Posted on 10/20/2002 7:51:16 PM PDT by tictoc
Keren Hasseyod staged an event yesterday evening at the Jewish Community center in Frankfurt.
There were two speakers, Esther Schapira and Dr. Dorit Nitzan of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Ms. Schapira, a freelance journalist/producer with ARD TV in Germany, talked about the responses she received after her documentary about the shooting of a Palestinian boy in the Gaza strip was aired. That shooting, of a young Arab boy named Mohammed Durra, came at the beginning of the second Intifada and quickly became a symbol for anti-Israeli people everywhere to rally around.
In her research, Schapira discovered that the bullets fired at the boy and his father, who were huddled in a spot between IDF forces and Palestinian shooters, almost certainly could not have been fired by Israeli soldiers. She also found that there are strong indications that the bullets were fired from the position of the only TV cameraman filming the incident, a Palestinian Arab freelancing for French TV. That broadcaster has only released snippets of the TV footage, which they otherwise keep under lock and key.
Schapira went on to describe the constant pressure that journalists working in the West Bank and Gaza face. Threats including abduction and physical intimidation are the norm, so that most Western journalists have come to rely on stringers (Arabs) and simply report what they get from them as fact, from the comfort and security of their air-conditioned studios inside Israel.
A torrent of abuse rained down on Schapira following the airing of her documentary. The TV station was attacked for airing "zionist propaganda", yet none bothered to engage her points in a factual manner. Interestingly, most of the hate mail was signed with full name and address, while at the same time there is no shortage of Germans complaining that "you can't ever say anything critical of Israel in Germany"!
Following a break during which tasty snacks were served from the kosher restaurant in the Center, we heard a presentation from Dr. Dorit Nitzan, who is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Dr. Nitzan began by showing slides with family pictures. As it turns out, both her parents were born in Germany. Her father was a professor at a medical school in Germany, but when the Nazis came to power he was fired from his job (in 1932) and the family emigrated to Israel. Their four daughters all went into the medical field.
Today Dr. Nitzan works as a trauma surgeon at Hadassah. Unsurprisingly, she treats many victims of Arab homicide bombings. The work she and her staff do is nothing short of amazing. Dr. Nitzan showed slides of X-rays taken of victims (similar to what we have seen on FR), and color photographs of wounds. She emphasized that there are many more severely injured in every attack than dead.
Israelis classify survivors as "mild", "moderate", and "severe". These categories, however, are misleading: someone who becomes psychotic after witnessing an attack is classified as "mild", and in one picture she showed the leg of a 17-year-old girl riddled with shrapnel; that person is classified as "moderate"!
She showed color slides of a young Israeli man who had most of his lower face blown apart. Amazingly, through the skill of reconstructive surgeons, this man had his jaw reconstructed from fragments, and today you wouldn't be able to tellby looking at him what he went through.
Another victim (mentioned briefly at this link -- http://www.hadassah.org/news/archive/2001/Feb01/inside.htm -- scroll down to bottom of page) was working as a security guard supervising social security payouts to Arabs in Jerusalem, when a gunman fired four bullets into his head. Miraculously, this young man survived. They removed the bullets from his skull, gave him a glass eye which looks just like real (making glass eyes appear almost real is a special skill that only a few trained people possess), among numerous other rehabilitative measures, and he is preparing to rejoin society as a productive member.
The last slide was of this young man, lighting a menora candle in memory of his grandfather, who was killed in Israel's Independence war.
Dr. Nitzan had flown specially from Jerusalem to Frankfurt to tell us about these stories first hand, but she also asked the participants to donate money, as the hospital's resources are being strained to their limit.
I must say that I was somewhat disappointed at the turnout. By my reckoning, there were perhaps two hundred people in attendance, which is a low number for a city with Germany's second-largest Jewish community (after Berlin). I have no idea how many people gave, and how much, but I hope the tally wasn't a disappointment to Dr. Nitzan.
In her research, Schapira discovered that the bullets fired at the boy and his father, who were huddled in a spot between IDF forces and Palestinian shooters, almost certainly could not have been fired by Israeli soldiers. She also found that there are strong indications that the bullets were fired from the position of the only TV cameraman filming the incident, a Palestinian Arab freelancing for French TV. That broadcaster has only released snippets of the TV footage, which they otherwise keep under lock and key.
Now why was I not surprised to hear this?
Ping.
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