed she had been given a flu vaccination and had no idea she had been injected with Depo-Provera.

Another was pregnant with her fifth child when she arrived in the transit camp, where she would live for seven years. The woman in her thirties told Reuben that officials had gathered together all the new mothers in the camp and told them they would be given Depo-Provera as it would be too difficult for them to give birth Israel.

"No, we didn't want to take it, we refused. We said we didn't want it," the unnamed woman recalls in the film. She agreed to the injections only because she was told her immigration to Israel would be blocked and she would receive no further healthcare in the camps if she refused.

"This happened to many, many other women," Reuben said.

More than 50,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel in the past decade. The fast-growing community has struggled against bias. In 1996, thousands rioted when it was discovered that the Israeli health ministry had destroyed all stocks of blood donated by Ethiopians on the grounds that it might be contaminated with HIV.

Israel's health ministry has strongly denied allegations that the injections are part of a policy to control the growth of the Ethiopian community.

"The Israel ministry of health neither advises nor encourages the use of Depo-Provera injections and if they are being administered this is in despite of our view," a spokesperson said.

And yet Reuben claims to have discovered a letter from the health ministry to a clinic in Ethiopia in 2000 thanking doctors there for the large numbers of women they had treated with Depo-Provera.

"Why are only Ethiopian women being given Depo-Provera in Israel? It's supposed to be a last-resort contraceptive. Israeli health authorities claim the injections are a cultural preference but in our culture, to have lots of children is to be rich," Reuben said.

"It is my opinion that this is a deliberate policy on the part of Israel. They are taking advantage of women who are weak because they are new to the country, do not understand the language and who traditionally respect authority. It makes me more than angry."

Dr Mushira Aboodia, a gynaecologist working at Jerusalem's Hadassah medical centre, said the majority of Ethiopian women she had met received Depo-Provera injections.

"This is a policy that no one will admit. No one in Israel will take responsibility for the treatment in the camps but someone must have instigated it and it would not be in Ethiopia's interests to treat women preparing to leave the country," Aboodia said.

"Something is definitely wrong here. I'm very glad the ministry of health will be investigating the issue. They will need to do a thorough job."
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Hey Byrnzie,

    thanks for posting this. My first reaction was "unbelievable," but is it really unbelievable for an apartheidal regime to administer inhumane treatment, even on their own fellow zionists, absolutely not. "Never forget" is the term favored by zionists, which has taken a whole new meaning, never forget what exactly? Nazi tactics such as sterilization of their own population.
  • gimmesometruth27gimmesometruth27 St. Fuckin Louis Posts: 23,303
    this is completely unethical at every turn.

    you have to obtain consent from whomever you are injecting and you have to disclose whatever it is that you are injecting. i work in an MD office and i obtain informed consent every day.

    i guess if one is seeking to limit the number of babies born to certain elements of the population this would be the way to do it. this just tells me that whatever section of the isreali establishment that authorized this is involved in a long term form of ethnic cleansing. it shows yet again that the certain segments of the israeli establishment have learned nothing from the holocaust. how is this any different than the forced sterilization that the jews were made to undergo as part of the eugenics programs?

    i keep wondering if this were possible in the states. i can totally see some powerful group wanting to implement some plan in attempt to limit the population of certain groups.
    "You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry."  - Lincoln

    "Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
  • peacefrompaulpeacefrompaul Posts: 25,293
    That is so fucked up. Thanks for posting
  • Jason PJason P Posts: 19,138
    i keep wondering if this were possible in the states. i can totally see some powerful group wanting to implement some plan in attempt to limit the population of certain groups.
    planned parenthood? ;)
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