From Middle East Children's Alliance:
Nasma Abu Lasheen died on Saturday, October 16, 2010 in Gaza. Israel failed to issue her an urgent entry permit for life-saving medical treatment at Ha-Emek Medical Center in Afula, Israel. She was two years old.
Abu Lasheen, a young resident of Gaza diagnosed with Leukemia, was referred for emergency treatment in Israel on October 6, 2010. When requests to the Israeli Army for an entry permit went unanswered for several days, by way of B’Tselem, the family contacted Physicians for Human Rights- Israel (PHR-Israel) for additional help. That very same day, on October 13, 2010, PHR-Israel contacted the Gaza District Coordination Office (DCO) demanding a permit be issued immediately to the baby and her father to enable their entry into Israel. A military approval was finally granted the next afternoon, October 14, 2010.
Abu Lasheen’s medical condition had been deteriorating rapidly and by the time the permit was received, the treating doctor in Gaza, Dr. Mohammad Abu Sha’aban, said she was too sick to travel. Nasma died in the early morning hours of October 16, 2010.”
So it has come to this as generations of hate and paranoia leach the humanity of Israel, to create a heartless society composed of “them and “us.” Weep we must. Nama Abu Lasheen , age 2, was someone’s precious daughter who was helped to die by those whose hearts have turned to stone. I am not a proud Jew when I must disassociate myself from such acts, for they defy what it is to be a Jew. Not for this did millions of hearts and souls go up in smoke from the ovens of the crematoria and die in the ghettos and camps constructed by the Nazis who deemed this appropriate for Jews and dissenters. Not for this did I once hope quite naively that Israel could rise above the gruesome lessons of a hunted and oppressed people.
That I was deported and told I no longer could enter Israel and questioned as to whether I was REALLY a Jew and could I prove it-- that is minuscule in the face of the dehumanization of “Them." What laws allow the “us” the “good Jews to be morally superior to “them?” Pure racism as I see it. Israel should know better for history has taught it well. America knows the face of racism which makes me incredulous to observe the unflinching support of semites and anti semites for Israel as it exists in this state of apartheid. No, I am not afraid to use that word, for when one population is forced to live as the “other” in the same country, they are against their will living apart. Let’s be real, America knows well the face of apartheid. In the face of human rights disasters perpetuated on the “other," those who have had their voices taken away, I am appalled.
In the case of Israel, call me a traitor or anti Israel, anything you wish to justify these actions and to keep this travesty going. I am devastated that it has come to this twisted moral righteousness, this myth of superiority that provides the venue for “us” against “them.” Such division separates humanity, splits all of our brothers and sisters into good and evil, victim and victimizers. Make no mistake, Israel is divided into the prosperous Jewish state that lives along side a walled, collectively punished society of Palestine, under siege, in deplorable despair, “them”, “the other” “forgotten” “not cared about.”
No, I am not proud to be a Jew. How can life continue in this land dominated by hate and war. How can the Jews in Israel be happy while their neighbors suffer?
I wish to remind you of the death of this child, not a Palestinian child, not an Israeli child, not an American child. She was a child who died and I who also had a child who died stand hand in hand with all parents and siblings who have lost children. Let Nasma Abu Lasheen’s death bring us all to an awareness of what hate and moral superiority will do to destroy.
Excellent post, Lillian.
Thank you for this moving and courageous piece.
I am not in a position to know what caused Nasma to develop leukemia at the tender age of 2, but I would not be in the least surprised to learn that it was the use of white phosphorous during Israel’s attack on Gaza, at a time when Nasma would have been about 3 months old and probably still breastfeeding. We don’t know her story, what happened to her mother and her family during the war, but even so – we can speculate that the collective culpability for her death may be even greater than you suggest. And she is one child of how many? How many children in Gaza will be similarly afflicted in the next decade? Will this ever be known?
Some data: More leukemia in Iraq than after Hiroshima as a result of the US-UK use of depleted uranium, white phosphorus and nerve gas in its weaponry
~Quote:
Bill Wilson MSP (SNP) has lodged a Parliamentary Motion highlighting the consequences of the US and UK’s use of Weapons of Mass Destruction during an attack on Fallujah in 2004.
Speaking after lodging his motion, Dr Wilson said, “The consequences are ongoing: a survey showed a four-fold increase in all cancers, a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s and a 38-fold increase in leukaemia. By contrast, Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase with regard to the latter. What’s more, because of this cancer crisis, local doctors are advising women not to have children.
“I have long been convinced that those responsible for the invasion of Iraq should be charged. It seems to me that any reasonable person looking at what happen in Fallujah would conclude that major war crimes have been committed. Tony Blair has to answer for his decisions.
“It is disappointing, to say the least, that our media have paid relatively little attention to this issue. Yet women are now being advised not to have children. To turn a blind eye now would surely make us all complicit.”
Thanks Lillian. I am not Jewish. But I am an American. America enabled this young death of an innocent. I am not proud to be an American. If this is an exceptional nation, then I don’t want to be so special. I did not serve in the combat forces for this, nor did my brother. And neither did a whole bunch of my uncles in WW2. I am not religious, but what sort of religion allows this?
What sort of spiritualism? I am old, and cynical, but this still manages to shock me.
Lillian, being a Jew has nothing to do with this so you have no reason to feel any shame. These people in Israel doing evil things are doing them because they are evil and not because they are Jewish. When Saddam was gassing the Kurds or other Arab regimes were bashing heads, I did not feel ashamed to be an Arab because what they were doing had nothing to do with being Arab or Muslim; they were doing these evil things because they were evil. I’m under the impression that Jews put their pants on one leg at a time, just like other people, and I find your disgust with these people because of their Jewishness is off-base.
bijoux made an important comment on the probability of the child having develped leukemia from the DU and phosphorus dumped on Gaza. Fallujah that was showered with an overdose of American democracy is a good case in point.
The callous nature of Israeli society is beyond belief. However, I have some sympathy for those Jewish people who wrestle with the dilemma that somehow it is being done in their name. The only answer I can suggest is that Israel has redefined Jewishness to mean the ideology of the complete, untrammelled superiority of the ‘Jewish state’ and all of the apparatus and means to further this, including complete disregard and indifference for any non-Jews. As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with Judaism, and everything to do with a political ideology more commonly referred to as fascism. Just because their citizens (and by no means all) pay lip service to a religion and its practices doesn’t mean those religious values have any meaning for them – instead a myth of entitlement and privilege dominates the imagined justification for the death and destruction of the indigenous people. If religion has any connection to the land, then a Judeo-Christian heritage, intertwined with an Islamic one, would privilege all three major religions and cultures. Judaism is one thing, what Israel does is another, and has very little to do with the name they use to justify supremacism.
“America knows the face of racism”…well, yes, it certainly does.
I can only guess, but it strikes me that our ongoing American racism is one of many reasons we can continue to support Israel in spite of Israeli racism.
Phil often refers to “Jim Crow” in the past tense. No criticism of Phil intended here at all, but just how “past” is Jim Crow? Interesting article in today’s NY Times…
“Smoke and Horrors” by Charles M. Blow
link to nytimes.com
From the article…
“In fact, in her fascinating new book, “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander argues that the American justice system is being used to create a permanent “undercaste — a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society” and to discriminate against blacks and Hispanics in the same way that Jim Crow laws were once used to discriminate against blacks.”
A Holocaust survivor and a dear friend of mine, passed away years ago. He taught me how to play chess, told me about his childhood experiences, discussed Kafka and more. He was a precious human being. He didn’t bring children into the world. Once, I asked him about that and he explained that after what he saw and experienced in life, especially in Austria under the Nazi regime, he had come to the conclusion that this was not a world into which he wanted to bring children. From that day forward, I had contemplated those words and soon came to the conclusion that while life, in general, has its own struggles and challenges — a fact that makes it interesting and worth living — the world in which we live is also filled with agony, suffering, despair and misery. Such horrors I do not wish on any human being. For that reason and to this day, I have been resolute that I will not bring children into this cruel world for I will be an accomplice.
Once, my friend asked me to fetch something for him from the bedroom. As I walked past the dresser with the glass top, I saw an embroidered piece of cloth. It was yellow, the star of David. It had some stains, perhaps mud, charcoal. I quickly grabbed what he had asked me to get and walked out, but the image of that piece of cloth was searing. I felt jolted by its historic significance, its meaning, and it made all the cruelty and racism in the world tangible, familiar and painful. My dear friend objected to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. He criticized and rebuked the Israeli State’s policies, it’s racism, and it’s divisive ideology.
What will Palestinians tell their grandchildren in 40 or 60 years? What experiences will they have of the occupation, the oppression, the expulsion and dispossession?
Perhaps you may project an answer to your last paragraph’s question from a dialogue between the children of Nazis and Shoah survivors:
link to shadowsoftheholocaust.com
You’re a beautiful person. Thank you for speaking on behalf of that child. Please keep fighting the good fight and setting a wonderful example for all Jews to follow. Jews need to be reminded that their loyalty is first to their humanity. We are all equal.