Israel Matzav

Saturday, October 18, 2014

'Screening airline passengers for Ebola with infrared cameras a no-brainer...US is lagging behind'

An American-Israeli expert in infectious diseases has attacked the United States' failure to screen airline passengers by taking their temperatures using infrared cameras as a means of preventing passengers with Ebola from boarding planes.

According to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Professor Leslie Lobel, “the world has been asleep for 50 years regarding infectious diseases and Ebola is the wake-up call.”

Lobel is a world-recognized virologist who has studied the virus and others emanating from the African continent.

“Fifty years ago, we were dealing with eradicating polio, smallpox and yellow fever which had similarly high mortality rates. Today, most of the world seems to understand the need to screen passengers in airports using infrared cameras for elevated temperature as a simple precaution — the US is lagging behind,” said Dr. Lobel.

The American-Israeli professor has been researching a cure for hemorrhagic fever viruses, including Ebola, for a decade, the university said in a press release.

...

Earlier Friday, the World Health Organization admitted that it botched attempts to stop the now-spiraling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.

“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” WHO said in a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press, noting that experts should have realized that traditional containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.

Of course, if TSA ever started screening passengers for fevers, you can bet that (a) it would be done randomly rather than targeting people carrying the passports of affected countries and (b) it would cause long lines at the check-in counters.

As to WHO, anyone who depends on any UN agency to do anything reliably (other than hate Israel) is simply detached from reality.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Ebola, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, TSA, United Nations, United States, World Health Organization

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

'Palestinians' plan B?

Jonathan Schanzer warns that with the likely collapse of the current 'negotiations,' the 'Palestinians' have a plan B which consists of seeking recognition from the United Nations and its agencies. And there's little that Israel - or even the United States - can do to stop it. It's a diplomatic intifada.

Even amidst the peace talks, the Palestinians have used the 194 campaign as leverage. In early November, for example, the Palestinian Monetary Authority announced that it had obtained full membership in the International Association of Deposit Insurers [16]. Senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath [17] also warned that the Palestinians could use the "weapon" of taking claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court. Shaath added, "There are organizations that await our application, and ask us when are we applying."

Abbas himself has threatened [18], "If we don't obtain our rights through negotiations, we have the right to go to international institutions." Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi also warned that the Palestinian leadership was ready to join sixteen agencies [19] beginning in April 2014. "Everything is in place and will be set in motion," Ashrawi claimed. By late December, Saeb Erekat told Maan News Agency [20] that there were no less than sixty-three member agencies of the UN that the PLO sought to join.

And while the exact strategy has not been released, on January 25, Maan News Agency [21] reported that a PLO committee had reached an internal agreement on how to "take the Palestinian plight to the UN and its various bodies." This included "signing international conventions and joining UN agencies and different bodies." Among the most important of these bodies was said to be the International Criminal Court (ICC), "because that will enable the PA to sue the Israeli occupation over war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Israeli officials quietly admit that the ICC is only one agency on a short list of international bodies that they view as red lines. They include the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and INTERPOL. The concern for Israel is not that, not only would the Palestinians gain acceptance as a state through these agencies (and do so outside of the bilateral peace process), but that the Palestinians would also try to isolate Israel from these agencies, which are crucial to Israeli commerce, security and/or diplomacy.

Other Palestinian memberships would simply be insulting. For example, Palestinians seek to join FIFA and then disqualify Israel from the international soccer association. Indeed, Israel is growing increasingly concerned that the Palestine 194 campaign is about to become part of the larger strategy of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS). The campaign has scored some small successes in academia, with a handful of European businesses joining, too. But should the majority of UN member states embrace the strategy of shunning Israel from multiple international organizations, BDS could evolve into a real threat to Israel's legitimacy.

The Palestinians, for their part, know that if they take new steps in this direction, it will open up a whole new front in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This explains, in part, why Palestinian officials have kept a lid on their strategy. However, Palestinian officials in the past have been quick to point out that they do not view the Palestine 194 campaign as antithetical to bilateral negotiations with Israel. Indeed, they see it as a means to enhance their negotiating position. But now that talks are ongoing, Palestinian officials will not discuss how this dual-track strategy works, particularly in light of U.S. opposition to the 194 track. Instead, Palestinian officials articulate their full-throated support of the Kerry initiative. At least most of the time [22].

For Washington, there is more at stake here than a Nobel Prize for Obama, Kerry and Indyk. Washington maintains its laws prohibiting the funding of UN agencies when the PLO gains membership. That law did not change following the UNESCO debacle. This, of course, means that the US could be forced to choose between the State of Palestine and sixty-three different UN agencies.

Some may not seem like a loss—such as the International Olive Council [23]. However, others, such as the World Health Organization or the International Court of Justice, could be bruising.

There's a lot that the United States could do to fight this using the power of the purse. But with Obama in charge, it's unlikely that the US will do anything to fight it.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: International Criminal Court, Interpol, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, UNESCO, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, World Health Organization

Sunday, May 26, 2013

This is not a parody: World Health Organization condemns Israeli medical care for Syrians and 'Palestinians'

You can't make this stuff up. Israel has set up a field hospital for wounded Syrians on the Golan Heights, it provides regular, critical medical care to the 'Palestinians' regardless of their ability to pay, and it provides medical care that is otherwise unavailable to them to persons throughout the Arab world. And the response? The World Health Organization has condemned Israel for the medical care it provides to Syrians and 'Palestinians

As thousands of people in large swathes of the planet, including war-torn Syria, are dying daily for lack of adequate medical care, the one geographic area whose “health conditions” are slated for condemnation at the World Health Organization’s annual conference is, naturally, “the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

What makes this surreal isn’t just that the above areas enjoy far better “health conditions” than much of the rest of the world. It’s that the Palestinian Authority (Israel’s “peace partner”), together with Syria and other Arab countries, is seeking to condemn Israel at a time when it is actively providing medical services to both Palestinians and Syrians.

The denunciation of health conditions on the Golan is particularly surreal: Syrians in Syria, where medical care of any kind is often simply unavailable, would be thrilled to get the same state-of-the-art care as their brethren on the Golan–where, as in East Jerusalem, Israeli law applies, entitling residents to the same services as all other Israelis.

But thanks to Israel, some of those Syrians actually are getting such care–which is doubtless Syrian President Bashar Assad’s real gripe. Israel has quietly set up a field hospital on the Golan where dozens of Syrians wounded in the civil war have been treated; others, who need more intensive care, have been transferred to regular Israeli hospitals.

Israel has also offered treatment to some Syrian refugees. Just this month, via Israel’s Save a Child’s Heart program, Israeli doctors saved the life of a four-year-old Syrian refugee with a serious heart condition. Similar treatment was offered to three other Syrian children in Jordan who have similar conditions, but their parents refused: Apparently, they fell victim to their own anti-Israel propaganda. Still, the doctors are hoping they will change their minds once the first girl returns to Jordan healthy and happy.

In the PA and Hamas-run Gaza... they have an advantage most other countries with similar health-care systems don’t: generous access to Israeli hospitals for any problems their own can’t treat. And you needn’t take my word for it: Just this month, after PA Health Minister Hani Abdeen visited Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that “30% of the patients who are children are Palestinians.” It also reported that Hadassah is now training some 60 Palestinian doctors, who will then return to serve the PA’s own population.

Surreal. And a clear demonstration of how Israel must ignore the 'international community.' No matter what we do, we will be condemned.

Labels: Golan Heights, Israeli medical care, Palestinians, Syrian uprising, World Health Organization