RUTHFULLY YOURS

The only way to discover whether new interventions are effective is to test them during an epidemic.

A virologist carrying out mouse experiments in a lab in Hamburg five years ago accidentally pricked her finger. The syringe contained the Zaire Ebola virus, the same strain wreaking havoc today in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There is no approved treatment or vaccine for Ebola, or even one that has passed the first phase of safety trials in human volunteers. Yet unlike those exposed to Ebola in West Africa recently, the Hamburg virologist was quickly offered an experimental vaccine.

This vaccine hadn’t yet been tested on humans, but it had been shown to offer primates some protection against Ebola infections. For the virologist, it wasn’t a good option, but it was the only one available in the face of a virus with an extremely high mortality rate. She chose to take the vaccine.

We expect it is a risk we would take if one of us were exposed to Ebola. The Hamburg researcher didn’t fall ill. It is unclear exactly how the vaccine worked, or indeed whether she was ever infected. What is important is that immediate access to an experimental vaccine allowed her to try something with the potential to protect her.

It is highly likely that if Ebola were now spreading in Western countries, public-health authorities would give at-risk patients access to experimental drugs or vaccines. Indeed, there are reports that two U.S. relief workers infected with Ebola in Liberia have been offered experimental therapies, which they have accepted.

Much of my research and writing has concerned World War II, and as a result I try to steer clear of discussing Hitler or Nazis in any context other than that era. Use either word in the context of contemporary politics at your peril: Invoking them almost invariably has the effect of trivializing monstrous crimes of the past in the service of scoring cheap rhetorical points—and cutting off all rational discussion.

Yet at some point most of us make exceptions to the rules we impose on ourselves. This is mine: What we are witnessing today in the surge of poisonous anti-Semitism around the world, particularly in Europe, would have delighted Hitler and his Nazi followers.

Cloaked in the garb of humanitarian concern for the Palestinian people, anti-Semitism is gushing with such ferocity that the power to shock diminishes daily.

That makes it easy for the far right, the far left, and a lot of people in between to attend rallies where others chant “Hitler was right!” and “Death to Jews”—even if they don’t do so themselves.

The UNRWA is on the front lines of the Hamas War in Gaza. In the headlines, its schools are forever being fired on or found to be stockpiling rockets. If individual Gazans are being used as human shields, the UNRWA often seems as if it is one big organizational human shield.

But the UNRWA isn’t Hamas’ human shield. The UNRWA is Hamas.

The “UN” part of the UNRWA, the blue logos and symbols, fool us into thinking of it as an international humanitarian organization. But the UNRWA in Gaza functions as a large Palestinian Arab organization with a smattering of foreign supervisory staff.

And those foreign staffers often tend to leave during a conflict.

The UNRWA is not an international organization operating in the Middle East. Effectively it’s a local Arab Muslim organization funded and regulated internationally. Since the UNRWA classifies 80% of Gazans as “refugees”, it administers the biggest welfare state in the world on their behalf. Like the Palestinian Authority, the UNRWA’s welfare state is run locally and funded internationally.

The UNRWA is the biggest employer in the West Bank and Gaza after the Palestinian Authority and the vast majority of its employees are “locally recruited”. Varying figures place the share of local employees at between 90 and 99 percent.

Even though there are more Arab Muslims living in the West Bank than in Gaza, there are more “official” refugees in Gaza, which means that more UNRWA funding and efforts are directed there. The UNRWA only runs 96 schools in the West Bank, but it runs 245 schools in Gaza. It employs less than 3,000 education staffers in the West Bank, but over 10,000 in Gaza.

Why does Hamas, which is obsessed with brainwashing the next generation into martyrdom, allow a foreign organization to run an educational system for 232,000 pupils?

It’s because in Gaza, Hamas and the UNRWA are the same thing.

If you want honesty from Muslim settlers in the West, you really can only get it from Hizb-ut-Tahrir. They will actually tell you what they’re thinking.

The media won’t.

Here’s how the Australian media covered a Hizb-ut-Tahrir pro-Hamas rally.

A group of about 100 protesters have rallied outside the Egyptian consulate in Sydney to call for the defence of Gaza and the destruction of Israel. The group including men, women and children gathered on Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills, on Saturday afternoon, waving placards calling for Muslims to support Gaza.

How touching. Here’s the real genocidal reality.

Now here’s actual video from that event courtesy of Memri.

“This nation has been and will continue to be a nation of Jihad until Judgement Day.”

“There is no god but Allah… and Jihad is a duty decreed by Allah”

“Palestine cannot contain the Muslims and the Jews.”

The Spanish government on Monday announced that it had “provisionally suspended” sales of weapons to Israel because of its supposed targeting of civilians in Gaza. This came a day after the Obama Administration declared that it was “appalled” by Israel’s “disgraceful” shelling of a UN school in Gaza. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called the shelling a “moral outrage” and a “criminal act.” The only problem with all this moral indignation is that it is wrongly placed on the victim rather than the perpetrator, and bears witness to the success of Hamas’s propaganda barrage.

These are just two of the most recent examples of the success of Hamas’s skillful manipulation of the mainstream media, and the eagerness of the media to be manipulated – an eagerness so great that amid the frenzy to demonize Israel in the court of world opinion, Hamas’s oft-reiterated genocidal bloodlust and brazen breaking of ceasefire agreements goes unreported and ignored.

The U.S. condemnation of the Israeli shelling of the UN school was a particular victory. Jeff Dunetz reported in Truth Revolt Monday that “evidence is emerging that the Israeli strike hit outside of the school and the bodies were moved into the courtyard to make it look like Israel hit the school.” This wouldn’t be remotely close to the first time that Palestinian jihadis have been caught faking Israeli “atrocities” – recently they even billed a still from a horror movie as a fresh Israeli killing of a Palestinian civilian.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is apparently the gift that keeps on giving. A series of new revelations are highlighted by the idea that if you like your current ObamaCare plan you can keep it—but it will likely cost you more, and you may have trouble finding a doctor who will treat you.

A devastating expose by the National Journal reveals that Americans who decide to stick with their current ObamaCare plan “are at risk for some of the biggest premium spikes anywhere in the system. And some people won’t even know their costs went up until they get a bill from the IRS.”

At the heart of this daunting new reality are the taxpayer-financed premium subsidies that Americans receive to offset the true costs of their health insurance. Because of the way the law is written, many Americans will have to switch their plans to maintain their current costs. That in and of itself is a major headache, because it means another visit to the infamous HealthCare.gov website. Healthcare experts already question how many Americans will re-visit that ordeal, especially when the Obama administration has set up an automatic renewal process for one’s current policy.

Yet that current policy may end up costing enrollees considerably more because of changes in the law triggered, ironically, by increased competition among insurers that will bring lower-priced products to the marketplace. Newer plans offered by this competition will change the entire structure of subsidy payments because those subsidies are tied to what is called a “benchmark” insurance plan. As its stands now, lower-income consumers are only required to pay a certain percentage of their total income to acquire health insurance. The rest of the premium is paid by the government subsidy. Those who choose a more expensive policy pay the difference out of their own pocket.

There are no silver bullets. The price of freedom is hard work and vigilance.

West Bank
Rocket hits house in West Bank Photo: screenshot
Hours before Israel accepted the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire deal on Monday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to the south to try to allay the fears of area residents.

It’s not at all clear how successful he was.

Residents of the communities bordering the Gaza Strip who evacuated their homes are skeptical of the IDF’s claims that it is safe for them to return.

In an interview with NRG website, Yael Paz-Lahiany, a mother of three young children from Kibbutz Nahal Oz just across the border from Gaza professed profound confusion and concern.

“I really don’t understand what is happening here and don’t know what to think. Just on Saturday we had 10 red alerts at Nahal Oz and I don’t know what to say. I also don’t understand what the prime minister said [Saturday].

How many times have you heard on television or read in the media that the Gaza Strip is “the most densely populated area in the world”? Repeating this statement, however, does not make it true. There are dense parts of Gaza, especially Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and Khan Younis, but there are far less dense areas in Gaza between these cities. Just look at Google Earth, or this population density map.

(Image source: Peace Now)

The fact that these sparsely populated areas exist in the Gaza Strip raise several important moral questions: First, why don’t the media show the relatively open areas of the Gaza Strip? Why do they only show the densely populated cities? There are several possible reasons. There is no fighting going on in the sparsely populated areas, so showing them would be boring. But that’s precisely the point—to show areas from which Hamas could be firing rockets and building tunnels but has chosen not to. Or perhaps the reason the media doesn’t show these areas is that Hamas won’t let them. That too would be a story worth reporting.

Second, why doesn’t Hamas use sparsely populated areas from which to launch its rockets and build its tunnels? Were it to do so, Palestinian civilian casualties would decrease dramatically, but the casualty rate among Hamas terrorists would increase dramatically.

Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati said he was able to speak freely about witnessing a Hamas misfire that killed nine children at the Shati camp, confirming the Israel Defense Forces version of events, but only after leaving Gaza, “far from Hamas retaliation.”

On Twitter, Barbati, Jerusalem Correspondent for Radio Popolare Milano, and a former reporter for Sky Italia, in Beijing, said, “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday [yesterday] in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.”

He said, “@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it.”

On Tuesday, the IDF released aerial photos showing how a rocket from Gaza targeting Israel hit the Shati camp, run by the UNRWA, and Al Shifa Hospital, which has become a de-facto Hamas headquarters, against international rules of war.

Barbati said he was unable to speak about the Al Shifa hit, but he was certain that it was a Hamas rocket that hit the Shati camp, and a witness saw militants rushing to clean the debris.

The Iron Dome, well this particular hi-tech defensive shield certainly has been splendid in protecting Israeli parents and their kids from rocket attacks coming in from Gaza – and we’re speaking about thousands of Hamas rockets over a period of a dozen years.

So the Iron Dome keeps being blessed for all the wonderful work it’s been doing, and Amen to that – but is this the answer?

Not for me.

I love the Iron Dome for all the right reasons. But I have learned to hate the Iron Dome because it keeps Israelis conditioned to expect a lifetime of warfare.

It means there is no end to the terror.

It means that Israelis cannot expect their government to fully protect them.

It means that Israel has surrendered into accepting a life on the run.

It keeps Israelis trained into believing that they have no right to expect peace or tranquility, ever.

It means that Israeli kids can never be tucked into bed safely. The next siren can go off at any minute. This time, will the Iron Dome succeed?

This time – will it fail?

Is this any way to live – for parents, for kids?