RUTHIE BLUM: BAD BLOOD LIBEL
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6649
On Wednesday, the Magen David Adom rescue organization set up a blood-donation station at the Knesset. Among other members of Israel’s parliament to volunteer to perform their civic duty was Yesh Atid MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, a lawyer and journalist by profession whose family immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia in 1984.
But before Tamano-Shata, the first Ethiopian woman to be elected to the Knesset, had a chance to roll up her sleeve, she was informed by MDA paramedics that she did not meet the criteria for donating blood for transfusions; and if she went through with the procedure, her blood would be frozen, rather than used.
Tamano-Shata was offended. “I have lived in Israel since I was three years old,” she protested. “I served in the Israel Defense Forces.”
The apologetic paramedics assured her that they were only adhering to Health Ministry regulations, which they produced for her to see. The section titled “Situations in which a dose of blood cannot be used for transfusion” lists many prohibitions, among them: “The donor spent time in England for a cumulative six-month period between 1980 and 1996, or received a transfusion in England from blood drawn in 1980; the donor spent time in Ireland or Portugal for a cumulative period of at least 10 years, from 1980; the donor has a lifestyle that is liable to increase the risk for recipients, such as intravenous use/inhaling of drugs, paid sexual relations, sexual relations between men after 1977; the donor was born or lived for more than one year in a country in which there is a high incidence of AIDS, since 1977: Africa (excluding South Africa and North African states), Southeast Asia and the Caribbean Islands.”
Because Tamano-Shata was born in Ethiopia in 1981, she is among those whose blood is prohibited for transfusion. Had she been born in Israel and spent time in England, Ireland or Portugal during certain periods of her life, she would have been subject to the same prohibition.
This did not prevent her from getting on her high horse, however. “I am good enough to serve the state and in the Knesset, but apparently equality is violated when it comes to donating blood,” she said. “I bear no anger toward those taking blood, who were doing their job. These are guidelines that come from higher up and do a painful injustice to an entire community. … It is sad that after so many decades the state has failed to stop differentiating between blood and blood.”
Though Magen David Adom explained that these regulations are in place to lower the risk to blood recipients of contracting AIDS and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease, nobody called Tamono-Shata to task for blowing the incident out of proportion. On the contrary, there was consensus across the political spectrum that a mass “mea culpa” was in order.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who had just returned with Tamano-Shata from Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa, kicked the MDA paramedics out of the Knesset, barring them from blood drives until further notice. MK Gila Gamliel, also a member of the delegation to South Africa, said, “… Pnina [Tamano-Shata] and I together marked Mandela’s achievements in the struggle against racism. I’m shocked to discover the degree to which the situation here is shameful and disgraceful.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an investigation into the incident and phoned Tamano-Shata to say that the issue of setting criteria for blood donations from Ethiopian Israelis needs to be reviewed. And the Knesset Interior Committee scheduled a meeting for next week to do just that.
President Shimon Peres chimed in: “New regulations should be created to enable all citizens of Israel to give blood. The Ethiopian community is very dear to Israel, the real salt of the earth.”
Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver also strongly condemned the incident. Even Health Minister Yael German — who heads the ministry that created the blood-donor rules in the first place — was outraged. “It is absurd and unacceptable that in the year 2013, in the State of Israel, members of the Ethiopian community, who arrived here 25 years ago, can’t give blood,” she said.
This outcry is as inane and insane as it is disingenuous on Tamano-Shata’s part.
In the first place, the young MK has been an activist against the practice of excluding Ethiopian immigrants from blood donations since her youth. She even led protests over the issue in 2006. So when she went to donate blood at the Knesset, she knew exactly what was going to happen. This is why she made sure to get it all on camera. She had an agenda all along, which she furthered beyond her wildest dreams.
In the second place, there is nothing racist about the blood-donor regulations. It is a fact that African countries have been plagued with the AIDS virus, just as it is a given that mad cow disease was spread in England. This does not mean that everyone who was born or who lived in these places necessarily has infected blood; nor is such a notion even being suggested. Screening blood is a precautionary policy, not a social statement.
Why anyone would want to give or receive blood that is potentially problematic is a complete mystery. What is clear as plasma, however, is that the prospect of being accused of racism arouses fear greater than that of death.
Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”
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