Welcome to Jewish Voice for Peace’s monthly Health and Human Rights Media Watch. Members of the Health Advisory Council monitor relevant organizations and websites and compile a list of important news and issues which are summarized here.

Gaza

When illness is a ‘death sentence’: The victimization of Gaza women

29 August 2018 Ma’an News Agency—Hanan al-Khoudari resorted to Facebook in a cry for help when Israeli authorities rejected her request to accompany her three-year-old son, Louay, suffering from aggressive soft tissue sarcoma, to his chemotherapy treatment in East Jerusalem. Israeli authorities then justified their decision based on a vague claim that one of Hannan’s relatives is a “Hamas operative.” Even if an explanation is offered, denying gravely ill Palestinians from receiving life-saving treatment remains an immoral and illegal act. See more: Counterpunch

WHO strengthens trauma care services in Gaza

16 September 2018 The World Health Organization—A report states that it is replenishing stocks of urgently-needed trauma medicines in the besieged Gaza Strip and providing hands-on training for health staff working in frontline Trauma Stabilization Points (TSPs). Dr. Gerald Rockenschaub said in the report that life-saving medicines and medical supplies to treat more than 100,000 people have been delivered to hospitals and TSPs.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a managed crisis with no political resolution on the horizon

17 September 2018 OCHA-OPT—The most immediate crisis this month is for emergency fuel to sustain essential services. If there is no emergency funding, services provided at hospitals, clinics, as well as sewage treatment, water and sanitation facilities will cease. Gaza has been repeatedly brought to the brink before stop-gap aid contributions (in the case the UN) avert disaster and the political stalemate drags on, supported by the failure of the international community. See more: Electronic Intifada

The Israeli High Court of Justice denies a Defense Ministry directive preventing Gazans with ties to Hamas members from receiving lifesaving treatment in Israel

27 August 2018 Haaretz by Amira Hass—“Justice Groskopf wrote that “the possibility of using a patient in desperate need of lifesaving medical treatment, who no one claims is herself involved in activities against the State of Israel, as a ‘pressure lever’ is not compatible with the values of the State of Israel and cannot stand legally.” According to a joint statement from rights groups Gisha, Al Mezan, Adalah, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel — who filed the petition earlier this month on behalf of the women — the court ruled that “the decision to deny Gaza patients access to medical treatment as means of leverage over Hamas was ineffective and illegal.” See more: Mondoweiss

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) launched a video titled: ‘Medical Personnel Under Fire’

27 August 2018 PCHR Gaza—The video sheds lights on the serious violations committed against Palestinian medical personnel while rescuing the casualties of the peaceful March of Return. The video shows that Israeli forces used excessive force against medical staffers, which resulted in the killing of 3 paramedics and the injury of about 103 medical staffers.

Thinking internationally about the social determinants of health care, UN reports ‘A child dies every 5 seconds’

21 September 2018 The Lancet—While the health catastrophe in Gaza is largely a result of the siege, recurrent assaults, and lack of clean water, electricity, medical supplies, as well as rampant poverty and trauma, this article in the Lancet reminds us that worldwide, “social injustice is still killing on a grand scale.” Another example is a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group. New mortality estimates show that an estimated 6.3 million children under the age of 15 died in 2017 or one child every five seconds. According to the UNICEF report, the cause of death is the lack of water, sanitation, nutrition and basic health care, saying that the vast majority of these deaths, 5.4 million, occurred in the first five years of life. Newborns account half of the deaths. See more: Ma’an News

Occupied Palestinian territory

Israeli Cruelty and Palestine’s Predicament

27 August 2018 Counterpunch by Vijay Prashad—This is an excellent review of Palestinian nonviolent resistance and the Israeli response, with a focus on university education: Given repeated Israeli attacks, it is not unexpected that Israel has now blocked the entry of half of the foreign nationals who teach at Birzeit University and at other Palestinian institutions of higher learning (from Gaza’s University of Palestine to Jerico’s al-Istiqlal University).

US Administration decision completely flouts the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

4 September 2018 Badil—Palestinian human rights groups continue to denounce the Trump administration’s halting of all aid to UNRWA: Badil (Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights) issued the statement U.S. Administration decision completely flouts the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People to self-determination and reparations (voluntary repatriation, property restitution, compensation and non-repetition).

US decision to end funds to UNRWA: yet another blow to dire living conditions in Gaza

4 September 2018 Gisha—”Finding a sustainable solution to the refugee issue is a goal shared by all, but it will come with a resolution to the conflict, not by unilaterally withdrawing funding for vulnerable populations.” See more from: Mondoweiss’ ‘If UNRWA leaves, we won’t survive,’ and from Jadaliya, Noura Erakat’s Quick Thoughts on the US Zeroing Out Its UNRWA Funding.

Book on Israel’s deliberate maiming of Palestinians wins top academic prize

17 September 2018—Rutgers University Professor Jasbir Puar was awarded the National Women’s Studies Association’s Alison Piepmeier Book Prize for “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability.” The book exposes the Israeli military policy of maiming Palestinians as a matter of policy. She shows how debility, (defined as bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors), disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar’s analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. See more: Duke University Press

Israel

Conscientious objector to mark Jewish new year in prison

7 September 2018+972 Magazine—Conscientious objector Hilel Garmi, 18, was sentenced to 10 days in prison beginning September 10th. This will be his third time in prison (totaling 37 days) for refusing to serve in the Israeli military in protest of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. “I know I will be proud of this decision for the rest of my life, knowing that in the moment of truth, I was loyal to my beliefs, and did the only thing that seems moral to me. The way I see it, I chose to be on the right side of history,” said Garmi upon his entry to prison. He was inspired by Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the lead organizers of the nonviolent Great Return March protests on the Gaza border. “I was impressed to find people who prefer to deal with the situation between the Jordan River and the sea without resorting to violence. I, too, believe in civil disobedience – in applying nonviolent pressure to highlight a government’s lack of morality…Civil disobedience is usually used when the government has lost its legitimate source of authority, and I think that after 50 years of undemocratic rule, the government between the Jordan River and the sea has lost its legitimate authority.”