<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[The Hasbara Buster: Close encounters of a nasty&nbsp;kind]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Thursday, January 13, 2011</p>
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<p>Israel provides free medical care to Palestinians. Every year, [fill in  with number] Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals, getting  world-class attention, which proves Israel is no cruel occupier.You will  have heard this Zionist claim a fairly large number of times.</p>
<p>For some reason, certain people seem to believe that you can&#8217;t be bad  unless you&#8217;re absolutely bad. Unfortunately, they don&#8217;t apply the same  reasoning to the Palestinians, who are incurable Jew-haters even though  they <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=198113">sent firefighters</a> to help control a recent fire in Israel, or to the Cuban leaders, who are irrationally evil even after they <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9311876/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/">offered</a> to send some 1,600 medics, field hospitals and 83 tons of medical  supplies to ease the humanitarian disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina  in the US.</p>
<p>But a recent <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=203047">JPost story</a> provides a new angle to analyze Israel&#8217;s kindness towards its occupied  people (an obligation under international law, by the way) at its  hospitals. Reports the daily:</p>
<blockquote style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><p><strong>Specialist helps Palestinian talk after 8 month silence</strong></p>
<p>The ability to speak – lost eight months ago by a 21- year-old  Palestinian allegedly from the emotional trauma of an encounter with  security forces – has been restored by a clinical communications  specialist at Rehovot’s Kaplan Medical Center.</p>
<p>The humanitarian gesture was that of Pnina Erenthal, who has much experience in treating psychogenic aphonia.(&#8230;)</p>
<p>She finally found him and volunteered to treat his condition at Kaplan;  approval for his entrance was granted by the authorities.(&#8230;)</p>
<p>Erenthal said she “took the weak voice and helped him build it into  sentences and texts. The first thing he said was about the trauma he had  suffered,” but she did not provide details.(&#8230;)</p>
<p>[The patient] said he was very excited by Erenthal’s initiative to restore his voice.</p>
<p>“I want to study industrial engineering and management in university,  and now I hope I will be accepted. Thanks so much to Pnina – she is a  dear woman – and to Kaplan Medical Center which arranged all the  authorizations.”</p></blockquote>
<p>So here we&#8217;ve got a caring Israeli doctor who helps restore a  Palestinian&#8217;s lost speech. OK. But notice how matter-of-factly the  article mentions the reason the young man suffered from that condition  in the first place. He was traumatized by an &#8220;encounter&#8221; with Israel&#8217;s  security forces (<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/twilight-zone-lightning-strikes-again-1.335741">elsewhere</a> we learn he was beaten by police after he was caught in Ashkelon, where he works, without a permit to be in Israel).</p>
<p>In the talkbacks, a reader moans:</p>
<blockquote style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><p><strong>3. This won&#8217;t appear in Ha&#8217;aretz</strong></p>
<p>* Author:   Michael<br />
* Country:   Israel<br />
* 01/11/2011   08:16</p>
<p>And you won&#8217;t hear from Israel bashers like Ron in Fairfax, the Labrador Retriever, etc.</p></blockquote>
<p>Leaving aside that it did appear in <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/twilight-zone-lightning-strikes-again-1.335741">Haaretz</a>, notice how oblivious the reader is to the fact that it was a (commendable) <em>private</em> citizen who took it upon herself to help out the young man, while it was the <em>public</em> forces of the State of Israel that traumatized him in an &#8220;encounter.&#8221;</p>
<p>At most we can say that Israel still has individual persons who have the  will and the scientific knowledge to correct the wrongs caused by the  State with its security bodies.</p>
<p>Kudos to Dr. Pnina Erenthal for restoring a young Palestinian&#8217;s speech.  Shame on the Israeli police for beating him until they rendered him  voiceless in the first place. Shame also on those who turn reality  upside down by suggesting that it is a beautiful person&#8217;s kindness what  is representative of the State of Israel, and not the brutality daily  exercised by its men in uniform.</p>
<p><a href="http://thehasbarabuster.blogspot.com/2011/01/close-encounters-of-nasty-kind.html">The Hasbara Buster: Close encounters of a nasty kind</a>.</p>
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