Posted on 12/28/2004 3:28:39 AM PST by white trash redneck
A 150-member Israeli aid delegation canceled its mission to Sri Lanka on Tuesday, after the country - one of the hardest hit in the Asian tsunami disaster - refused to accept the Israeli team, Israel Defense Forces officials said.
However, Israel is sending supplies at Sri Lanka's request, including 10,000 blankets contributed by the IDF, tents, nylon sheeting and water containers. The IDF Home Front Command is organizing aid preparations.
The Israeli humanitarian organization Latet ("To give") is sending a separate aid package Tuesday. It is filling a jumbo jet with 18 tons of supplies worth $50,000, at Sri Lanka's request. The group is considering sending additional aid shortly.
Sri Lanka said on Tuesday the death toll from the tsunami had risen to about 15,000 people, including at least 200 foreign tourists. Sri Lankan military spokesman Daya Ratnayake said more than 1.5 million people had been displaced from their homes - around 7.5 percent of Sri Lanka's population.
About 26,000 people were confirmed dead Tuesday in the wake of the tsunami that slammed into coasts from India to Indonesia two days before, with some estimates nearly doubling that toll.
The aid delegation that had been set to depart for Sri Lanka on Tuesday included medical teams and representatives of the IDF and Defense Ministry, who were planning to provide humanitarian assistance and participate in search-and-rescue operations.
The delegation was planning to assemble a medical facility comprised of specialist doctors, and set up emergency, internal medicine and pediatric departments, as well as laboratory and X-ray facilities in the southern part of Sri Lanka.
A far smaller team landed in Sri Lanka on Monday night, headed by four doctors from Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in Jerusalem. The team was carrying medicine and baby food.
The doctors - who specialize in rescue operations, trauma and pediatrics - were also checking the viability of setting up a field hospital in the area, and advised Israel to send a larger team, such as the one Sri Lanka rejected.
"We will advise Israel and the Foreign Ministry... to send something more massive," said Dr. Avi Rivkind, director of Hadassah's trauma unit. "We will try to use our... broad experience in dealing with terror attacks and rescuing masses to help in this disaster as well."
Israel is weighing the option of sending similar delegations to Thailand, where more than 1,000 people have died, and India, where more than 4,000 people have died, but has yet to make a final decision on the matter.
Health Min. team leaves for Thailand A Health Ministry contingent left for Thailand on Monday night to aid in the rescue efforts there after around 1,000 people, including tourists, were killed on the islands of Phuket and Phi Phi. The contingent includes doctors, nurses and four members of the IDF, Israel Radio reported.
Israel has also offered its assistance to India. Mofaz passed on the offer to Indian authorities through Israel's military attache Colonel Moshe Krawitz.
Mofaz offered aid of two kinds - a search-and-rescue team from the Home Front Command, as well as consignments of food and medicine.
A ZAKA rescue-and-recovery team left for the disaster areas Monday night armed with its equipment, including materials and tools for identifying bodies, as well as body bags.
"We are waiting for any instruction," Yehuda Meshi Zahav, the director of the organization, said Monday.
You do not know the reason the team cancelled the trip. If you have never participated in disaster relief--you would not understand that there is little worse than hoards of volunteers standing around without direction. Disaster relief requires staging.
The Israeli team may have only postponed their mission.
Yep, or as we all know in that part of the world human rescources are plentiful.
I am anxious to hear about your experiences in providing disaster relief.
I've made no assumptions other than in the context of a discussion of one particular article, which happens on all these threads. You berate others for making assumptions based on one article's facts and yet you make assertions based on NO facts.
So...maybe you should take your own advice.
What is your experience with disaster relief?
(yawn)
If you're so concerned with "so many innocents" why are you posting on an article which you seem to have divined is untrue, when you could be gathering funds for those "innocents" you claim to be so concerned with?
Before you start lecturing everyone else, put up or shut up.
Perhaps you should take a dose of your own medicine.
Feel free to post stories about other countries' aid being refused.
One good thing about a flame war this early in the morning...I can boil a pot of water for coffee.
The name would be more appropriately said as The United Hating Nations.
The scum of the earth.
I'll bet Israel has a little experience in disaster relief...too bad that some people think they are too good to have help from the Jews.
Excellent. Well said.
I don't know how bout city wide hail storm that hurt hundreds and displaced thousands from grapefruit size stones
that smashed the crap out of their houses and our firetruck while we were in it.
Lots of MCI with ten victims or more.
Just got through with a full scale all day test of the system here
which included mock mass casualty at the Texas motor speedway (air dispersed
chemical agent that killed everybody..had tons of nurses there running around}.
More than most less than some, what does it take to have enough experience to know too many people can be as bad as none?.
Hurry, now, you and the Nurse Knight must flee this meager hamlet to bring your compassion to those who suffer!
Oh, right--it's easier to lecture others on how they don't meet your compassionate standards than to actually DO something. So much easier to denounce others for not doing something.
Wow! Mighty righteous this morning, aren't we?
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