A birth this week in Haiti at the field hospital of the Israel Defense Forces. Source: IDF
Israel has a comparative advantage in medical care and specifically in treating trauma victims, which comes not only from its advanced human capital, especially in technology and health care, but also from vast experience treating victims of terror and war. Read the NYTimes article published yesterday on the subject. Israel has been treating Haiti’s earthquake victims in its mobile tent hospitals set up in the last week in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
The Times article discusses the ambivalence Israelis are experiencing, concerned about how they treat Palestinians in Gaza, while offering help to Haitians. There is a difference. Rockets have rained down on Israeli towns from Gaza for years, where Hamas was elected to office not long ago and where IDF Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, 23 years old, has been held hostage for over 3 1/2 years. Read the hate for Israel contained in the Hamas Covenant to understand the difference between helping Haitian earthquake victims and maintaining a blockade of the Gaza Strip. This document has been translated and published at the Yale Law School’s Avalon project, where you can go as well for a fairly full documentary history of the Middle East conflict (1916-2010).