Israeli Doctors Treat Wounded Syrians
yosi
Posts: 3,038
From Michael Totten:
Israeli Doctors Treat Wounded Syrians
2 February 2014
The Israeli army opened a field hospital on the Golan Heights next to the Syrian border and has so far treated 700 patients wounded in the war next-door.
Working there, and being treated there, must be quite an experience. I don’t know of any nation on earth that’s lied about as much as Israel is in most Arab countries. The misconceptions average Middle Easterners have about the Jewish state is otherworldly. They hate an Israel that doesn’t exist, has never existed, and never will exist. I can’t even imagine how shocking it must be to get shot at by your own government and taken care of by an enemy government.
But it’s happening. And Yifa Yaacov at the Times of Israel interviewed a couple of Syrian patients.
The patients…cross the border armed with gross misconceptions about Israel and its people.
“They say that before the previous week, before they came, they thought we were the Great Satan, the enemies, and looked for the tails between our legs,” Zoarets said.
[…]
Firas, a rebel fighter who was being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, blasted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for neglecting and oppressing the people of Syria.
“Every day there are aerial bombings of cities. Each city is bombed three or four times by fighter planes,” Firas, who defected from Assad’s army to join the rebels fighting to topple him, said.
“Bashar [Assad] didn’t take care of us. Here, in Israel, we are being taken care of. Bashar doesn’t care about us, whereas Israel does. Bashar fires shells at us, he doesn’t care about us at all.”
Another patient, Latif, said, “They taught us about the Zionist enemy, the Zionist oppressor. But when we saw the Zionists, [we realized] they were nothing like what we’d been told. They’re human beings just like us, human, and even more than that.”
Ahmed, who was also being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, said that in the aftermath of the uprising against Assad, “we came to understand who is an enemy and who is a friend.”
He said that as the fighting raged on, many Syrians began to doubt what they’d been taught about the countries across the border from their own.
Israeli Doctors Treat Wounded Syrians
2 February 2014
The Israeli army opened a field hospital on the Golan Heights next to the Syrian border and has so far treated 700 patients wounded in the war next-door.
Working there, and being treated there, must be quite an experience. I don’t know of any nation on earth that’s lied about as much as Israel is in most Arab countries. The misconceptions average Middle Easterners have about the Jewish state is otherworldly. They hate an Israel that doesn’t exist, has never existed, and never will exist. I can’t even imagine how shocking it must be to get shot at by your own government and taken care of by an enemy government.
But it’s happening. And Yifa Yaacov at the Times of Israel interviewed a couple of Syrian patients.
The patients…cross the border armed with gross misconceptions about Israel and its people.
“They say that before the previous week, before they came, they thought we were the Great Satan, the enemies, and looked for the tails between our legs,” Zoarets said.
[…]
Firas, a rebel fighter who was being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, blasted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for neglecting and oppressing the people of Syria.
“Every day there are aerial bombings of cities. Each city is bombed three or four times by fighter planes,” Firas, who defected from Assad’s army to join the rebels fighting to topple him, said.
“Bashar [Assad] didn’t take care of us. Here, in Israel, we are being taken care of. Bashar doesn’t care about us, whereas Israel does. Bashar fires shells at us, he doesn’t care about us at all.”
Another patient, Latif, said, “They taught us about the Zionist enemy, the Zionist oppressor. But when we saw the Zionists, [we realized] they were nothing like what we’d been told. They’re human beings just like us, human, and even more than that.”
Ahmed, who was also being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, said that in the aftermath of the uprising against Assad, “we came to understand who is an enemy and who is a friend.”
He said that as the fighting raged on, many Syrians began to doubt what they’d been taught about the countries across the border from their own.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
0
Comments
Despite Decades of Enmity, Israel Quietly Aids Syrian Civilians
By ISABEL KERSHNERJAN. 29, 2014
NAHARIYA, Israel — Two brothers, ages 10 and 8, were playing marbles outside their home in a town in Syria when a rocket decapitated the older one and critically wounded his sibling. Having rushed the surviving child to a local hospital, the mother recalled, medics told her: “If you want to save your son, you should take him to Israel.”
A few days later, the boy and his mother, 34, arrived at Western Galilee Hospital here in Nahariya, on the Mediterranean coast. The traumatized boy told the staff how he had seen his brother’s head fly.
His mother broke down as she showed a visitor how he had hoarded the hospital’s packaged chocolate puddings in a bedside drawer, hoping to give them to a brother and sister still in Syria. She said she was convinced that the son who died had shielded his younger brother from the rocket explosion. “We buried him without a head,” she said.
As opposing Syrian delegations convened face to face this week in Switzerland, the tragedies of the Syrian civil war were reverberating here, the emotions sharpened by the decades of enmity between Israel and Syria, still technically in a state of war.
Crisis in Syria
After nearly three years of internal conflict that has killed an estimated 130,000 and displaced millions, some Syrians say they now fear President Bashar al-Assad’s forces more than the Israeli soldiers at the frontier, who transfer wounded patients and their relatives to the hospital via military ambulance.
Israel guards their identities to avoid exposing them to additional danger when they return home. “Assad calls those who come here collaborators with Israel,” said a Syrian accompanying his critically wounded 5-year-old granddaughter, who arrived last month.
Nearly 200 Syrians, about a third of them women and children, have been treated at this hospital since March 2013. More than 230 have been taken to Rebecca Sieff Hospital in the Galilee town of Safed. A third of the cost is covered by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, a third by the Ministry of Health and the rest by the hospitals. Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director general of the hospital in Nahariya, said that so far the treatment his hospital had provided had cost it about $2.6 million.
Israel made it clear that it would not tolerate refugees amassing along the decades-old Israeli-Syrian cease-fire line. But Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said this week that Israel “cannot remain indifferent” and had been providing food and winter clothing to Syrian villages across the border fence as well as tending to some of the wounded.
A small, low-profile humanitarian effort, it is politically risky for patients and their relatives. Some said they had been afraid to come here and now fear going back.
For some, the journey begins with help from the Free Syrian Army, a Western-aligned loose coalition of rebels who are fighting Mr. Assad’s government, and from international coordinating bodies in the area. Spirited across the frontier into the Israeli-held Golan Heights, the patients and their relatives pass into the hands of the Israeli military.
The 5-year-old’s grandfather, a farmer, said life in wartime was like “living in a whirlpool.” When the rebellion against Mr. Assad first started, he said, “It was us against Bashar, and we had a chance of winning.” Now, he said, “the whole world is involved,” but he asked why America was not coming to the rescue.
About five weeks ago, he recalled, he had been working his land when he learned that his grandchildren had been hurt in a rocket attack. He had heard about the Israeli medical care and, ignoring the political risks, worked to bring his granddaughter here.
“When there is peace, I will raise an Israeli flag on the roof of my house,” he said.
The war has eroded once-impervious psychological barriers on both sides. This month, an Israeli aid drive led by volunteers from the Working and Studying Youth movement, Israeli Flying Aid and other local organizations collected about 20,000 items — mainly jackets, blankets and sleeping bags — to be transferred to Syrian refugees. Donors were asked to remove all Israeli labels. Barak Sella of Working and Studying Youth said there were plans to establish a website for dialogue between Israeli and Syrian youths.
A wounded mother of six, who had been at the hospital in Nahariya with two wounded daughters for nearly six weeks, said, “I grew up hearing that Israel was an enemy country and that if you met an Israeli he would kill you.”
The mother, 31, said she had been on the roof of her home with her children and a nephew as snow began when a rocket struck. She said she did not remember what happened afterward. When she awoke in the hospital, she said, “I was very, very afraid, but I tried not to show that to the staff.”
Her left leg was amputated below the knee. One daughter, 6, was recovering from shrapnel injuries. The other, 3, had lost an eye and suffered damaged lungs and a mangled arm.
A son, 5, and the nephew, 12, were in the hospital in Safed, accompanied by their grandmother. The younger boy lost one leg; the nephew, both.
Having barely taken her first steps with a day-old prosthesis, the mother was about to return to Syria with her two daughters and a large suitcase packed with donated clothes and toys. They were to be picked up by an army ambulance in the afternoon to begin the six-hour journey to the border and home.
She expressed fear over what might await her. She did not know if the children she had left behind in Syria had survived the rocket attack.
Asked to draw a house in a hospital classroom, the 6-year-old girl drew rubble. Most of the mother’s neighbors and many relatives had already left for refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Once back, she said, she would confide only to those closest to her where she had been.
I think there are just some of those people who become doctors to heal people... not for money... not for Nationalistic Patriotism... not for political reasons.
Hail, Hail!!!
I'm not trying to compare myself to an Israeli doctor but it's the closest analogy I can think of. I like to think that good people do good things even when they are face to face with enemies. Propaganda or not, it's a good deed.
I'm not saying it is propaganda. I'm just saying that there is humanity in people... not necessarily in governments. Even in the Saddam Husseing Iraq... there were Iraqi doctors who took in Spc. Jessica Lynch and treated her of the wounds inflicted by their soldiers.
Governments should not parade around acts of basic humanity by it people as its own... if government sponsors acts of war and brutality.
That's all.
Hail, Hail!!!
----
But (and a nice, firm round buuuut)
When this story is being passed around, and in it you have things like "“When there is peace, I will raise an Israeli flag on the roof of my house"
It's hard not to look at it with an eye towards propaganda. It's goal (it seems) would be to show Israelis in a better light, considering all the fair criticism it has received recently the world over.
-
I mean we have Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon saying things like, "We can't sit by and watch the humanitarian difficulties on the other side,"
Someone should perhaps direct his attention to a place called 'The Gaza Strip'.
That is great. Perhaps it is a step towards seeking humanitarian solutions towards peace, rather than pulling the trigger on the military option.
Hail, Hail!!!
-
We can hope all we want, but actions are important, and Israel's actions show different sides, of the same coin.
Soda stream??
Firstly, it is being used for Propaganda, I just need to reference your post in which you want people to look at the illegal settlements 'with a new lens'..Yes, so clear for me now, Illegal settlements are 'good' because Israel helped some Syrians hurt by violence which it (Israel) has help to propagate by (for example) supplying arms to the so called rebels who themselves are accused of 'war crimes'.
Not only that, but Israel has on numerous occasions tried/pushed to take down the Syrian regime, not to help anyone but themselves, Israel would support Syria if they were not friendly with Iran.
and yes, when you have hypocrites like Moshe Yaalon saying (verbatim), "We can't sit by and watch the humanitarian difficulties on the other side," (Syria)
Someone should perhaps direct his attention to a place called 'The Gaza Strip'.
-
It would make more sense to speak about the large/growing progressive youth movement within Israel who are pushing towards an all around peace, that in this moment are collecting supplies and passing them to the Syrian Youth.
Nobody is saying Israel does not have a ton of open minded, people of understanding, but let's be clear, it's not the Israeli Government.
Finally, whatever the reason is that the Israeli government is doing this, it is still doing this. They're doing a good thing. That doesn't excuse them when they do bad things, but people should be fair-minded enough to recognize a good act when confronted with one.
As far as the term 'rebels', well...When Israel refers to the Palestinians fighting against (them) oppressive Israelis as 'rebels' and not terrorists, I'll change it. (and again, these 'rebels backed by whoever, are guilty of enough crimes and perhaps 'terrorists' could also be a fair 'moniker') (But really, call them whatever, point is they are not so innocent)
So when you say "Finally, whatever the reason is that the Israeli government is doing this, it is still doing this", sorry, that means nothing, it's like saying when the US destroyed Iraq, then handed candy to Iraqis or helped Iraqi kids hurt in the violence as "good" acts and lets applaud them for it, Sure good acts, but a greater picture exists, and we should also mention the bigger picture, not just part of it.
As far as arming the "rebels", well, I'll leave you with this, take it how you like...'Straight from the donkey's mouth'
(I'd have to search for articles pertaining to the 'rebels' being caught with Israeli arms, and I apologize for not having enough information on hand at this very moment)
timesofisrael.com/syrian-tv-rebels-caught-using-israeli-weapons/
(if that's the case)
rt.com/news/cia-blackwater-mossad-syria-037/
As far as I can tell Israel has largely stayed out of events in Syria. It seems that there has been a few relatively minor exchanges of fire across the border, and that Israel may have acted to prevent Assad from transferring certain strategic weapons to Hezbollah (which I think is not an unreasonable thing for them to have done), but otherwise they seem to be bystanders. So I don't think that your Iraq analogy holds - you're right that U.S. soldiers handing out candy is pretty meaningless in the context of the U.S. ruining the country, but Israel isn't responsible for what's going on in Syria, so I don't really see a fair reason to discount the value of its actions in this instance.
Israel is (as shown in my above posts) involved with Syria to a far greater extent then just some (as you say) "few relatively minor exchanges of fire across the border" and shortly after say " but otherwise they seem to be bystanders". (in Reference to Israel in the matter)
Israel is partly responsible for whats happening in Syria, and at the very least has/is aggravating the situation. (arms, mossad, and missle attacks)So calling them a "bystander" in this conflict is like seeing a man throw wood into a fire that someone else (may of) started and say "he's just a bystander" and not take into account the fact that the wood he threw has a direct effect on the fire.
and it's not true when you say "because you strongly dislike Israel's actions in another unrelated conflict." Saying that's the reason why i'm "discounting" this act by the Israelis to help some Syrians with medical help as anything but propaganda based. (anyway, of course I don't like Israels actions in that "unrelated conflict")
It's all part of the bigger picture, as I've already mentioned. So I'm not discounting anything in that way, yes Israel is helping some refugees, the better question is why', and the 'why' my friend, is always more interesting.
Israel is not some neutral 3rd party just helping Syrian Refugees, and that's how you and others are making it out to be, and it's just not true.
-
(as I've mentioned in another post) the amazing Israeli Youth movement and other progressive minds within Israeli society who seem to truly have an eye towards peace and helping people.
Seriously pathetic.
B - thank you for the respectful tone of your contribution. It is very much appreciated by this seriously pathetic individual.
No; you are supposed to accept that Israel is treating Syrian war wounded. One would hope that you will accept that this particular action is benevolent and praiseworthy. And for those who are open-minded enough, one would hope that they will accept that Israel is a complex country rather than the rapaciously evil caricature that it is so often painted as on this forum.
It's simple
In some people's minds Israel is the great Satan and Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PLO are the innocents that suffer at the hands of the great Satan.
No more and no less
As - salamu alaykum
‘Minor exchanges of fire across the border’…?? I don’t recall Israel being attacked from Syria, so where is the ‘exchange’? Also, calling aerial bombings ‘minor’, when such actions would elicit a ridiculously heavy handed response if it were to happen to Israel, completely disregards an act of war against a sovereign state.
There are documented ties between Al Nusra, the FSA, and Israel. Rebels have been caught with Israeli arms. Mossad is providing intelligence to these groups. There have been accusations of Israeli sponsored false-flag type attacks within Syria, including the August chemical attacks. Israel has directly attacked Syria. This became a proxy war long ago; considering the facts on the ground, Israel’s ‘security’ interests in the region, and its history of both open and covert violence against her neighbours, it is disingenuous, even deceitful, to claim that Israel is a bystander in the conflict.
Also, let’s not forget that this hospital is operating in occupied Syrian territory, and many of the civilian refugees Israel claims to be concerned about, are Palestinians displaced by IDF actions over decades of occupation and aggression.
With respect to the exchanges of fire I mentioned, there have been a number of relatively minor incidents. See for example:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/21/syria-israel-exchange-fire-golan-heights
I acknowledge that Israel has also conducted a handful of surgical airstrikes targeting strategic missile supplies. In the context of a chaotic civil war I don't think that it's unreasonable for Israel to fear that such weapons could be transferred to a terrorist group such as Hezbollah that would use them against Israel, or that they could be captured by a rebel faction that might do the same. I don't expect you to agree, but I think that given the context Israel's actions are defensible (much as I would think that an American military strike targeting Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be reasonable were that country to devolve into anarchy in light of the threat of such weapons falling into terrorist hands).
I'd be interested in seeing the reports you mentioned regarding Israeli involvement in Syria. I haven't seen anything to that effect myself. That said, I would be surprised if the Mossad were not active in Syria at the moment, just as I would be surprised if the Turkish security services weren't active there - for the Mossad not to be active there at all would actually be a shocking failure on their part, given that the situation in Syria inarguably will effect Israel's security. Still, from what I can gather, Syria is currently in a complete state of anarchy, and the situation is almost entirely of the Syrian's own making.
The article attempts to portray Israel as something it isn't. It tries to portray Israel as a beacon of tolerance and reason in the midst of hatred and ignorance. And Yosi predictably jumps all over this bullshit and reposts it here in the hope of casting this racist, expansionist, rogue state in a good light.
Like I said; seriously pathetic.