Nouvelles de Palestine du Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh (Bethleem)
What sometimes depresses me is not being able to help so many people who lose hope and do not know how to get themselves out of their life of inaction and paralysis. Life is tough but I try to remind them and myself that even when we were detained or imprisoned, we had the choice to be free in our minds (which is what really counts). What keeps me hopeful is a philosophy of action so I volunteer 16 hours a day helping others, cooking, gardening, field trips, writing, listening to my mother etc. This philosophy is derived from both secular and religious ideas. My religious educated friends tell me that submission to the will of God is only possible (and God will help you) ONLY if you have done your best first. They say "wala yughayur Allah ma biqowmin 'hatta yughauru ma bianfosihim" (God does not change a people unless they change that is within themselves). "God: give me the courage to change the things I can, patience for those I can't, and wisdom to know the difference." My non-religious educated friends cite free will and logic to explain the need for accurate information and why "action is the best antidote to despair."
These are the same human inspiring ideas and I am grateful to both. Bottom line: we all should get educated in the best sense of that word and get active. Knowledge without action is sterile. Below some points of knowledge/actions glimpsed from last week.
UK 130 MPs press for sanctions against Israel over West Bank annexations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/mps-press-for-sanctions-against-israel-over-west-bank-annexations
Vandana Shiva: Oneness vs the 1% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek2M-obq9LE
How is Palestine dealing with added hunger, poverty from COVID-19?
Finland rejects 104,000 kg of Israel oranges https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200430-finland-rejects-104000kg-of-israel-oranges/
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was prophetic in 1958 but far worse in 2020 than Huxley or Orwell would have predicted https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
Omar: a palestinian production 2013 https://www.palestinefilminstitute.org/en/pfp
Times of Israel: Biden seeks fundraising, foreign policy support from Jewish backers [and will keep US Embassy in Jerusalem as moved by Trump in violation of international law] https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-biden-seeks-fundraising-foreign-policy-support-these-are-his-jewish-backers/
[Brilliant published] Rapid Response: Covid 19 in Palestine under Israeli occupation
Dear Editor,
Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention specifies that an occupying power has a duty to ensure the “adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics”. The tools available to deal with a pandemic are prevention of contagion; identification of the carriers; testing; and provision of care (1, 2 ). Many reports by the WHO and UN agencies have indicated that in Gaza healthcare services are chronically stretched and on the brink of collapse (3). This has arisen directly from the blockade Israel has maintained around Gaza since 2006, and the repeated health emergencies arising from assaults on the whole population by the Israeli military (4), including the mass maiming of unarmed civilians since 2018 protesting about the seige (5, 6). Electricity provision is insecure, affecting health and sanitation services, there are chronic shortages of medical equipment and medicines, and patients and medical personnel cannot move freely. Gazans have had reason to remember what the then Interior Minister of Israel, Eli Yishai said in 2012: “we will bring Gaza back to the Middle Ages”(7). And now the Covid 19 pandemic. Gaza is unable to identify and lack the means to care for a still unknown number of infectious patients, having no provision of its own of protective gear and tests, and very limited numbers of hospital beds and ventilators. In fact the Gazan health authorities did adopt precautions in early March, isolating for 21 days anyone returning to Gaza.
No community cases have emerged in Gaza to date, but by April 25 there were 17 cases infected outside Gaza. More than 2000 people are currently in quarantine, but it has been possible to test only a fraction of these. A task force of 300 has been readied, itself in need of protective gear, for further testing and 1000 rooms located for quarantine purposes (8).
Schools, mosques, marriage halls, and public gatherings have been suspended, with inevitable extra stress for the local economy and for unemployment rates already more than 50% (youth unemployment is more than 70%).WHO’s advice is to “test, test, and test”, but since the first detection of Covid-infected returnees from Pakistan a month ago, it has been able to provide Gaza with less than 3000 tests. No other tools for testing or for medical care of the sick have been delivered from Israel- it did take about 50 test samples from Gaza this week but then suspended testing (9). The continuing blockade of Gaza impedes/delays the delivery of other sources of aid from abroad, and at a time when hospitals should be readying themselves in relation to oxygen, ITU beds and ventilators. Gaza has only 65 ventilators in use or in poor condition, and urgently needs at least 150 more (10). Israel is not discharging its duty as occupying power, though the infection of even a few people in the community would be a disaster in a place with one of the highest population densities in the world.While the lack of health structures is less extreme, in West Bank and East Jerusalem, the support of the Israeli government to the Palestinians efforts to contain the infection is very questionable.. The Palestinian Ministry of health declared restriction of movement in West Bank in March.
More than 400 cases were detected since the first ones in Bethlehem; thousands of Palestinian laborers in Israel were repatriated to the West Bank without sufficient notice and without testing, and many of them covid19 positive among them; a few sick Palestinians were even dumped on the road (11); the military, unprotected, escalated incursions into Palestinian homes and increased detentions (more than 100 only in March); settlers, in quarantine for covid19 themselves, increased the attacks on the Palestinians, with the declared aim to infect by spitting on them and were not contained by Israeli police (12). A request for a plan on Covid19 by Human rights organizations (13) to the Israeli government awaits answer since April 7.. Israeli actions aggravate the difficulties in containing the spread of infection in the Palestinian communities under its direct control in East Jerusalem: no instructions for prevention were disseminated in Arabic, clinics dedicated to isolate and treat infected people supported by the Palestinian Authority were closed and testing prohibited; Unwra delivery of protective kits was obstructed (14).Five thousand Palestinian prisoners, 194 children, were denied sufficient quantity of water and sanitary items and family and lawyers visits denied. On health security ground, Israeli released a good number of Jewsih prisoners, but is refusing to do so even for the children, the sick, the ones without charge, if they are Palestinians; already cases of guards positive for the virus and sick prisoners have been reported.These facts suggest that Israel has so far taken a political line not to assist Palestinian efforts to buttress themselves against the Covid threat, yet their control over every aspect of Palestinian life continues as before. As health professionals we call on the international community, including the UN and EU, to address this situation urgently. Led by the need for rapid action, the international community, in whichever configuration it may coalesce at the time of this emergency, has the duty and legitimacy to take direct action with long perspective in mind, and directed to overcome the use of health restrictions as political tool. Lifting the sea blockade would make it possible for aid to reach Gaza directly by sea. Political pressure and discussion about accountability if help is denied may achieve the changes needed to address the pandemic in the occupied Palestinian territories, and within Israel’s 1948 borders, including the rapid release of prisoners1) https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25746&.
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25746&.>..2)
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-wh.
<https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-wh.>..3)
https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/file/publications/gaza/Gaza%20in%202020.pdf
<https://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/file/publications/gaza/Gaza%20in%202020.pdf>4)
https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/gaza_gmr_one.
<https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/gaza_gmr_one.>..5)
https://www.msf.org/deaths-and-broken-lives-aftermath-airstrikes-gaza-pa.
<https://www.msf.org/deaths-and-broken-lives-aftermath-airstrikes-gaza-pa.>..6)
Summerfield D. et al The maiming fields of Gaza. BMJ
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3299 <https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3299>
(2018)7)
https://www.haaretz.com/live-blog-idf-strikes-hamas-pm-s-office-1.5198718
<https://www.haaretz.com/live-blog-idf-strikes-hamas-pm-s-office-1.5198718>8)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-running-out-of-coronavirus-tests-warn.
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-running-out-of-coronavirus-tests-warn.>..9)
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-halts-coronavirus-tests-in-gaza/
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-halts-coronavirus-tests-in-gaza/>10)
https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterrane.
<https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterrane.>..11)
https://imemc.org/article/pchr-condemns-israeli-authorities-discriminato.
<https://imemc.org/article/pchr-condemns-israeli-authorities-discriminato.>..12)
https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/UN-Settler-violence-against-.
<https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/UN-Settler-violence-against-.>..13)
https://gisha.org/updates/11106 <https://gisha.org/updates/11106>14)
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200410-unrwa-received-only-28-of-its
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200410-unrwa-received-only-28-of-its>..28
April 2020 Paola Manduca, retired Associate Professor in Genetics; Derek Summerfield, honorary senior clinical lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College, University of London, London, UK; Swee Ang, consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, Barts Health, London, UK, Vittorio Agnoletto, professor in globalisation and public health, University of Milan, Italy, Andrea Balduzzi, researcher (retired), University of Genoa, Italy, Franco Camandona, consultant gynaecologist, Department of Maternal and I*nfant Health, Ospedali Galliera, Genoa, Italy, Carla Eleonora Ciccone, gynecologist, retired Ospedale Moscati, Avellino, Italy, Bruno Cigliano, MD, Surgery for Children-Onlus, Italy,Gianni Tognoni, researcher in cardiovascular pharmacology, Mario Negri Institute, Milan, Italy, Alan Meyers, MD,MPH Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine, USA, Raija-Leena.Punamaki, PhD, MBA, professor Faculty of Social Sciences / Psychology Tampere University,Finland, Guido Veronese, Ph.D associate professor,University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, University of Genoa, Italy Corso Europa 26, Genova, 16100
Stay Human, Stay safe, stay active
Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability Bethlehem University Occupied Palestine https://qumsiyeh.org https://palestinenature.org facebook pages Personal https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9
Museum
https://www.facebook.com/Palestine-Museum-of-Natural-History-1454309858180882/
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