Fitzgerald: Fleeing into Israel

The latest “Palestinian” complaint is about Israel not allowing out every single “Palestinian” who wants – for god’s sake, practically demands – first-class treatment in….Israeli hospitals. That is, they want to be treated, they demand to be treated, in the hospitals of the very people against whom are lobbed thousands of rockets, and who would, if the Gazan Arabs have their way, be destroyed, and unavailable to treat those same Arabs. They have no sense of irony, those Gazan Arabs.

Here’s a recent sob story designed to tug at your NGO or EU or UN heartstrings:

Ahmed Hisham Abu Shawish is forty-six, but he looks older. His skin is tinged with grey and he sits slumped forward in his chair. He used to work full time at the Islamic University doing logistical support, but these days is confined to his home in the Al Daraj district of northern Gaza city. He has an aggressive carcinogenic tumour, and suffers from serious hematuria, or blood in his urine. He has to attend hospital every two or three days in order to receive regular blood transfusions. 'I go to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis for my treatment' he says. This involves a painful journey by shared public taxi several times a week, as the hospital is 30 kilometres away, and the family cannot afford to pay for a private taxi to and from their home.

Ahmed Abu Shawish urgently needs an operation to remove his cancer and repair the internal damage. 'The [Palestinian] Ministry of Health referred me to Echelof Hospital in Tel Aviv for specialist treatment' he says. "But of course I need a permit to leave Gaza, and my permit was denied. So I applied again with the help of human rights organizations.' The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights and the Gaza city based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) worked together to try to secure a permit for Ahmed Abu Shawish to be able to travel to Echelof hospital. But on 18 August he was denied a permit once again. PCHR has just submitted a formal complaint to the Israeli State Attorney, outlining the urgency of Ahmed Abu Shawish's case, and asking he be immediately issued a permit by Israel in order to travel to Echelof hospital for his treatment. In the meantime, Ahmed Abu Shawish is confined to his home, where he lives, and waits, in pain, discomfort and uncertainty.

If Ahmed Abu Shawish does not receive a permit enabling him to travel to Echelof hospital in Tel Aviv very soon, he will have to resort to having his surgery inside Gaza. 'The doctors at the European hospital advised me to go to Israel for my treatment' he says. 'The risks of being treated here are much bigger - and I tell you, I am frightened at the prospect of having surgery for my cancer here. How do you think I feel when even my own doctors are telling me that, for my own sake, I need to go and have my surgery in hospital in Israel?'

That’s the tale which, I trust, has left not a wet eye in your house.

Of course what this points up is also Israel’s idiocy. Why did it ever allow such people to think they had any right to be treated in Israeli hospitals in the first place? And I’m sure the treatment is delivered for free, by the way. Those who are making war on you, who are trying to wipe you out, should not be offered the courtesy of a place in your hospitals, and access to advanced Western medicine. They have their own hospitals. They have their hundreds of millions of dollars that they receive annually from the Infidels. They have access to Egyptian hospitals if need be. Or are they all like Edward Said’s parents, who even in the 1930s went to Jerusalem in order to take advantage of the superior hygiene and treatment that the Jewish hospitals could offer?

Recently also, the "Palestinian" Authority asked Israel, which gave refuge to nearly 200, and gave free medical care to two dozen wounded, members or supporters of Fatah who had fled Gaza, not to keep them, nor to transfer them to the Arab-occupied "West Bank," but to send them back to Gaza.

The reason, as given by a "Palestinian" member of the Slow Jihad (Fatah) quoted in a Jerusalem Post article, is this: "Everyone knows that if we allow people to leave the Gaza Strip, almost all the residents living there would try to cross the border into Israel. We don't want to leave the Gaza Strip to Hamas."

They would -- "almost all" of them, "try to cross the border into Israel."

You know -- into Israel, to which every Arab flees when he can, whenever faced with Arab enemies. The members of Black September did this when Jordanian King Hussein’s men pursued them. They waded crossed the Jordan, their hands raised, knowing that the Israelis would not harm them but would take them in.) They fled into the country routinely denounced as "Nazi-like" or even "worse than the Nazis." We all remember how the Nazis offered free medical care to Jews and other benefits, so that they would always flee to Nazi-held territory whenever they could.

Don't forget this kind of telling display, and the even more telling comment by a Fatah official. Don't forget it, and don't forget to remind others, when they go into their Guardian-or-BBC or World-Council-of-Churches or Amnesty-International or Human-Rights-Watch or United-Nations slander-and-rant against Israel. Remember not to forget.