We'll Breed Them Out

Something I blogged about back in March, when our 2nd delegation was in Gaza:

69 cases of Palestinian pregnant women giving birth at Israeli checkpoints...As a result of the checkpoints, 10 per cent of pregnant women who wished to give birth in a hospital had been delayed on the road between two to four hours before reaching health facilities, while 6 per cent of them had spent more than four hours for the same journey. Before the intifada, the average time to reach health facilities was 15 to 30 minutes.

These hazardous conditions were mainly attributed to impediments faced by ambulances and medical teams when trying to transport women in labour through checkpoints, and to inspections or attacks perpetrated by Israeli forces against ambulances and their patients...35 newborn babies had died at checkpoints as their mothers did not receive the urgent care required by their condition and five women lost their lives while giving birth.

In addition, six pregnant women had been injured at checkpoints as a result of beating, shooting and use of toxic gas by Israeli soldiers. Mention was made of the case of a pregnant woman who had been targeted in her ninth month of pregnancy at a checkpoint by Israeli military, while she was accompanied by her husband and her father. The woman received a wound in her shoulder and the father was injured in the chest; her husband, however, died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds.

As I noted on Sunday, we feel very lucky in our uncertain circumstances.  We live in Vermont, USA, so we have a "public option" health insurance plan, and despite our distance from the hospital we enjoy fairly easy access to pre-natal and neo-natal medical treatment.

Palestinian families do not.  From where I sit, that's tantamount to genocide.

The problem with Palestine is it's full of Palestinians.  If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out.

This is the Israeli-American Occupation in a nutshell (my apologies for its being provided by an anti-Semitic film director's historically inaccurate action/chick-flick).

So we'll be talking to Congressman Peter Welch--unexpectedly, given I'd just heard from him--tomorrow at 12:30.  Topics will include our individual trips to Palestine and the healthcare bill markups going on this week.  These are much more related in my mind than they were just a few weeks or months ago.

ntodd