Palestinian health care 'ailing', 10% of Palestinian children now have stunted growth.

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Written by BBC News BBC News

Published: 12 March 2009 12 March 2009

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 Palestinian health care 'ailing'

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza suffer from an "ailing landscape" of health services, a new study claims.

The Lancet medical journal report highlights how 10% of Palestinian children now have stunted growth.

The paper describes the healthcare system in the Palestinian territories as "fragmented and incoherent".

An Israeli government spokesperson said the Lancet had failed to seek its view, and said many Palestinians had accessed medical care in the country.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government, called the report one-sided.

He said: "This is propaganda in the guise of a medical report."

Experts from Birzeit University say death rates among children and expectant mothers have failed to decline in recent years.

The plateau is in spite of good ante-natal care and high rates of child immunisation.

“ The trend for stunting among children is increasing, and the concern is about the long-term effects ”
Dr Hanan Abdul Rahim Birzeit University

Dr Hanan Abdul Rahim said: "There are gaps in care. There's a low level of post-natal care and often it's not given in a timely manner.

"Mortality rates among infants and under-fives haven't declined much. This is unusual when compared with other Arab countries that used to have similar rates but have managed to bring them down.

"The trend for stunting among children is increasing, and the concern is about the long-term effects. It is caused by chronic malnutrition, and affects cognitive development and physical health.

"There are pockets in northern Gaza where the level of stunted growth reaches 30%.

"It's very important that women and children have access to quality care."

Dr Rahim's paper mentions a previously published report from the UN, which says more than 60 Palestinian women have given birth at Israeli checkpoints and 36 of their babies have died as a result.

Another paper says the Palestinian health system fails to be effective and equitable.

'Heartbreaking'

The conditions of military occupation are blamed, but so is the political instability of the Palestinian Authority - which has appointed six health ministers in three years.

“ Israel as a policy enables and encourages people from all over the world to come to Israel for advanced medical treatment ”
Unit of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories spokesman
The lead author, Dr Awad Mataria, also from Birzeit University, said: "Political havoc is one of the reasons for the failure of the health system - but this has been exaggerated and perpetuated under occupation.

"Also, the policies of foreign aid donors can be fragmented and contradictory."

Dr Mataria's paper note that the Palestinian Authority has received $10bn in recent years - mostly donated by the European Union.

But he and his colleagues say health programmes have focused on relief and emergency, rather than on long-term development.

In an editorial accompanying the series, the Lancet's editor Richard Horton said: "Our series is not about Arab politics, the status of Israel, or existing conventional diplomatic efforts to broker peace."

He added: "The latest storm of violence to engulf Gaza has been heartbreaking to watch, especially for those who have seen first hand the predicaments faced by health professionals trying to maintain a rudimentary, but ultimately failing, health system there."

Israeli response

An Israeli government spokesperson from the office responsible for coordination with the Palestinian territories said the researchers had failed to get a full picture of health care in the region.

He said: "In the two year period supposedly covered by the report over 28,000 Palestinians accessed Israel from the Gaza Strip for medical needs.

"Contrary to the indications of the writers, at no time was medical access from Gaza prevented as a policy.

"On the contrary, the only time medical aid in Israel was prevented was as a direct result of a Palestinian decision or on limited occasions when the crossing in to Israel was under direct threat and attack."

He added: "Israel as a policy enables and encourages people from all over the world to come to Israel for advanced medical treatment it is only natural that our closest neighbour, the Palestinians, enjoy this privilege."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7924199.stm

Published: 2009/03/05 09:10:38 GMT

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Activists confront AIPAC donors with checkpoint outside fundriaser

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Written by Ad-hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East Ad-hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East

Published: 12 March 2009 12 March 2009

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Press release, Ad-hoc Coalition for Justice in the Middle East - Los Angeles, 11 March 2009

Activists set up a mock Israeli checkpoint outside the AIPAC fundraiser. (Roxane Auer)

Dozens of Los Angeles-area Jews, Palestinians and other allies erected a mock checkpoint at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual Valley Fundraiser in protest of AIPAC's attempt to steer US policy makers to ignore recent Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Cars were confronted by people dressed as Israeli soldiers and those attending the event were "allowed to pass through" after receiving a new program for the event that exposes AIPAC support for Israeli policies which contravene international law. A boisterous crowd also chanted "Angelenos choose a side, human rights or Apartheid!" at AIPAC donors as they approached the hotel entrance.

"At a time when President Obama's administration seeks to restart peace talks with Palestinians and Israelis, AIPAC advocates a one-sided US policy of supporting Israel at any cost," said Julie Hey, a graduate student. "As a Jewish American, I am particularly appalled that my tax dollars are funding Israel's apartheid policies."

AIPAC is self-described as "America's leading pro-Israel lobby," and as such has supported Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, including the use of military checkpoints and the erection of a 450-mile-long wall that has encircled entire communities, leaving Palestinians prisoners in their own land. The South African apartheid regime broke the country into 10 noncontiguous Bantustans made of 13 percent of the total land --"homelands" for the black population. Israel's "separation wall" and settlements have broken the Palestinian territories into 12 noncontiguous cantons representing only 12 percent of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

"Tonight we are exposing AIPAC's support of Israel's Apartheid system and are letting the high-donors and political leaders of Los Angeles know that is it unacceptable to support Israel's separate and unequal treatment of Palestinians," said Lisa Adler, an LA-based community organizer and Jewish leader. "Just as the movement for end South African apartheid required boycott, divestment and sanctions, people of conscience around the world are increasingly supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination by boycotting all things Israeli."

AIPAC also supported Israel's recent offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,000, the vast majority civilians. "We found strong evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day offensive," said human rights attorney Radhika Sainath, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip. "Israeli forces repeatedly violated international law by targeting civilians, blocking medical access to the wounded, and using weapons that cause needless suffering."

AIPAC wants Obama to agree to almost $3 billion in new military aid to Israel. US law forbids assistance to governments that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights

Mostly recently, AIPAC, praised the Obama Administration's decision to boycott the World Conference Against Racism in Geneva next month, unless its final document drops all references to Israel and reparations for slavery. In 2001, Bush administration diplomats walked out of the conference in Durban, South Africa after delegates proposed a resolution likening Zionism to racism.

Many of the same participants in today's demonstration also were part of an ad-hoc group of Los Angeles Jews that shut down the Israeli consulate for three hours on 14 January 2008 during Israel's invasion of Gaza.

Ex-AIPACer Rosen suing former employer for defamation

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Written by Ron Kampeas, JTA Ron Kampeas, JTA

Published: 11 March 2009 11 March 2009

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[Perhaps spying for AIPAC "does comport with standards that AIPAC expects of all its employees"]

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy chief charged with receiving classified information, is suing his former employer for defamation, JTA has learned.

Rosen filed a civil action March 2 in the District of Columbia Superior Court seeking $21 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its officers at the time of his dismissal in 2005 and an outside spokesman hired to deal specifically with the case.

Should it come to trial, the civil case promises revelations of how AIPAC works its sensitive relations with the executive branch and allegedly capitulated to government pressure to fire Rosen and Keith Weissman, its then-Iran analyst.

Weissman, Rosen's co-defendant in the criminal case under way in a federal court in Alexandria, Va., is not a plaintiff in the civil suit. He and his lawyers declined comment, as did Rosen.

Both of Rosen's lawyers -- in the criminal case and in his suit against AIPAC -- did not return calls requesting comment.

The core of the case is the repeated claims by Patrick Dorton, the outside spokesman for AIPAC named in the suit, that Rosen and Weissman were fired because they "did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of all its employees.”

AIPAC’s regular spokesman, Joshua Block, referred questions to Dorton. In turn, Dorton issued a statement saying that AIPAC and the others named in Rosen's suit would defend themselves vigorously.

"The complaint paints a false picture of what happened," he told JTA, adding later that "AIPAC made all decisions in this situation with a determination to do the right thing."

In seeking to prove that he was the victim of "false and defamatory statements" made on AIPAC's behalf, the complaint describes Rosen as tumbling from the heights of a cozy relationship with the highest echelons of government to being shown the door at AIPAC.

Rosen describes his own status as a high-flying conduit between foreign policy mandarins and the policy community, journalists and foreign diplomats.

In the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by JTA, Rosen says he had the "requisite experience and expertise" to deal with those "with the authority to determine and differentiate which information disclosures would be harmful to the United States and which disclosures would benefit the United States."

Rosen and Weissman allegedly received classified information having to do with Iran and its backing for terrorism. The case came to light following an FBI raid on AIPAC's offices in August 2004.

After the FBI raid, AIPAC stood by the two employees, insisting they had done nothing wrong. Rosen says he even received a performance bonus. Seven months later, in March 2005, Rosen and Weissman were fired; they were indicted in August of that year.

Rosen's suit alleges that AIPAC gave in to government pressure to fire the two staffers, casting Paul McNulty, the lead prosecutor in the case, as making threats that would not be out of place in a legal drama.

"We could make real progress and get AIPAC out from under all of us," the filing quotes McNulty as saying.

The filing draws its information from a motion by Rosen and Weissman to have the criminal case dismissed in 2007. The motion said the government violated the defendants' right to a defense by threatening to charge AIPAC as well unless it fired Rosen and Weissman and stopped paying their legal fees.

In sworn affidavits filed with the motion, lawyers for Rosen and Weissman quoted lawyers for AIPAC as saying that the decision to fire the two came under government pressure.

T.S. Ellis III, the federal judge trying the case, ultimately rejected the motion to dismiss but said its claims were credible. At the time of the May 2007 ruling, Dorton brushed aside the motion's claims.

"AIPAC made all of its decisions in this case alone based on the facts of the situation and the organization’s intention to do the right thing," he told JTA.

Within months, however, AIPAC agreed to pay Weissman's legal fees and reportedly expressed willingness to do the same for Rosen. (Rosen's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, deferred negotiating such a payment, in part because he had switched legal firms in the interim and preferred to wait until the case was completed to properly apportion fees.)

Rosen's central contention is that his actions comported with AIPAC practices, and that he provided his superiors with regular briefings about his efforts to gather information from government officials. The paragraph in the complaint outlining how AIPAC works suggests that the trial would lift the veil over exchanges with the government that AIPAC has long tried to keep under wraps.

"To be effective, organizations engaged in advocacy in the field of foreign policy need to have earlier and more detailed information about policy developments inside the government and diplomatic issues with other countries than is normally available to or needed by the wider public," the complaint says. "Agencies of the government sometimes choose to provide such additional information about policy and diplomatic issues to these outside interest groups in order to win support for what they are doing among important domestic constituencies and to send messages to select target audiences.”

The complaint also asserts that the statements made by AIPAC’s outside spokesman "might influence a jury that will hear the misdirected case brought against him by the government." The criminal trial, which has been delayed multiple times, is now set for May 27.

The filing also alleges that "through their publication of the falsehoods about Mr. Rosen, defendant achieved an increase of millions of dollars in revenue for AIPAC, whereas had they told the truth, AIPAC might well have suffered a significant decrease in fund-raising, as well as an increase in legal costs."

Sources close to the criminal case say that Weissman and the criminal defense team are not troubled by the lawsuit, but think that making the case that Rosen had been defamed would be much easier after an acquittal or after the case had been dropped by the government.

Increasing calls on the Obama administration to drop the case include most recently an editorial Wednesday in the Washington Post.

The case is now being seen to have been an instrument of Bush administration efforts to expand secrecy laws. Prosecutors charged Rosen and Weissman under a rarely cited section of the 1917 Espionage Act that criminalizes the receipt of classified information by civilians; the section has never led to a successful prosecution.

Rosen in filing his lawsuit may have felt pressed for time, as defamation suits must be filed within a year of the offending statement.

The most recent instance of Dorton, the spokesman, claiming publicly that Rosen and Weissman did not comport with AIPAC rules came in a story by The New York Times on March 3, 2008 -- a year less a day before Rosen filed his suit. The suit contends that Dorton repeated the claim to a reporter for the Forward in October; that instance apparently was not published.

A Superior Court judge set June 5 for a hearing to set a trial date regarding Rosen’s claims. By the time Rosen’s civil lawsuit comes to trial, he might have a dismissal or acquittal under his belt, increasing his chances for victory.

Rosen’s filing asserts that at AIPAC he “was one of the principal officials who, along with Executive Director Howard Kohr and a few other individuals, were expected to maintain relationships with [government] agencies, receive such information and share it with AIPAC Board of Directors and to Senior Staff for possible further distribution."

Kohr is named as a defendant, as are AIPAC's lay leadership at the time: Bernice Manocherian, then president; Howard Friedman, then president-elect (and a former president of JTA’s board of directors); and Amy Friedkin, then the immediate past president.

Also named are alleged members of an "advisory group" set up to deal directly with the case. These names reinforce the impression that a small core of members of AIPAC's board continues to take the lead in determining AIPAC's direction. They include past presidents Lonnie Kaplan, Larry Weinberg, Bob Asher and Ed Levy.

The complaint asks for $10 million from AIPAC, $500,000 each from all 12 other defendants and $5 million collectively from all the defendants.

US diplomat resigns from intelligence post over Israel criticism

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Written by Oliver Burkeman in Washington, guardian.co.uk Oliver Burkeman in Washington, guardian.co.uk

Published: 11 March 2009 11 March 2009

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Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, withdrew from one of Barack Obama's top intelligence positions

A veteran American diplomat has resigned as one of Barack Obama's top intelligence officials over his strident criticisms of Israeli government policy.

Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, withdrew before starting work as chairman of the national intelligence council, accusing his critics of libel, character assassination and "utter disregard for the truth".

The "Israel Lobby", he argued, was stifling any discussion of US policy options in the Middle East except those endorsed by "the ruling faction in Israeli politics" - a situation that could "ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel".

Freeman's job would have involved producing National Intelligence Estimates, the authoritative documents intended to provide the president and senior policymakers with an overview of crucial security issues.

But numerous members of Congress have questioned Freeman's ability to carry out the task objectively, citing his view that until "Israeli violence against Palestinians" is halted, "it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance". They also questioned his business links with Saudi Arabia and his views on China.

"His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration," said the New York Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer. "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."

Unlike the string of prominent Obama nominees who have withdrawn in recent weeks, Freeman did not have to be approved by Congress. But his departure - coming hours after the national intelligence director, Dennis Blair, defended him before a Senate committee - will embarrass the White House, and signals how reluctant the president may be to depart from Washington's current policies towards Israel and the Palestinians.

Freeman's critics noted that he was president of a Middle East thinktank part-funded by the Saudi regime, and serves as an adviser to an oil company owned by the Chinese government. In a posting to a foreign policy email list, attributed to Freeman, he appears to back Beijing's actions in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, arguing that force should have been used sooner.

"I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be," the posting reads.

But in a message on the website of the magazine Foreign Policy, Freeman claimed it was ironic to be accused of improper regard for foreign governments "by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government". He had never sought money from or been paid by any overseas power, he said.

"This is a country where you can say anything you want about the president, or any other policy, and it's really important for people to understand that this is the only issue you cannot discuss openly," said MJ Rosenberg, of the Israel Policy Forum. "I think if people perceive incorrectly that the Jewish community as a whole is behind these efforts to stifle dissent on this issue, that's dangerous."