Media Marvel at Israel’s Haiti Response
January 28, 2010 – 4:14 pmIn his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, looks at the coverage of Israel’s response to the earthquake in Haiti.
The devastating earthquake in Haiti dominated the news last week. And on the U.S. television networks, several news reports focused on the speed with which Israel – although 7,000 miles away from Haiti – managed to establish a sophisticated field hospital.
This story had special resonance in the United States because, as intense as the American relief effort was, it had not managed to match the Israeli accomplishment, even as the number of Haitians in dire need of medical attention remained overwhelming.
For instance, on ABC World News (Jan. 18), anchor Diane Sawyer introduced a story by saying that Israel’s medical unit had already become “legendary.”
Sawyer interviewed Dr. Richard Besser, ABC’s senior medical editor and an expert in emergency response.
“What do you make of this?” Sawyer asked.
Besser pointed to the contrast between the U.S. and Israeli response: “The timeline is very different,” he said.
“The Israelis arrived here Friday night [Jan.15]. By Saturday morning they had set up a field hospital. The Americans were just getting started this morning [last Monday]. I can’t understand that difference when Haiti is so close to our shore.”
Sawyer and Besser remarked on the specialization within the field hospital: a surgical unit; intensive care units for children, a pediatric ward, a maternity ward and so on.
On Jan. 19, NBC Nightly News carried much the same report, with an additional focus on the high-tech nature of the hospital: X-rays and other diagnostic procedures could be digitized and transmitted to Israel – or anywhere else for that matter – for consultation. The medical technology was all in the interest of reaching the best and quickest decision for the patient.
With its quick reaction to the Haitian disaster, Israel provided the world with a model of emergency medical response.
* * *
What are the facts about Iran’s nuclear weapons program?
In “Don’t bomb Iran’s hopes for change” (Globe and Mail, Jan. 9), Doug Saunders argued that Iran’s nuclear program is slowing down and doesn’t pose an immediate threat.
“Iran is close to a making a weapon the way an owner of an iron mine is close to making an automobile,” he wrote.
Saunders added: “Their [nuclear] program is dropping away, probably because the [political] protests have created other priorities.
“Given this and other intelligence discoveries, the White House now believes it will be as long as three years before Iran is even capable of beginning the enrichment of its fuel into weapons-grade purity. Even then, under the most desirable of circumstances, even one weapon would take five or six additional years.”
However, in “Iran’s Path to the Bomb,” published in the Jan. 14 New York Review of Books (a publication known for being anything but hawkish and alarmist on foreign affairs) nuclear physicist Jeremy Bernstein wrote that, depending on how the centrifuges are configured at its recently disclosed Qom nuclear site, Iran “could enrich enough uranium for two or more bombs a year.”
Bernstein argued that the more immediate threat is at the main Natanz nuclear enrichment site where, given the technical procedure he outlines as possible, “the 1,700 kilograms of low-enriched uranium now available [there] could produce enough uranium 235 to make one bomb in as little as six months.”
Bernstein’s article is worth reading in full. It can be found at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=23560
* * *
Further to last week’s column on British MP George Galloway, not to be overlooked is how Galloway’s feverish anti-Jewish bigotry may well be a strong motivating factor in his pro-Palestinian crusade.
In a Dec. 28 piece for the Scottish Daily Record under the headline, “Dark Echoes of the Holocaust,” Galloway bolstered a Swedish journalist’s notorious blood-libel allegation (in the paper Aftonbladet) that Israel harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and then went on to compare Israeli doctors with infamous Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele. (Galloway wrote that these doctors were “playing mini-Mengele on Palestinian prisoners in Israel jails.”)
In case anyone needed additional proof of Galloway’s twisted, hateful mind, there it is.
Possibly related posts:
3 Responses to “Media Marvel at Israel’s Haiti Response”
Too bad President Obama couldn’t bring himself to include Israel in the list of countries providing aide to Haiti. A transcript of President Obama’s January 15th speech can be found at http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/01/obamas_haiti_update_transcript.html
By Tzachi P on Feb 2, 2010
And yet Israel routinely lets Palestinians die at checkpoints, for want of medical attention.
They seek publicity for one deed, but to keep the other hidden.
Ironic isn’t it?
By Peter Dawson on Mar 14, 2010