NefeshBarYochai
2024-07-22 17:49:16 UTC
This past week, poliovirus was detected in sewage samples in the Gaza
Strip. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) polio
(poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease that invades the
nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
Like so much else in the Gaza Strip these days, polio according to the
WHO mainly affects children under 5 years of age but can infect
anyone of any age who is unvaccinated. Furthermore, One in 200
infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs).
Among those paralyzed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become
immobilized.
Israel and its apologists can be expected to blame Hamas for this
state of affairs, with canards about the Gaza health authorities
prioritizing the construction of tunnels over inoculating those under
their rule, dirty Arabs, and the like. The fact of the matter is that
not only is polio not endemic in the Gaza Strip, it was eradicated
from the territory several decades ago. The achievement was publicly
touted by none other than Ted Tulchinksy, who from 1978-1994 served as
the Coordinator for Health in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within
Israels Ministry of Health. His testimony is significant because
during his tenure Tulchinsky supervised the health departments of the
military governments Israel established in each of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip in 1967.
Writing on the website of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
in 2011, Tulchinsky writes that during the 1970s polio epidemics
periodically erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories it was
in the process of annexing, and despite high levels of [vaccination]
coverage in the Gaza Strip in particular, on account of its degraded
sanitary infrastructure.
Tulchinsky recounts that in 1978 Israel consulted with Natan Goldblum
and Joseph Melnick, two noted epidemiologists from Baylor University,
to develop more effective anti-polio strategies. Their recommendation,
to increase the four doses traditionally given to infants during their
first year with an additional three of a different variety, was
pioneered in the Gaza Strip. It proved so effective that the disease
was eradicated from the territory within a few short years. Tulchinsky
does not say so, but it seems likely that as with so much else the
Gaza Strip here too functioned as a human laboratory for new Israeli
methods. Indeed, the Goldblum-Melnick vaccination sequence was
according to Tulchinsky dubbed the Gaza system and subsequently
applied within Israel to quell a polio outbreak of its own in 1988.
As a result of this episode, Tulchinsky wrote, Israel adopted the
Gaza system, and total eradication of polio was rapidly achieved.
It is unclear how polio has suddenly re-appeared in the Gaza Strip.
What is beyond doubt is how its spreading. Israel has systematically
destroyed the Gaza Strips health, sanitary, water treatment, and
power infrastructure, particularly since October 2023, leading to the
collapse of systems that were already precarious. Contaminated water,
untreated sewage, and uncollected garbage, particularly when paired
with the severe overcrowding resulting from Israels genocidal
campaign and repeated forced displacement of the civilian population,
represent ideal conditions for its spread.
In the words of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres,
speaking last December:
The people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs
ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of
the basics of survival Conditions in shelters are overcrowded and
unsanitary. People nurse open wounds. Hundreds of people stand in line
for hours to use one shower or toilet wearing clothes they have not
changed for two months.
Such conditions have also created a breeding ground for other
infectious diseases. As of June 30, the WHO reported nearly a million
cases of acute respiratory infection (affecting almost half the
population), over half a million cases of diarrhea (including nearly
200,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea), and over 100,000 cases of
acute jaundice (suggesting hepatitis is widespread), and so on. The
WHO notes these figures should be interpreted with caution, due to
delayed and incomplete data reporting. As the summer intensifies,
there have also been multiple warnings of a cholera outbreak.
With few and limited exceptions, Israel is preventing the entry of
fuel, vaccines, medical supplies, and potable water into the Gaza
Strip. As Israels Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, publicly
announced on October 8, We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza.
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything
will be closed.
There was more to this policy of collective sadism than revenge. Giora
Eiland is a retired major-general who previously served as head of
Israels National Security Council and is an advisor to its current
government. He also publishes a regular column in the Israeli
newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Writing on October 29, he urged Israel to
inflict not only destruction in Gaza City, but a humanitarian
disaster and absolute governmental chaos [O]nly that outcome the
complete destruction of all systems in Gaza and desperate distress,
would in his view bring about victory. On November 19 he exhorted the
government to continue its siege on the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that
severe epidemics in the southern Gaza Strip will bring victory closer
and will reduce the number of IDF casualties. The enthusiastic
identification of an entire society as a military target, and the
determination to inflict maximum levels of suffering to compensate for
Israels military failures, has been a common refrain among Israels
senior political and military leaders.
Central to this campaign has been the eradication of Gazas health
infrastructure. The WHO speaks of the continued dismantling of the
health system. In late May Doctors Without Borders (MSF) put it thus:
In the last seven months the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has
been systematically dismantled. According to OCHA [The United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] 24 hospitals are
now out of service, while 493 health workers have been killed. By
July 12 the WHO reported 746 health workers killed, 967 injured, and
128 still incarcerated. Israel flunkies will no doubt denounce each
and every one of them as Hamas, and claim the numerous ambulances
bombed to smithereens were camouflaged rocket launchers.
Attention has primarily focused on the challenges Gazas
disintegrating Palestinian medical facilities and their overworked and
under-resourced staff confront in dealing with the overwhelming number
of casualties resulting from Israels genocidal campaign. The accounts
of young children enduring amputations without anesthetics and severe
burns without pain management, of patients dying because of the
unavailability of basic medical supplies like disinfectants, have
become all too common. But the crisis also goes much deeper. Regular
health care, for example for cancer patients or those who suffer a
stroke, diabetics requiring insulin, a child or grandparent with a
broken bone, and the like, has also all but disappeared. Mark
Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, two U.S. surgeons who recently
volunteered at a hospital in the Gaza Strip, provide a particularly
harrowing account of their experience. It is, unfortunately, just one
of very many such testimonials.
At the beginning of July Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf
published a letter in the prestigious British medical journal The
Lancet in which they note that Armed conflicts have indirect health
implications beyond the direct harm from violence, with destroyed
health-care infrastructure prominently noted as a factor. The authors
observe that In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from
three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Based on current
conditions in the Gaza Strip the authors, applying a conservative
estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death, find it not
implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could
be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza, and note that this
amounts to 7-9% of the population in the Gaza Strip. Thats a lot of
Pallywood for the Defamation League and other Israel flunkies to
explain away.
Accounts of the destruction of the Palestinian health infrastructure
typically focus on Israels destruction of al-Shifa Hospital, the
largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip that was razed and burned to
the ground by the most moral army since the Ku Klux Klan after none of
its pretexts for attacking the complex were substantiated.
Before Al-Shifa there was the October 17 mass casualty bombing of
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Established in 1882, it is the only Christian hospital in the Gaza
Strip and is managed by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem. Along with
other hospitals, it also became a refuge of choice for civilians
desperate for safe haven.
Three days earlier, on October 14, Human Rights Watch reported that
an artillery projectile struck the hospitals diagnostic cancer
treatment center. Based on details of the shell, it concluded that
Israel is the only party to the [Gaza] conflict known to possess and
use the artillery that fires this type of munition.
Over the course of the next three days, the hospitals director and
staff received numerous direct Israeli warnings and threats, demanding
they evacuate the premises. (Needless to say, they refused and
continued to treat their patients). In the immediate aftermath of the
October 17 bombing, Israel put out several and often contradictory
accounts, before eventually settling on two points: the casualty
figures were vastly exaggerated and, more importantly, were caused not
by Israeli fire but by an errant Palestinian projectile.
As so often Israels purpose in rejecting culpability and blaming its
victims is not to convince its audience so much as to confuse it. If
journalists, Human Rights Watch, and others conclude they cannot
clearly establish responsibility and must await a full and proper
investigation when conditions permit, it is mission accomplished.
In this particular case, the ruse worked beyond expectations. Although
the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem pointed the finger squarely at
Israel, the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior cleric of the Anglican
Church, Justin Welby, shamelessly denounced accusations that Israel
was responsible as a blood libel. Dont assume its Israel, he
stated. You have no proof.
For good measure Welby professed total ignorance on the numbers killed
and injured, stating, Ive heard so many different figures. Ever the
knave, U.S. President and soon-to-be-former-nominee Joe Biden rushed
to blame the Palestinians. Speaking in Israel, the same individual who
claimed to have viewed non-existent images of beheaded infants on
October 7 stated, Based on what Ive seen, it appears it was done by
the other team, and not you. The resulting outrage contributed to the
abrupt cancellation of his scheduled conclave with an assortment of
Arab client regimes in Amman several days later. Like these past
several weeks, even his closest allies couldnt stomach being
associated with him.
The most comprehensive investigation I have come across to date has
been conducted by Maher Arar, who has produced two extraordinarily
detailed technical reports to demonstrate not only that it was an
Israeli projectile that hit Al-Ahli Hospital, but that any other
theory is inconsistent with the available evidence. While I found his
reasoning entirely convincing, Im not sufficiently technically
proficient to put it mildly to rebut any challenges to his
technical conclusions. I do however know enough to confidently dismiss
any detractors who do not call for an immediate, comprehensive,
independent international investigation and refuse to condemn Israel
for refusing one.
Maher Arar makes the important point that Israel attacked Al-Ahli
Hospital not despite its prominent international connections, but
because of them. It was a test case. If it succeeded, and it could get
the likes of Welby, the BBC, and Western governments to play along,
that would send an unmistakable signal that every single Palestinian
hospital was fair game and could be attacked with impunity. And thats
precisely what has happened. A fundamental principle of the laws of
war that has survived for centuries if not millennia lies buried in
the rubble of Gazas hospitals. It no longer exists, and the horrific
consequences will already do reverberate far beyond the Gaza
Strip.
In the words of noted Palestinian-British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta,
who was at Al-Ahli Hospital the night of the attack:
This incident served as a litmus test for what was to come: Israels
full war on Gazas healthcare infrastructure. After Al-Ahli was hit,
and no one was held to account, the domino pieces began to fall
rapidly. Hospitals were targeted one after the other. It became
obvious that the attacks were systemic.
Several months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Chandra Hassan
in Chicago. A dedicated medical professional and humanitarian, he had
volunteered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for some time during the
current genocide and has remained in regular contact with Palestinian
colleagues.
During our conversation, I asked him what he thought the underlying
purpose of Israels systematic destruction of the Palestinian health
infrastructure was. He responded and here I paraphrase that
hospitals have a special sanctity and form the ultimate refuge and
source of hope for people in crisis. They expect to have, and need the
confidence they can have, access to a hospital and its staff should
they or their loved ones require it, and refuge within its premises
should this prove necessary. Remove that confidence, that hope, and
replace it with the fear generated by the knowledge it is no longer
there, that you will be left to your own devices when you most need
hope and help, and you are well on your way to ensuring the
disintegration of a society. Sounds about right.
Strip. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) polio
(poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease that invades the
nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
Like so much else in the Gaza Strip these days, polio according to the
WHO mainly affects children under 5 years of age but can infect
anyone of any age who is unvaccinated. Furthermore, One in 200
infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs).
Among those paralyzed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become
immobilized.
Israel and its apologists can be expected to blame Hamas for this
state of affairs, with canards about the Gaza health authorities
prioritizing the construction of tunnels over inoculating those under
their rule, dirty Arabs, and the like. The fact of the matter is that
not only is polio not endemic in the Gaza Strip, it was eradicated
from the territory several decades ago. The achievement was publicly
touted by none other than Ted Tulchinksy, who from 1978-1994 served as
the Coordinator for Health in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within
Israels Ministry of Health. His testimony is significant because
during his tenure Tulchinsky supervised the health departments of the
military governments Israel established in each of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip in 1967.
Writing on the website of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
in 2011, Tulchinsky writes that during the 1970s polio epidemics
periodically erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories it was
in the process of annexing, and despite high levels of [vaccination]
coverage in the Gaza Strip in particular, on account of its degraded
sanitary infrastructure.
Tulchinsky recounts that in 1978 Israel consulted with Natan Goldblum
and Joseph Melnick, two noted epidemiologists from Baylor University,
to develop more effective anti-polio strategies. Their recommendation,
to increase the four doses traditionally given to infants during their
first year with an additional three of a different variety, was
pioneered in the Gaza Strip. It proved so effective that the disease
was eradicated from the territory within a few short years. Tulchinsky
does not say so, but it seems likely that as with so much else the
Gaza Strip here too functioned as a human laboratory for new Israeli
methods. Indeed, the Goldblum-Melnick vaccination sequence was
according to Tulchinsky dubbed the Gaza system and subsequently
applied within Israel to quell a polio outbreak of its own in 1988.
As a result of this episode, Tulchinsky wrote, Israel adopted the
Gaza system, and total eradication of polio was rapidly achieved.
It is unclear how polio has suddenly re-appeared in the Gaza Strip.
What is beyond doubt is how its spreading. Israel has systematically
destroyed the Gaza Strips health, sanitary, water treatment, and
power infrastructure, particularly since October 2023, leading to the
collapse of systems that were already precarious. Contaminated water,
untreated sewage, and uncollected garbage, particularly when paired
with the severe overcrowding resulting from Israels genocidal
campaign and repeated forced displacement of the civilian population,
represent ideal conditions for its spread.
In the words of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres,
speaking last December:
The people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs
ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of
the basics of survival Conditions in shelters are overcrowded and
unsanitary. People nurse open wounds. Hundreds of people stand in line
for hours to use one shower or toilet wearing clothes they have not
changed for two months.
Such conditions have also created a breeding ground for other
infectious diseases. As of June 30, the WHO reported nearly a million
cases of acute respiratory infection (affecting almost half the
population), over half a million cases of diarrhea (including nearly
200,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea), and over 100,000 cases of
acute jaundice (suggesting hepatitis is widespread), and so on. The
WHO notes these figures should be interpreted with caution, due to
delayed and incomplete data reporting. As the summer intensifies,
there have also been multiple warnings of a cholera outbreak.
With few and limited exceptions, Israel is preventing the entry of
fuel, vaccines, medical supplies, and potable water into the Gaza
Strip. As Israels Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, publicly
announced on October 8, We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza.
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything
will be closed.
There was more to this policy of collective sadism than revenge. Giora
Eiland is a retired major-general who previously served as head of
Israels National Security Council and is an advisor to its current
government. He also publishes a regular column in the Israeli
newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Writing on October 29, he urged Israel to
inflict not only destruction in Gaza City, but a humanitarian
disaster and absolute governmental chaos [O]nly that outcome the
complete destruction of all systems in Gaza and desperate distress,
would in his view bring about victory. On November 19 he exhorted the
government to continue its siege on the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that
severe epidemics in the southern Gaza Strip will bring victory closer
and will reduce the number of IDF casualties. The enthusiastic
identification of an entire society as a military target, and the
determination to inflict maximum levels of suffering to compensate for
Israels military failures, has been a common refrain among Israels
senior political and military leaders.
Central to this campaign has been the eradication of Gazas health
infrastructure. The WHO speaks of the continued dismantling of the
health system. In late May Doctors Without Borders (MSF) put it thus:
In the last seven months the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has
been systematically dismantled. According to OCHA [The United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] 24 hospitals are
now out of service, while 493 health workers have been killed. By
July 12 the WHO reported 746 health workers killed, 967 injured, and
128 still incarcerated. Israel flunkies will no doubt denounce each
and every one of them as Hamas, and claim the numerous ambulances
bombed to smithereens were camouflaged rocket launchers.
Attention has primarily focused on the challenges Gazas
disintegrating Palestinian medical facilities and their overworked and
under-resourced staff confront in dealing with the overwhelming number
of casualties resulting from Israels genocidal campaign. The accounts
of young children enduring amputations without anesthetics and severe
burns without pain management, of patients dying because of the
unavailability of basic medical supplies like disinfectants, have
become all too common. But the crisis also goes much deeper. Regular
health care, for example for cancer patients or those who suffer a
stroke, diabetics requiring insulin, a child or grandparent with a
broken bone, and the like, has also all but disappeared. Mark
Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, two U.S. surgeons who recently
volunteered at a hospital in the Gaza Strip, provide a particularly
harrowing account of their experience. It is, unfortunately, just one
of very many such testimonials.
At the beginning of July Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf
published a letter in the prestigious British medical journal The
Lancet in which they note that Armed conflicts have indirect health
implications beyond the direct harm from violence, with destroyed
health-care infrastructure prominently noted as a factor. The authors
observe that In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from
three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Based on current
conditions in the Gaza Strip the authors, applying a conservative
estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death, find it not
implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could
be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza, and note that this
amounts to 7-9% of the population in the Gaza Strip. Thats a lot of
Pallywood for the Defamation League and other Israel flunkies to
explain away.
Accounts of the destruction of the Palestinian health infrastructure
typically focus on Israels destruction of al-Shifa Hospital, the
largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip that was razed and burned to
the ground by the most moral army since the Ku Klux Klan after none of
its pretexts for attacking the complex were substantiated.
Before Al-Shifa there was the October 17 mass casualty bombing of
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Established in 1882, it is the only Christian hospital in the Gaza
Strip and is managed by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem. Along with
other hospitals, it also became a refuge of choice for civilians
desperate for safe haven.
Three days earlier, on October 14, Human Rights Watch reported that
an artillery projectile struck the hospitals diagnostic cancer
treatment center. Based on details of the shell, it concluded that
Israel is the only party to the [Gaza] conflict known to possess and
use the artillery that fires this type of munition.
Over the course of the next three days, the hospitals director and
staff received numerous direct Israeli warnings and threats, demanding
they evacuate the premises. (Needless to say, they refused and
continued to treat their patients). In the immediate aftermath of the
October 17 bombing, Israel put out several and often contradictory
accounts, before eventually settling on two points: the casualty
figures were vastly exaggerated and, more importantly, were caused not
by Israeli fire but by an errant Palestinian projectile.
As so often Israels purpose in rejecting culpability and blaming its
victims is not to convince its audience so much as to confuse it. If
journalists, Human Rights Watch, and others conclude they cannot
clearly establish responsibility and must await a full and proper
investigation when conditions permit, it is mission accomplished.
In this particular case, the ruse worked beyond expectations. Although
the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem pointed the finger squarely at
Israel, the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior cleric of the Anglican
Church, Justin Welby, shamelessly denounced accusations that Israel
was responsible as a blood libel. Dont assume its Israel, he
stated. You have no proof.
For good measure Welby professed total ignorance on the numbers killed
and injured, stating, Ive heard so many different figures. Ever the
knave, U.S. President and soon-to-be-former-nominee Joe Biden rushed
to blame the Palestinians. Speaking in Israel, the same individual who
claimed to have viewed non-existent images of beheaded infants on
October 7 stated, Based on what Ive seen, it appears it was done by
the other team, and not you. The resulting outrage contributed to the
abrupt cancellation of his scheduled conclave with an assortment of
Arab client regimes in Amman several days later. Like these past
several weeks, even his closest allies couldnt stomach being
associated with him.
The most comprehensive investigation I have come across to date has
been conducted by Maher Arar, who has produced two extraordinarily
detailed technical reports to demonstrate not only that it was an
Israeli projectile that hit Al-Ahli Hospital, but that any other
theory is inconsistent with the available evidence. While I found his
reasoning entirely convincing, Im not sufficiently technically
proficient to put it mildly to rebut any challenges to his
technical conclusions. I do however know enough to confidently dismiss
any detractors who do not call for an immediate, comprehensive,
independent international investigation and refuse to condemn Israel
for refusing one.
Maher Arar makes the important point that Israel attacked Al-Ahli
Hospital not despite its prominent international connections, but
because of them. It was a test case. If it succeeded, and it could get
the likes of Welby, the BBC, and Western governments to play along,
that would send an unmistakable signal that every single Palestinian
hospital was fair game and could be attacked with impunity. And thats
precisely what has happened. A fundamental principle of the laws of
war that has survived for centuries if not millennia lies buried in
the rubble of Gazas hospitals. It no longer exists, and the horrific
consequences will already do reverberate far beyond the Gaza
Strip.
In the words of noted Palestinian-British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta,
who was at Al-Ahli Hospital the night of the attack:
This incident served as a litmus test for what was to come: Israels
full war on Gazas healthcare infrastructure. After Al-Ahli was hit,
and no one was held to account, the domino pieces began to fall
rapidly. Hospitals were targeted one after the other. It became
obvious that the attacks were systemic.
Several months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Chandra Hassan
in Chicago. A dedicated medical professional and humanitarian, he had
volunteered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for some time during the
current genocide and has remained in regular contact with Palestinian
colleagues.
During our conversation, I asked him what he thought the underlying
purpose of Israels systematic destruction of the Palestinian health
infrastructure was. He responded and here I paraphrase that
hospitals have a special sanctity and form the ultimate refuge and
source of hope for people in crisis. They expect to have, and need the
confidence they can have, access to a hospital and its staff should
they or their loved ones require it, and refuge within its premises
should this prove necessary. Remove that confidence, that hope, and
replace it with the fear generated by the knowledge it is no longer
there, that you will be left to your own devices when you most need
hope and help, and you are well on your way to ensuring the
disintegration of a society. Sounds about right.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/polio-and-the-destruction-of-gazas-health-infrastructure/