Great news. Farah Abu Halima, a three-year-old who was badly injured by an Israeli white phosphorus attack that destroyed most of her family last January, has reportedly left Gaza and is in Egypt now with her grandmother. She has a visa to the U.S. and is to fly out on Saturday, headed for hospital treatment in San Diego. In the photo above, you can see the burns on her chin and throat. The burns across her abdomen and legs are far worse and have already affected her growth. Her hand is also damaged.
Steve Sosebee of Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and Felice Gelman of Wespac have been working tirelessly stateside to help this little girl, whom Gelman and I met in Beit Lahiya, Gaza. Kudos to them, and to PCRF, whose reps in Gaza and the West Bank apparently managed to get the Palestinian Authority to act on this desperate case. And Gelman tells me that at Wespac’s urging, Nita Lowey, the powerful Westchester congresswoman, apparently put in a word to the U.S. State Department– even as Lowey worked to bury the Goldstone report (as an impediment to the peace process!).
Sosebee tells me that Farah will be accompanied by three other children from Gaza who need treatment. One with shrapnel wounds to the face, another with a gunshot wound to the leg, and a third child with a birth defect. "Farah got out of Gaza on Sunday with her grandmother, they are both suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."
It may take months or a year for the plastic surgery that Farah needs so that she can develop normally. She will live with her grandmother with a host family. Sosebee fears the psychological wounds even more than the physical ones. This little girl and her grandmother have lost their whole family in a scorching horrifying blast. What can our country do to heal that relentless damage? Here is PCRF’s site, if you want to get them some money.
Gelman also speaks of the political work that is more important than the humanitarian work. What does it mean that she has to go to our State Department to try and get pencils into the Gaza Strip? What does it mean that these people need international permission to do anything? As Taghreed El-Khodary of the New York Times told us last May, this is not a humanitarian crisis, it is a political crisis. And one in which our country has recklessly taken sides in.
Its sad the Palestinians use children as human shields.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OefgMtXOc1M
Armed palestinian terrorists using Children as human ShieldArmed palestinian terrorists using Children as human Shield.
One child out of hundreds more……..Is the US going to rescue them too the way it rescued Jews from Yemen just a few weeks ago?
One child out of hundreds more.
Is the US going to rescue them too the way it rescued Jews from Yemen just a few weeks ago?
Said the big smelly fish to the packed sardines.
Nomi998: “Its sad the Palestinians use children as human shields. . . “.
Yes, Nomi, very sad that Little Farah abu Halima’s family tried to use her as a human shield to protect all of them from the white phosphorous missile the IDF laser-guided through the roof of their home. I guess if your side has US-taxpayer-subsidized smart bombs, you get the privilege of calling the other side “terrorists,” and you get to come up with facocked pretzel logic that you’re entitled to incinerate women and children as a defensive strategy. Dude, have you even read the Goldstone report?
Her eyes…
She’s still beautiful even with burns on her face.
Good to know that she’s fetting treatment. Is her host family Muslim?
Nomi and her propaganda…
Such a waste of time to respond but I can’t help it.
1. link to youtube.com
2. link to youtube.com
3. link to guardian.co.uk
4. link to guardian.co.uk
5. link to alternet.org
Let me know if you need more, Nomi.
Seham, to funny this coming from the anti Israel Guardian.
The Guardian which also tried to lie about Memri because for the first time Memri showed the hate and racism of the Arabs.
Oh ya… hilarious Nomi.
Are you talking about this expose of the lies of Zionist propaganda machine MEMRI?
Great reporting by Whitaker. Let me guess… he’s an anti-semite of the worst kind, right? His daddy was a Nazi, I am sure…
Selective Memri
Brian Whitaker investigates whether the ‘independent’ media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems.
link to guardian.co.uk
Considering what a dupe Nomi is about news sources, one has to imagine in his spare time, he’s out in the Iraqi desert with a metal detector, looking for WMDs. Or maybe holding up a picture of Obama with a Hitler moustache painted on it, screaming against tax and health care reforms that are actually less punitive and costly to the socio-economic class she inhabits.
That would be the height of hypocrisy woudln’t it Chaos? An Israeli propagandist (and a bad one at that), curing Obama for about taxes and health care reforms, while Israel has socialized everythig, including cash bonus for the whack jobs building settlements?
Seham, let me know if you want more info to counter your lies.
link to israelmatzav.blogspot.com
What Goldstone does claim is that the IDF used ‘Palestinian’ civilians as human shields. He bases that claim on testimony by ‘Palestinians’ that he deemed credible. My friends at NGO Monitor have already taken apart the ‘Palestinians’ and their NGO’s on Gaza – for example, see here. But Goldstone claims that the testimony was corroborated by Israeli soldiers….
1089. In more general terms, the Mission notes that the statements of the men used as human shields by the Israeli armed forces during house searches are corroborated by statements made by Israeli soldiers to the NGO Breaking the Silence. The soldier providing testimony 1 speaks of the “Johnnie procedure”: “It was the first week of the war, fighting was intense, there were explosive charges to expose, tunnels in open spaces and armed men inside houses. […] Close in on each house. The method used has a new name now – no longer ‘neighbour procedure.’ Now people are called ‘Johnnie.’ They’re Palestinian civilians, and they’re called Johnnies […] To every house we close in on, we send the neighbour in, ‘the Johnnie,’ and if there are armed men inside, we start, like working the ‘pressure cooker’ in the West Bank.” This soldier then mentions that some commanders were “bothered” by the fact that “civilians were used to a greater extent than just sending them into houses.” A second soldier interviewed by Breaking the Silence, testimony 17, appears to have discussed the “Johnnie procedure” at length, but his testimony was censored or otherwise cut in that respect, so that we can only read: “They [civilians found in houses] were used as ‘Johnnies’ (at a different point in the interview the witness described the ‘Johnnie’ procedure, using Palestinian civilians as human shields during house searches), and then released, and we’re finding them in later searches.”
1090. The Mission thus finds that while these testimonies do not confirm the details of the specific cases it investigated, they strongly support the general allegation that the Israeli armed forces engaged in the practice of compelling Palestinian civilians to accompany them on house searches.
I wonder why the owners of this blog haven’t banned you and your cut-and-paste nonsense, much of which you most likely do not understand.
What’s the matter? Are your writing skills severely lacking?
Noami998 – this post is copy/paste from the propaganda site link to goldstonereport.org
Weird – you guys bought commercial links for these cheap lies on google.
Something is wrong with my browser..sheesh.
———————————————————
One child out of hundreds more.
Is the US going to rescue them too the way it rescued Jews from Yemen just a few weeks ago?
GREAT POINT! Did you see the coverage the airlifting of 58 Yemeni Jews got on the above-the-fold part of page one of the Wall Street Journal? How about airlifting some house building supplies into Palestine??
Nolan, how the Palestinians love their children.
link to pmw.org.il
PA Indoctrination of Children to Seek Heroic Death for Allah – Shahada
The premise of your argument relies on the assumption that the Palestinians were beamed down to Palestine out of nowhere after Israel was established.
As if Israel’s actions and the murderous ethnic cleansing that has been going on for decades is irrelevant.
The other false premise of your argument is the assumption that Israel actually had legitimacy in the first place. It didn’t. The Zionist lobby pressured Britain to allow them to establish a homeland in Palestine and both the British and the Zionist movement reneged on their promises.
Wow Nomi, I really hope you aren’t getting paid for your lame hasbara efforts. I mean your skills are so elementary. You don’t really think that this whole “Palestinians don’t love their children business” is going to get you very far do you?
By the way Nomi, how much do Jews from around love their children when they move to settlements in the West Bank?
What is it they are trying to teach their children?
That risking their lives is worth it for cheap rent on someone elses land?
Nice!
Noami998
According to Memoirs by David Ben-Gurion (1970), p. 36
“I don’t understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. ……”
He said WE HAVE COME HERE AND STOLEN THEIR COUNTRY!!! does that contradict your lies that Palestinians never existed? and their country too?
And there’s the famous quote by Ben Gurion that everyone but nomi knows,
“If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter—-because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.” (I fess, I cut and pasted the quote from www.palestineremembered.com. Its from Benny Morris, Righteous Victims)
I guess Ben Gurion got what he asked for, the destruction of (I think it was more than half) of the Jewish children of Europe. Do zionists really love Jewish children?
“PA Indoctrination of Children to Seek Heroic Death for Allah – Shahada ”
While the Israeli Indoctrination of Children to Seek the Death of Palestinians and Lebanese because the goy are expendable.
link to images.google.com.au
BBC: Israel using Palestinian Kids as Human Shields with video proof: link to z.pe
Israeli Soldiers Testify: We Used Gazans as Human Shields! with photograph of blindfolded Palestinian kid: link to z.pe
Regardless of the human shields bullcrap often peddled by Israeli Hasbara, international law stipulates that using White Phosphorus against a civilian population, in a dense urban area to boot, is a clear violation of the laws of war and is a war crime.
Case closed.
Let’s focus on more important issues than these trolls and their distractions.
Nolan,
I never knew there was a Zionist lobby in 1917.
The British never created any Jewish state.
But the British did create an Arab state with 75% of the mandate borders called Transjordan in 1922.
The British also gave out a white paper barring all Jewish immigration in 39.
This to appease the Arabs.
2nd, there was never any state called Palestine governed by Palestinians.
“I never knew there was a Zionist lobby in 1917.” Then you’re an idiot who’s never read history.
“2nd, there was never any state called Palestine governed by Palestinians
Every Jew in Palestine pre-1948 held a Palestinian passport, and paid for their fruits and veggies with Palestinian currency.
Seham, What do the names Judea and Samaria refer to?
link to palestinefacts.org
Um, let me guess . . . an evil Zionist plot to ethnically cleanse an entire civilian population?
link to memri.org
November 6, 2009
Egyptian Cleric Amin Al-Ansari – Hatred of Jews is Prevalent in Sports and in the Animal Kingdom: “‘Judgment Day Will Not Come Before the Muslims Fight the Jews and Kill Them’; The Muslims Will Kill the Jews – Be Patient”
Nomi, if you keep on looking at that girl, you are gonna end up saying something really stupid. As one Jew to another, why don’t you quit now, before you embarrass yourself further. There are lots of other threads, and you know you’ll end up saying she should have been killed. Cause that’s what a Zionist will say every time they think people might be feeling sorry for anybody except them!
After all, think of your family, don’t they have some kind of pretensions to decency, or are they Israelis?
Well done, Mooser. Thanks for that.
Phil — which hospital, do we know? I’d like to send a gift.
I agree with Mooser, this isn’t the right thread to be posting your opinions.
May her suffering be a reminder to all, real people are involved and a real solution needs to be reached before another child needs to suffer.
You mean one side is suffering vastly more than the other. One side is perpetuating the suffering of the other.
This is not a conflict between equal forces. She’s suffering because Israelis rained down white phosphorus on her.
It’s convenient for a Zionist like yourself to remove the identity of her torturers when her suffering is right in your face.
But you won’t shy away from adding in the usual Zionist, JEWISH this and JEWISH that – when it’s YOUR “side” that’s suffering.
You’re so transparent Zionist. Fucking scumbag.
Cliff? wow that was kind of unnecessary, feeling a little ballsy after your Jew hating fest last night?
Why do the Palestinians continue fighting then? What is the point of antagonizing a force which is so much more powerful than you are?
How did I remove anyone’s identity? she is a Palestinian’s whose family was killed by an Israeli shell in a conflict between two groups which has lasted way too long.
I think this joke of an armed struggle is the only thing perpetuating anything, douche-bag.
…and yonira curls up into a ball and goes into full anti-defamation defamation mode. As it happens, Cliff is right. While you aren’t vile enough to condemn the child above, you are vile enough to justify what happened to her.
Hey Yonira,
What was thbe point of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto antagonizing a force which was so much more powerful than they were?
Try explainign to the sruviging family memners that theirs was not a an armed struggle but a joke and that their effors were efforts didn’t perpetuating anything.
Now off you go to drown some kittens.
Overworked amygdalas are the Likudists’ problem, and the lack of any frontal lobe activity (which is where you measure the IQ.) Breathless, overwrought limbic brain activity is the sign that you need a sedative.
I would also like to send a gift. Pls let us know of the hospital.
I have a little girl around her age.
I know why I’m on Mondoweiss and I figure my reasons are similar to those of most folks here. I wonder though what Nomi998 is doing here. Is the Jerusalem Foreign Minstry paying for Hasbara moles to take on the anti-Israel blogs?
I was reading an article in lemonde link to lemonde.fr
The article is about the Israeli Army chief who says about IDF “We are not an army of looters and robbers”
BTw: we have French Hasbara moles too but very few.
I wonder how Nomi is feeling about the suffering of this little girl and whether she is pleased that she, and her grandmother are coming to USA to get treatment. Nomi?
The Hasbara brigade must be off their game: not one breathless inquiry about the authenticity of the photo. A sign that they are capable of feeling shame, or just tactical discretion?
That photo is so arresting. I can only hope that somehow normal life is still possible for her.
Farah’s is a story that Americans need to hear. How can we get the MSM to cover this?
Fat chance–like asking in reverse gear for the pic of Anne Frank to be erased from public consciousness.
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