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.
Wow, that's a good one. You come up with that on your own or do you have a team of writers?
Nice to see you can't answer my points so you're off on this ridiculous track. Have fun on this nonsensical binge you're on.
Uhmmm you wrote invest genious. (from 33)
Where in the article is this intimated?
Yep, water's coming to a boil now. If the flame war keeps up, soon there will be fresh coffee for everyone.
Excellent point. Too many volunteers in the acute crisis phase is almost as chaotic as the disaster.
The point is you're running around pointing fingers when all anyone has done is comment on one specific article. It may be disproved, and if so, whoopee do. But it's served it's purpose--you've gotten to preen about what a good person you are. Big deal.
I just find it laughable that someone whose going on about "the innocents" has time to waste on one article when he should be wiping these supposed tears off his face and getting over to the Red Cross, or be on the phone calling friends asking them to donate money, or calling his senator, or a htousand other compassionate expressions in such a time, and you use your time to strut your self-proclaimed moral superiority.
I, on the other hand, merely commented on an article, on a site which is about commenting about articles, and my history and what I am doing (or not) about a tragedy is none of your business (Jesus said something about keeping that kind of stuff to oneself).
You and your buds go right on parading your supposed superiority. I'm sure you've saved many lives strutting around here this morning. How proud you must be.
Where in the article (or anywhere else for that matter) is it intimated, or explicitly stated, that aid was rejected from any other country except Israel? If you can find an article reporting that any other country's aid was rejected, please post it. Otherwise, it seems pretty clear that the leaders of Sri Lanka would prefer that their countrymen suffer so that they could take a poke at Israel and indulge their antisemitism.
probably from the title. Who knows what this poor country is going through with all the dead and injured.
Can someone please post a midi with loud applause and cheering?
Your boring me now Peace Corps dude. Im gonna have to pull out the violins if you keep it up.
The Turd World will never change. Ignorance abounds.
So what? That was what you chose to do, what you wanted to do. If you think that makes you some moral arbiter, who can decide what is good and true and right, you're insane. Those "tourists" you sniff at provide a healthy part of many of these economies, while your conscience-healing charity work was something you could obviously afford to do, and is now something you parade around for your own self-aggrandizement.
I'm sure your efforts have revolutionized the world, but it's embarassing watching someone wave his personal charitable works around in a vain attempt to impress others...and which has NOTHING to do with the veracity of the article in question.
You go save the world--just make sure you advertise it to everyone afterwards.
It seems that the Israeli aid team has been rejected,but not Israeli material aid.This could be put down to a number of reasons including political expediency(the Arabs won't give aid if the JOOs are around & Sri Lanka has lots of expats in the M.E) or sheer lack of common sense as Sri Lanka has never faced a crisis of this order before.I don't think SL has any anti-Israeli tendencies.The govt in Colombo survived the 2000 LTTE offensive thanks to Indian & Israeli arms.
Do you know what the word "cancel" means?
Go back to LF. You are smelling up this joint.
You are missing the point. The outrage isn't that Israel was snubbed. Heck, they're used to that. The outrage is that a nation whose people just suffered an unimaginable tragedy are are on the precipice of an even worse one (from disease) would turn away valuable aid just to make a political statement. That is the hierarchy of suffering: bigotry trumps lifesaving aid.
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