With Israelis working round-the-clock to save the lives of earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, newspapers and TV stations around the world, including a much-publicized clip by CNN, have been praising the massive, state-of-the-art medical aid that the small, beleagured country of Israel sent to another located half a world away from it.
However, this world recognition served as an anti-Semitism catalyst for one Jew hater. The video he uploaded to the You Tube Internet website parallels the ancient blood libels against the Jews, and anti-Semitism has reared its ugly face in a sordid attempt to taint the praise for the work of the highly professional, altruistic Israeli medical team.
The video is narrated by “T. West,” a Black American with wire-rimmed glasses, clad in a café-au-lait sport jacket, mild-shaded tie and mauve shirt. It begins with the Seattle, Washington anti-Semite somberly informing the viewer that fundraising for Haiti by text messaging is bringing in “a great deal of money.” As he begins his narrative, a green banner appears at the top of the screen with the words “Feasting Upon Human Organs ("Proof" of Israeli Trafficking in Human Organs) printed in stark white lettering.
One minute into the video, T. West shows the viewer a clip of a CNN report on “the Israeli Defense Force, which is in Haiti right now.”
The clip he refers to is the following much lauded report on the IDF Field Hospital – the only high-tech facility available to earthquake victims in the entire area -- and the life-saving treatment it has tirelessly offered.
“One of the things they are doing is they are really, really showboating their technology, their presence on the ground there in Haiti. It is good that they are there,” T. West is forced to admit.
In the report, Dr. Jennifer Furin of the Harvard Medical School tells the interviewer, “No one but the Israeli hospital has taken any of our patients.” CNN’s senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, strides around the hospital grounds with the camera crew, adding, “I’m just amazed, just amazed at what’s here. This is like another world compared to the other hospital.” The report goes on to show all the high-tech equipment brought in by Israel’s medical corps.
However, West uses this heartwarming clip as backdrop to his sinister motive: raising an insidious fabrication that Israelis steal organs, echoing the lie published just a few months earlier by author Donald Bostrom in Sweden's newspaper, the Aftonbladet tabloid. That false accusation, reminiscent of the anti-Semitic libels of the Middle Ages, has been condemned by Israel and denied by the Arabs who were said by Bolstrom to have started it.
He warns the people of Haiti to guard their bodies, deftly connecting the truth--i.e. lifesaving aid and the big lie. “There is little monitoring in such a tragedy as this. So the Haitian people must watch out for their citizens as these international groups come in to assist medically and in other ways in Haiti.”
It seems as though the United Nations feels otherwise. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked Israel’s Foreign Ministry to send a police contingent to the island to fight the growing anarchy on the streets. The plea comes amid reports that the city is being transformed into a battle zone between various gangs, and looting is escalating.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovich and Police Chief Major-General Dudi Cohen decided together to send 100 police officers to Haiti in response to the U.N. request.
Fresh medical teams arrived at the beginning of the week to relieve the IDF Aid Delegation in Haiti, which had worked around the clock since the first plane touched down on Friday.
The delegation brought with it medicine and additional equipment, including a medical lab, pharmacy and an x-ray center.
