They Let Babies Die, Don't They?

Naheel Abu Rideh, 21

Philosophers will argue whether there is a significant ethical difference between killing and letting die. Apparently, there is a significant difference for Israelis between killing a Jewish baby and letting a Palestinian baby die. The penalty for the former is life imprisonment (if the killer manages to get a trial) and blowing up the home of the family. The penalty for the latter is a two week prison sentence.

That's the way it is in Sodom -- I mean, the West Bank -- today.

B'Tselem is reporting that yet another Palestinian baby was born dead at a checkpoint because the mother was not allowed to go through by the soldiers. I have lost count of the dead babies; you can find the number somewhere on the B'Tselem website here.

I remember when this sort of thing was big news. Now, it doesn't even make the Israeli papers. I reproduce here the testimony of the mother, Naheel Abu Rideh, from the B'Tselem website.

I married Muaiad Abu-Rideh two years ago, and had a baby girl, Shadah, a year ago. She was born in my seventh month of pregnancy but is fine now.

Seven months ago, I became pregnant again. Last Thursday [4 September], I had sharp stomach pains and I started to bleed badly. Around 7:00 P.M. I went to Dr. Fathi ‘Odeh in Jawarish, because our village doesn’t have any specialist physicians. He gave me medication and told me I’d be all right, but I didn't feel any improvement and the pains even got worse.

Around midnight, I couldn’t bear the pain any more. I woke my husband and asked him to take me to the hospital. When he saw how much I was suffering, he called to get his brother ‘Udai, who lives in the center of the village, to drive us in his car. ‘Udai arrived, with my mother-in-law, in a couple of minutes. My husband picked me up and carried me to the car. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t walk.

We started on our way to the hospital in Nablus at about 12:50 A.M. At the Za’tara checkpoint, we told the soldiers I was pregnant and had to get to the hospital, and they let us cross without a problem. When we got to the Huwara checkpoint, the soldiers didn’t let us pass. They said we didn't have a permit to cross by car. We told them my brother has a permit to cross the Ma’ale Efraim checkpoint because he works at settlements in the Jordan Valley, but that didn’t help.

The pain got worse. I felt as if I was going to give birth any moment. Now and then, the soldiers came over to the car and looked at me lying in the back seat. I was really worried about the fetus, and couldn’t stop thinking that I’d have to give birth in the car while the soldiers watched.

I kept screaming and crying and calling for help. I don’t know how much time passed, but suddenly I felt the fetus coming out. I shouted to my mother-in-law and to ‘UdaI, who were outside the car: “I think he’s coming out!” I took off my clothes. I was afraid they’d see me naked and that something would happen to the fetus. My mother-in-law shouted: “Yes, here’s his head, he’s coming out.” I asked her to pull him, and she said, “Breathe! Push!” I felt as the baby move, as if he was calling for help and asking us to help him come out. My mother-in-law covered me with my clothes. I shouted to my husband, ”The baby is out!” He shouted to the soldiers something in Hebrew that I didn't understand.

I don’t remember exactly what happened then, but when the medics arrived, they picked me up with the car seat and put me in the ambulance. I didn’t feel the baby moving any more and realized he was dead. The medics took away the dead baby and took me to the hospital. My husband and mother-in-law came with me in the ambulance. At the hospital, the doctors operated on me to clean my uterus. They discharged me the next day.

It hurts me a lot when I remember how the baby moved inside me and what happened to him. What did he do wrong? I also gave birth to my daughter in my seventh month, and now she is healthy. This poor baby died because there wasn’t anybody to help me deliver him.

Naheel 'Awni 'Abd a-Rahim Abu Rideh, 21, married with one child, is a homemaker and a resident of Qusra in Nablus District. Her testimony was given to Salma a-Deba'i on 8 September 2008 at the witness's home.

Checkpoints Don't Kill People -- People Kill People

Checkpoints, Israelis and their defenders concede, cause major discomfort for Palestinians. But they are justifiable because a) they save lives, and b) Palestinians share some sort of collective reponsibility for their terrorists, whom they hail as martyrs.

The common responses to these arguments are that a) an occupying army is responsible for the welfare of the occupied people, and that b) the measures it takes to ensure the security of its own population cannot be disproportionate to the pain and suffering it causes to the occupied population. Or to be blunt - saving the lives of your people does not override destroying the lives of an occupied people, if the measures you take are disproportionate.

There will be arguments, obviously, over what is disproportionate, but those arguments should not be held hostage to the sensitivities of the people making them. That is why we need a stronger system of international human rights law and its enforcement, not a weaker one. I am always more sensitive to my pain than to yours.

Haaretz reported yesterday that an Arab woman died because soldiers would not let her reach an ambulance to take her to a hospital. Instead, she was taken back to her village to die. The IDF spokesman said that the husband should have informed the "local military coordination office for humanitarian cases" that an ambulance was arriving. In other words, the soldiers at the checkpoint did not have the authority -- or the desire -- to let the woman through. Read about it here.

More Palestinians have died because of Israeli checkpoints than have Sderot residents because of Kassams. In the last year alone, there was a sharp rise in such incidents, despite the fact that there were no successful suicide bombings So in 2007 ten sick Palestinians died because of checkpoints in order to save -- possibly -- the lives of Israeli citizens. See here I counted ten on B'Tselem's website. And I am not talking of lives ruined or livelihoods destroyed. I am talking about physical deaths.

Some of my readers say that these deaths were not intentional. But they were. Because these people were intentionally prevented from getting medical care. It doesn't matter, either legally or morally, whether other lives could have been saved. It doesn't matter, either legally or morally, that ambulances have been used to smuggle weapons in less than a tenth of a per cent of ambulance use by Palestinians. So don't bother to remind me about it. Certain things cannot be done. I could reduce the murder rate in Washington DC by 98% if I clamped down a dusk to dawn curfew every night and shot violaters on sight. Does that give me the right to do that?

Some of my readers will, say, "Look, war is hell; it's us or them; life is tough, get over it." To those readers I say, "Fine -- as long as you have no problem with the morality of the suicide bombers beyond the fact that they are killing your family." I understand the tribalism that motivates that. I love watching the Godfather.

What really nauseates me are the people who have no problem with wiping out neighborhoods in Gaza -- such as the current Israeli minister of the interior Meir Shitrit -- and then try to claim the moral high-ground. Look, if your morality is "It's us or them", then when they blow up our babies, they are not being immoral -- they are just doing what we are doing.

There should be no illusions.

That's one of the few things I like about the New Republic's Marty Peretz. His morality boils down to "Do it to them before they do it to us." He knows that the Occupation is hell on the Palestinians, but that's their tough luck. Or as he puts it in an interview with Haaretz here

I'm not under the impression that Israeli occupation is kind and sweet. No occupation is kind or sweet. But bad things happen everywhere.

Ah, to be able to talk like John Wayne and still be Jewish, what a rush that must give Peretz! It may not make up for TNR's flaccid circulation, but it sure beats Viagra.

Justice, equity, fairness, self-determination, democracy -- those things don't make much of a difference to tough Jews of Peretz's generation. And I mean, "of his generation". Because they are, thank God, a dying breed. Oh, sure, the young modern orthodox neocons are around, but they are about to be sent to think-tank (and blogger) hell, come the Obama election.

There is change in the air, and I am not just referring to TNR's plummeting readership. Let's put it this way....if I wanted to sound like Peretz, this is what I'd say:

Marty, Israel's bleeding, and you won't be able to stop it. The younger Jewish generation won't really be affected by Birthright, and in your lifetime you will see the only hardcore Zionists go Republican. The problem is not that "all occupations are not nice."The problem is that the longest Occupation in modern history --Tibet's problems will be solved before Israel's -- will catch up with Israel, and unless it is able to extricate itself from its suicidal death-wish -- which you, and other of your ilk, support -- it will plunge further into the chaos.

Then, Marty, you can erect your Museum of Zionism, commemorate the New Masada, as you sit by the waters of Washington and rail against the anti-Semites and the self-hating Jews that were responsible for destroying the third commonwealth. And you will weep over the decline of the the only sort of Judaism you understand (besides gastronomic Judaism)...."neofascist Judaism," "tough guy" Judaism, "'goyische' Judaism."

In short, the Judaism of the qena'im, the Zealots.

You've won before in Jewish history, Marty.

But never for long, thank God.