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By Dr. Jonathan Halevy

In the days following the Haiti earthquake, the international press was awash in astonishing reports commending Israel’s tremendous work in medical disaster response and setting up a field hospital operation that had other nations looking on in awe. Even as these reports left us feeling intense pride, our reaction back in Israel has been one of far less surprise.

Dr. Jonathan Halevy

From CBS to CNN to MSNBC and numerous other outlets across the media landscape, wide-eyed medical reporters witnessed the Israeli operation with an underlying tone of combined admiration and jealousy.

Why is it that of the dozens of countries contributing to the relief effort, with delegations of all shapes and sizes, it’s the Israelis who travel halfway around the world and within hours have a fully operational hospital in place? Journalists pointed with amazement at our mobile imaging machinery and sedated patients on ventilators and asked outright why anyone else couldn’t be doing this.

The reason we in Israel are not surprised is because we know that we’ve been training for years for just these types of scenarios. We can also appreciate that Israel sees part of its mandate as a military and medical leader to make sure that expertise and know-how will benefit the international community should the opportunity present itself.

And so, as much as our enemies desire to paint the IDF solely as a hawkish, war-seeking powerhouse, the mission in Haiti shows just the opposite to be true.

Admittedly, Israel’s adeptness in launching these types of operations stems from a history of confronting hostilities and being prepared to address every possible threat. I personally recall from my days as commander of a field hospital in the First Lebanon War that we set up such a field medical facility within hours and that “real-life” training was just one of many invaluable tests that would benefit the IDF Medical Corps in the future.

Over the years, the brave men and women of our army have recalled those lessons on all too many occasions, both here and, just as often, in ports of call in other parts of the world.

So when the news came across the wires that Haiti had been rocked by a devastating earthquake, the question was never if Israel would be there to respond, but only how soon.

Those of us involved in emergency management and disaster response know all too well that Israel has a unique advantage over most, if not all, nations in this discipline. Every week, a major drill is held at a hospital somewhere in Israel. Our protocols and emergency departments have become models for hospitals all around the world.

Despite our relatively small size and urban landscapes that pale in comparison to most of the West, our Home Front Command has made it a principal training objective to remain ever-ready for all types of disasters.

Even with the very limited traditional communication tools that exist between Israel and our rescue teams in Haiti, I had the chance to be in touch with my colleagues from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on several occasions after they landed in the earthquake zone. The underlying tone that came across was one of overwhelming shock at the scope of the disaster they faced, yet they admitted that they felt as prepared as humanly possible for the medical realities they were confronting.

What has been most challenging, without a doubt, has been the emotional experiences. Many of those in the field hospital were seasoned veterans of the military and have treated hundreds if not thousands of victims of warfare and terrorism. However, they reported that perhaps more than ever before, in Haiti desperate questions of medical ethics had to be asked even before the ones over the best course of treatment. Each patient had to be judged based on the chances for his or her survival. The medical process only then commenced if the doctors and nurses believed that this case had better chances for a positive outcome than the victim that lay immediately next in line.

These were devastating questions for even the most hardened medical professional and ones that challenge Israel’s medical teams countless times each day.

Beyond these stories of disaster and loss, the Israeli experience in Haiti still has been one of hope and promise. The world quickly learned that the “successes” we achieved there came because we appreciated the continuous need for this type of training. Even more so, it is recognized that we have a role in contributing to the greater welfare of the international community.

Perhaps it’s unfortunate that it took the devastating tragedy in Haiti for the world to understand this valuable lesson that Israel has an enormous amount of good to contribute, both in good times and bad. Yet we can also be hopeful and confident that it’s one not soon forgotten.

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Dr. Jonathan Halevy is director-general of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. This piece first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

www.JWeekly.com

The infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen last December from Auschwitz and broken into three pieces has been returned to the museum at the site of the Nazi death camp.

Police, who had quickly recovered the damaged sign after its theft, gave it to museum officials at a brief Jan. 21 ceremony in Krakow. It was then taken to the museum 50 miles away, where conservation experts examined the three dark steel pieces of the sign, whose cynical Nazi slogan means “Work Sets You Free.”

Thieves had cut up the sign at the site of the death camp the night of their heist to make it easier to transport in their getaway car.

Five Polish suspects have confessed to stealing it on Dec. 18. However, officials earlier this week were still seeking a suspected neo-Nazi from Sweden who is believed to have ordered the theft, possibly for a collector of Nazi memorabilia, prosecutors said.

Auschwitz spokesman Pawel Sawicki said officials must still decide whether to eventually put back the original sign or leave up the replica now in its place.

See related articles posted December 19, 2009 and January 9, 2010.

By Daniel Schwammenthal, online.WSJ.com  Wall Street Journal

Meet Ibrahim, a 23-year old Palestinian refugee living in the West Bank. Unlike those descendants of refugees born in United Nations camps, Ibrahim fled his birthplace just two years ago. And he wasn’t running away from Israelis, but from his Palestinian brethren in Gaza.

Ibrahim’s crime in that Hamas-ruled territory was to be a Christian, a transgression he compounded in the Islamists’ eyes by writing love poems.

“Muslims tied to Hamas tried to take me twice,” says Ibrahim, and he didn’t want to find out what they’d do to him if they ever kidnapped him. He hasn’t seen his family since Christmas 2007 and is afraid even to talk to them on the phone.

Speaking to a group of foreign journalists in the Bethlehem Bible College where he is studying theology, Ibrahim describes a life of fear in Gaza. “My sister is under a lot of pressure to wear a headscarf. People are turning more and more to Islamic fundamentalism and the situation for Christians is very difficult,” he says.

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Ibrahim’s Christian friends have also left Gaza.

On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier. Yet until Palestinian terrorist groups turned Bethlehem into a safe haven for suicide bombers, Bethlehemites were free to enter Israel, just as many Israelis routinely visited Bethlehem.

The other truth usually ignored by the Western press is that the barrier helped restore calm and security not just in Israel, but also in the West Bank including Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity, which Palestinian gunmen stormed and defiled in 2002 to escape from Israeli security forces, is now filled again with tourists and pilgrims from around the world.

A demonstration of power: Muslims praying in Manger Square, Aug. 7, 2009.

But even here in Jesus’ birthplace, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Christians live on a knife’s edge. Ibrahim tells me that Muslims often stand in front of the gate of the Bible College and read from the Quran to intimidate Christian students. Other Muslims like to roll out their prayer rugs right in Manger Square.

Asked about why Muslims would pray so close to one of Christianity’s holiest sites, Pastor Alex Awad, dean of students at the Bible College, diplomatically advises me to pose this question to the Muslims themselves. Mindful of his community’s precarious situation, he is at pains to stress that whatever problems Christians may have with their Muslim neighbors, it’s not the PA’s fault.

“Muslims and Christians live here in relative harmony,” he tells reporters, only to add that Christians “feel the pressure of Islam . . . There is intimidation and fanaticism but these are little instances and there is no general persecution.”

Samir Qumsieh, the founder of what he says is the holy land’s only Christian TV station, also stresses that there is no “Christian suffering” and that the Christians’ problems are not orchestrated by the PA. Yet his stories of land theft, beatings and intimidation make one wonder why, if the PA doesn’t approve of such injustices, it is doing so little to stop it?

Christians have only recently begun to talk about how Muslim gangs simply come and take possession of Christian-owned land while the Palestinian security services, almost exclusively staffed by Muslims, stand by. Qumsieh’s own home was firebombed three years ago. The perpetrators were never caught.

“We have never suffered as we are suffering now,” Qumsieh confesses, violating his own introductory warning to the assorted foreign correspondents in his office not to use the word “suffering.”

Always a minority religion among the predominantly Muslim Palestinians, Christians are, Qumsieh says, “melting away,” even in Bethlehem. While they represented about 80% of the city’s population 60 years ago, their numbers are now down to about 20%, a result not just of Muslims’ higher birth rates but also widespread Christian emigration. “Our future as a Christian community here is gloomy,” Qumsieh says.

Palestinian plight not attributable to Israel barely seems to register in the West’s collective conscience. As Christians around the world reflect on Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection in this season that extends from from Christmas to Easter, perhaps we can think of Ibrahim and those Christians still suffering in Gaza and Bethlehem.

By David Bedein, Middle East Correspondent for The Bulletin (Philadelphia, PA)

http://thebulletin.us

Saturday, February 6 will be the observation of Tu Bshvat on the Hebrew calendar, the 15th of Shvat, the Jewish arbor day, a day when the Jewish people bid a “happy birthday to the Land of Israel.”

One rabbi, known as “the Ari of Tzfat,” declared in the 16th Century that Tu Bshvat should be celebrated as the real Jewish New Year.

In the modern era, Tu Bshvat combines a heavenly commitment of love for the land of Israel with the Zionist enterprise in order to make the Land bloom in the modern era.

The organization in charge of planting trees in the land of Israel, after two millennia of desolation, is known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

This is how the momentum of tree planting in the land of Israel has progressed over the past 90 years:

In 1920, the year the JNF was established, there were 14,000 dunams (a measurement of one-quarter of an acre) of planted forests in the land of Israel. By 1942 there were already 35,000 dunams of forest, and more than a half a million in 1980.

Israel is the only country in the world that will have more trees in its territory this year than it did in 1910. The trees that will be planted this year during the annual Tu Bishvat celebrations are part of the JNF’s “A Tree for Every Resident” program.

“In the framework of the program we are going to plant seven-and-a-half million trees,” said Efi Stentzler, the JNF chairman. “A tree for every resident of Israel. Our project is part of a global project that was announced by the UN, the goal of which is to fight the causes of pollution that humanity is responsible for.”

Forests currently cover some 1.6 million dunams of land in the state of Israel. A million of those dunams are administered by the Jewish National Fund.

The JNF has planted more than 240 million trees to date. The national master plan envisions another 300,000 dunams of available land to be covered with forests. This year, between 15,000 and 20,000 dunams of land will be forested. Tree-planting season ends in March. The saplings are provided by the JNF nurseries, which produce 1.2 million saplings every year.

In 1960, pine trees accounted for 85 percent of all trees planted in Israel, which made them the icon of JNF planting in Israel. In recent years, pine trees have come to account for under one-third of the trees planted. Rather, 70 percent of all saplings planted are indigenous trees.

The JNF plants 150 different kinds of trees and invests an average of five million dollars every year for that purpose. The JNF has recorded in a special diary an account of all plantings since Israel was re-established. In 1991, that diary was computerized.

The largest forest in Israel is the Yatir Forest, which is spread over 40,000 dunams, half of which are desert. The smallest forest is the Dalton Forest, which is on a modest 42 dunams of land.

The first forest ever planted by the JNF is the Ben Shemen Forest —which was initially called the Herzl Forest and consisted of just 18 olive trees.