Dutch Daily: “The Chosen People Have to be Perfect”
January 12, 2012 14:33 by ManagingTeamThis is a guest post by Yochanan Visser of Missing Peace.
Last week the Dutch Christian daily ‘Trouw’ reached a new low when it published a vicious article about prenatal care in Israel entitled: “The chosen people have to be perfect”.
The writer, Ilse van Heusden, gave birth to a healthy baby boy while temporarily living in Israel.
She succeeded in portraying the prenatal care in Israel as a government instigated ‘military operation’ aimed at the production of babies as perfect as possible.
Apart from distortions and lies the article contained many accusations and insinuations which are reminiscent of classic anti-Semitic rants.
Requests
After the publication of the article we [Missing Peace] contacted ‘Trouw’ with a request to allow the publication of an op-ed in which we could debunk the false claims and lies in Van Heusden’s article.
‘Trouw’ did not even bother to respond, nor did the editors respond to a similar request by the Dutch branch of the Likud party.
Examples
Here is a prime example of the anti-Semitic content of the article:
Van Heusden:
To be pregnant in Israel is comparable to a military operation. Countless echos and blood tests should produce the perfect baby, nothing can be left to the luck of the draw. The state demands healthy babies and a lot of them too.
This was later followed by an outrageous lie about child allowances in Israel.
Van Heusden:
What makes things even more emotionally charged is the Israeli demand to produce many children. The state promotes the birth of children by supplying, among other things, a considerable child allowance.
To support these outrageous claims, she misused a quote made by former Minister of the Interior Shlomo Benizri in 2002. At the time Benizri declared: “the fear of losing Israel’s unique character obligates us to take action so as not to become a minority in our own country.”
Of course Van Heusden knew very well that Benizri was not talking about more Jewish babies, but about the influx of illegal immigrants and foreign workers.
She then suggested that the way Israel promotes having children is comparable to Arafat’s policy of using the womb of Palestinian women as a weapon.
Child allowance
It is of course a lie that Israel ‘demands’ many or ‘perfect’ babies. The state does not interfere in the decision to have children; that is something Israelis decide for themselves.
It is also a lie that the state promotes child birth with considerable child allowances.
In fact, since 2002, the Israeli government has considerably reduced the level of child allowances. This reduction rose to as high as 70% for a family with 8 children.
An average child now receives 35 Euros ($44) per month.
That is far below the Netherlands where child allowance is an average of 120 Euro ($152) per month for children born before 1995, and roughly 75 Euro ($95) for children born since then.
Furthermore, this summer thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the fact that parents themselves had to pay for daycare of their children up till the age of five years (The Israeli government recently reduced the age to three years).
Racist state
After writing that she was diagnosed with the Cytomegalovirus (CMV) virus and as a result was requested to conduct an additional test, Van Heusden exclaimed:
I was surprised about the spasmodic attitude about this test and the previous one. After all children are loved and honored here and Israel is a paradise when it comes to having children … But the flipside of the story is that having children is a demand and a discussion about that demand is not possible.
In actual fact, the prenatal program in Israel consists of recommendations only; a woman can refuse to conduct any test at all stages of pregnancy.
Van Heusden then compared the Israeli prenatal care to the Dutch system which she holds in high esteem:
Every time I had to undergo such a test (diabetes blood test) it caused distress. In the Netherlands my first pregnancy was without problems and it was dealt with by the obstetrician accordingly. I was boring but ‘boring was good’, explained the obstetrician.
I am healthy and not in the category of the Ashkenazi Jews … yet I had to experience twelve echo tests and four blood tests”.
Writing about the birth of her son Van Heusden said:
finally we held this little baby boy in our arms that went through all those tests. When we admired his little fingers and toes we saw that one of his toes was too small. His personal revenge on the Israeli health system.
It is obvious that Van Heusden twisted everything that was done to safeguard her health and that of her child into an attempt to prove that Israel is a racist state which has a system to produce perfect babies.
Her claims are so outrageous that rebuttal seems beyond the pale.
Basic facts
However to understand the viciousness of the claims in her article it is nevertheless useful to provide some basic facts about Israeli prenatal care and the health system in general.
First of all, prenatal care in Israel is organized according to World Health Organization recommendations and is now on a higher level than that in the Netherlands.
Furthermore, Van Leusden was diagnosed with the CMV virus, which is the sole explanation for the many tests she had to undergo. In her article she admits that CMV can cause severe damage to the fetus.
Several Israeli women wrote us that on an average, 4 to 5 echo (ultrasound) tests are usual and not 12 as in the case of Van Leusden. Another woman from northern Israel claimed that her twins owed their lives to these echo tests.
Van Leusden’s criticism about the diabetes blood test is completely unjustified. This test – standard procedure in all modern medical systems – is designed to detect gestational diabetes; a disorder which can have serious and even fatal consequences for mother and child.
Mortality rate
Through this type of advanced prenatal care, Israel has managed over the last 35 years to reduce the infant mortality rate by almost 70% (24.6 per 1000 infants in 1973 compared to 3.8 per 1000 in 2008).
A similar figure was reached among the Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank (now the lowest in the entire Middle East: 11 per 1000 compared to 58 in 1968 and 61 in Iraq nowadays).
It is also the reason Israel now has a lower infant mortality rate than the Netherlands, which has one of the worst rates in Western Europe.
High quality care
The high quality of Israeli health care is in part due to prevention programs such as prenatal care. There are nationwide population examinations for breast and colon cancer. Blood tests are almost standard during visits to a doctor.
As a result people are living longer (81.6 years in Israel compared with an average of 79.5 in the OECD). Israel has one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world (84% breast cancer survival rate in 2009). The same applies to the survival rate after a stroke (CVA) and Myocardial Infarction.
All this was achieved with a health budget which is approximately 60% lower than in the Netherlands ($2,165 per person per year compared with $5144 in the Netherlands) and a number of hospital beds that is far below the OECD average (2 per 1000 compared with 3.5 in OECD countries).
Eugenics
Of course all of this data was also at Van Heusden’s disposal.
However, she chose to write a libelous article where care for an unborn child in Israel was deliberately presented as a military operation and as a political weapon born out racist motives.
When an Israeli caretaker finally had enough of her complaints about the excellent prenatal care in Israel and made a sarcastic joke about the need for ‘the chosen people to be perfect’, she used it to make her point.
One ‘Trouw’ reader summarized the article as follows:
Subtle article by the way, it even manages to bring good infant care in Israel in the vicinity of “eugenics” and thus comparing it to Nazism.
Indeed such articles can normally be found on the websites of white supremacists such as David Duke or on anti-Semitic sites such as Jew Watch.
The fact that a Dutch Christian mainstream paper published it should sound alarms in The Netherlands.
The paper should issue an apology and dissociate itself from writers like Ilse van Heusden.
Trouw’s article deserves to be exposed to a wider non-Dutch speaking audience. Here’s your chance to let Trouw know how appalling this is. Send your considered comments to Trouw’s editorial team – redactie@trouw.nl
UPDATE: Dutch Daily Deluged Over Anti-Semitic Article
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/Bruce Berrien, flickr/juanktru.
norman a blumberg
1:07 am
Jan 13, 2012
Should this scurrilous article not turn out to be a manufactured event that never occurred, does it mean that this baby is an Israeli citizen? Why were they in Israel in the first place?
I know Holland and its people pretty well and have been there many times and known many Dutchmen. The early reports post WW11 that the Dutch protected their Jewish fellow citizens against the Nazis have over time required significant reevaluation. The information that has now become increasingly available is that there was a significant cadre among Hollands population who participated with relish and gusto in the Holocaust and I imagine the claimant of Israeli medical malfeasance is probably a descendant of some of those.
As a physician it is clear to me, that the alleged modalities and tests performed in the van Heusden pregnancy represent the quintessence of outstanding, world class medical care. The comment about thebaby’s toe is too ludicrous to even merit a response. This nasty ungrateful woman should perhaps try some third world environment for her next pregnancy.
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sigal
1:30 am
Jan 13, 2012
because there is not enough hate in the world?
I think the use of holocaust terms; nazis, etc. should not be allowed.
where is the editor?
Do the people who handed in Anne Frank to be murdered and the highest rate of murdered jews
in the western Europe think it is a joking matter?
There is so much ignorance and hate , where is the editor? where is the protest?
write and protest
This is in very poor taste!
sincerly
sigal
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Yael
2:23 am
Jan 13, 2012
I do agree that the writer is prejudiced towards Israeli medical system. However, medical care in Israel is very intervention based, most ante- natal appointments do call for routine ultrasounds, without which u may not be seen. And to give birth in a less medical environment, the only option is home birth with a private midwife. Unlike in Australia, where we have birth centers as part of hospital care. But all on all, if she so suffered she should have had the baby at home- only a 4 hr flight??
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B. van de Cremer
6:04 pm
Jan 16, 2012
@Yael; ‘only a 4 hour flight’ exactly ! So I wrote this to her at the Trouw website , but she did not answer. Also I wrote, that according a report in the JP last year, a docter of the Kaplan hospital in Rehovot gave advice via e-mail to a doctor in.. Iran, who could then safe a pregnant Iranian woman.
You should know that in Holland there are many people getting a forum in the media just to blackmail Israel. Daily “Trouw” has such a forum, but at the same time they do not want to be remembered at the fact, that they gave the whole PLO topechelon a full page in the 1970′s, to promote the fact that ” Jordan is also Palestine”. Now nobody seems to remember that, because now they , the editors , must sing the opposite song in line with Palestinian Arab propaganda….
But also the best daily so far, NRC, is changing toward Israel bashing as does the public TV News program NOS Journaal. So, the best way to get more balanced information in general is for me to read ..German newspapers like FAZ, die Zeit ect .and to watch German TV like ARD, ZDF, WDR, ND, and Arte. They bring also enough info about Australia and the whole world, even about West-Papua.
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Dale Schaan
2:59 am
Jan 13, 2012
By ignoring all requests to comment, Van Heusden exposes herself as a racist bigot, who when given the chance to back up her biased statement, ” that having children is a demand and a discussion about that demand is not possible” shows she is not interested in an open discussion but is happy to remain a racist hypocrite!!!
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Emil Friedman
3:43 am
Jan 13, 2012
I read the original quickly in machine translation to English so I may have missed something, but it came across to me as high (though unintended) praise of the Israeli medical system. We see a woman who prefers to give her child sloppy prenatal care being coerced into giving her child the best prenatal care that technology can offer. Her child is her responsibility, not her property.
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Naomi B.
5:44 am
Jan 13, 2012
………….”we saw that one of his toes was too small. His personal revenge on the Israeli health system.”
Seems to me that this mother would have been happier giving birth to an unhealthy child!
How odd when someone actually complains about a brilliant health system, where every care is taken that both mother and child are healthy!
I think Van Heusen has some deep psychological issues and resentments that have nothing to do with the subject at hand and venting with some meaningless “blah,blah,blah” is her way of dealing with it. How sad!
I am curious to know what the grown up baby will thinks when he reads the garbage she wrote to “celebrate” his small toe!
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lovezion
7:08 am
Jan 13, 2012
Poison like this coming out from the pen of a stupid jerk that probably needed a subject for puking out her vomits, it is that the following is more urgent than ever:
YOUNG/HEALTHY/STRONG JEWS AND SYMPATHIZERS OF THE WORLD: STOP WHINING OR CRITICIZING ISRAEL – NO GOVERNMENT WILL HELPS US. NO ANTISEMITES EVER CHANGE. LEAVE YOUR ROTTEN COUNTRIES AND GO TO ISRAEL TO STAY AND PROCREATE IN ABUNDANCE, NONSTOP. GO FIGHT FIERCELY AS NEVER BEFORE. EMPOWER ISRAEL TO REGAIN ITS RIGHTFULLY-WON TERRITORIES AND CONQUER MORE! ISRAEL NEEDS NOT ONLY TO EXIST BUT TO PREVAIL IN FULL FORCE, INCREASING POWER CONTINUALLY TO ASSURE NOT BEING ATTACKED BY ANY COUNTRY, EVER!!! ISRAEL NEEDS YOU AND YOU NEED ISRAEL AND IT’S ONLY FAIR THAT YOU, YOUNG AND HEALTHY YIDS, GO AND HELP IT NOW! HOW ELSE DID AMERICA BECOME GREAT?
THOSE THINKING WE CAN CHANGE EVIL… ARE NAIVE AT BEST (I CALL THEM DANGEROUS (USEFUL?) IDIOTS!!!)
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Victor
8:01 am
Jan 13, 2012
Did the bitch pay for excellent services received from Israel’s system if not, why not ? Send her an invoice for the full costs. If she doesn’t pay sue her……
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DUTCH DAILY DOES THE DIRTY ON DA JOOOOS……. |
10:22 am
Jan 13, 2012
[...] the full scoop at Honest Reporting, the Dutch paper makes hash of Israeli prenatal care, in its desire to make it sound as if Israel [...]
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betty
2:10 pm
Jan 13, 2012
why o why did she ever go to israel in the first place when her heart and mind is full of hatered and antisemites.will any country or nation lift their little finger to help a tiny nation like israel and mind there is NO nation that is not in AWE OF THE THIS TINY NATION just ask the neighbours the mighty rich arabs these arabs just try and the dirty tricks but JESUS THE MIGHTY GOD KINGS OF KINGS THE RULER OF THIS WORLD THE MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH IS WITH THAT TINY NATION ,So dont let these people who are against GOD chosen people worry you. BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD THESE EGYPTIANS WHOM YOU SEEN TODAY WILL YOU SEE NO MORE.
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Anna
9:49 pm
Jan 13, 2012
I think I will emigrate to Israel ! Shame I am not Jewish . Oh my, doctors that care about you & your baby?
Well unthinkable here in NL of course, where you are lucky to come out of a hospital alive (I almost didn’t just a few years ago!) Also unfortunately, I had my eldest here, horrible. No pain killers, no nice nurses ( well, one- a student) and the other 2 children born when we were in the UK. BLISS. Care, love, concern. I burst into tears and they were worried something was wrong “No, I cried,you are all so nice to me” WIsh we had never had to return !( Hoping to leave when we can afford to )
‘Nuff said about Netherlands. Wonder if “Trouw” will publish my damming story about health-care here in The Netherlands.? That woman should be on her knees thanking Israel and God her son was born healthy, as most normal people do ! if they can’t find anything negative to publish about Israel then why not criticise the positive. ? Just goes to show how pitifully desperate they are .Crazy, mean-spirited and plain ignorant. Shame on “Trouw” (means “faithful” or “loyal” in English- does that not crack you up ?) not designating this rubbish to the trash can . I hope Israel never lets this woman back in. let her have her next baby in NL , that’ll teach her !
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Jerry Meents
10:09 pm
Jan 13, 2012
Ilse Van Heusden is een anti-semite of heeft een geestelijk probleem met Israelie’s
Allebei heel gevaarlijk.
Wat is haar probleem voor kinderbijslag in Israel? Nederland geeft kinderbijslag voor heel wat
meer jaaren dan Israel, en de kinderbijslag in Nederland is veel hooger dan in Israel is dat om
meer kinderen te produceren in Nederland?
Maar waarom is het ok voor Nederland maar niet voor Israel?
I have seen baby’s been born in Israel zonder al dat BS Ilse is reporting.
Hoe kont het dat de babies hebben een hogeren kans te blijven leven, dan zelfs in Nederland?
Zou het mogerlijk zijn dat de kliendere teen van Ilse’s baby kwam van een defect van haar of the man die haar zwanger maakte?
Door Ilse en zo veele anderen Nederlanders, die net als Ilse zijn heb ik 54 jaar geleeden
Nederland verlaaten.
En dat Trouw dit smerige artikle heeft geplaast laar zien dat zij niet veel beter zijn dan Ilse.
Sorry voor mijn Nederlands.
Jerry Meents.
jmeents3729@msn.com
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Bernard Geron
3:33 pm
Jan 14, 2012
Oh Indeed, Van Heusden is absolutely right – AT TIMES. Israel’s life saving efforts are planned – and executed – with military precission. We saw that two years ago when a devastating earthquake shook Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Within 48 hours the IDF airlifted to that remote spot, and set out to operate it, a military hospital in barely 48 hours. It came equipped with X-ray equipment and – I suppose, those detested US-machines as well, and started saving lives. Mind you, it personnel came prepared to to save new-borns as well and women in labour: From past experience it knew that a high proportion of women go prematurely into labour as a result of the stress that comes with a mass traumatic experience. The Israeli doctors and medical personnel had brought along elementary equipment to offer shelter for exactly the most vulnarable victims of the quake. the foetusses and their mothers. Thank you, ms. Van Heusden to point that out to the readers of Trouw!
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david coddington
12:08 pm
Jan 15, 2012
I can sum up this article in 2 words: “Ungrateful Bitch!”
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Nili
5:27 pm
Jan 15, 2012
And people wonder why we do not like to give citizenship to non-Jews! Not only do they come to our country and use deception to try and convert the most vulnerable of our society, they turn out hateful reports like this. I would suggest that she go to a Muslim country and have a baby. If she survives~it would be interesting to hear her adoring praises…
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Wilko van der Veen
9:40 pm
Jan 15, 2012
I am a Dutch citizen and I like Israel!
The newspaper used to be a Christian newspaper, only they lost the bible or something because they are moving in to a humanistic view of the world. I am amshamed that our citizen are making such low quality and anti-israel articles.
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Leonie Lachmish
11:56 pm
Jan 15, 2012
I sent this to the editor:
Dear Ed,
I was shocked to learn of the article in your daily, that even turned Israel’s
magnificent and evidently enviable pre-natal care system into a reason to knock Israel!
As a lecturer at an Israeli college with many Jewish and Arab students, I would like to inform you that my female students, both Jews and Arabs, enjoy the knowledge that their babies have as high a chance as possible to be born healthy and that both Jews and Arabs (as indeed your reporter who I understand is neither Jew or Arab) have an equal opportunity to save their baby later in pregnancy if any danger signs are detected. I imagine your reporter does not consider Arab Muslims or Christians to be counted as part of the “Chosen People”, yet in the State of Israel, they are equal and receive the same medical treatment from A to Z.
How is your newspaper going to come to terms with that? By ignoring the information at best, I suppose ,or perhaps you’ll find a way of presenting it as another Jewish plot of some sort
I’d like to express my personal regret at the expertise and responsible care your reporter received that so affronted her sensibilities. I suppose that our doctors and nurses arrogantly assumed she also wanted as healthy a baby as possible, just like our Jewish, Moslem, Druze and Christian Israeli citizens
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B. van de Cremer
8:53 pm
Jan 16, 2012
Leonie: You hit the nail exactly ! But if you sent this reaction to the general e-mail adres redactietrouw.nl, it may not be answered, as they have special e-mail adresses for every section.
So, I sent an email of the whole article above inclusive the reactions, and especially mentioning yours, to: gezondheid@trouw.nl (health) , buitenland@trouw.nl (foreign countries), religiefilosofie@trouw.nl and podium@trouw.nl , hoping they will all start to talk to each other like : “Did you read, we at TROUW are associated with a smear-article, clearly blackmailing Israel”. And this, a few days before the 20th of january, the day at which 70 years ago the Wannsee Konferenz in Nazi-Berlin took place.
By the way, at the website http://www.israel21c.org one can find other information about Israel, not only politics, also about medical affairs.
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Therese Kimber
4:37 pm
Jan 16, 2012
I am dismayed at the antisemitic attitude of this writer. However, it puts me in mind that mankind in general sort of leaves God out of the equation and leaves nothing up to Him in an effort to pre-empt every possible negative situation. In doing so we put ourselves in a kind of prison sometimes, it seems to me. The solution to one problem is always the beginning of another when it comes to the human race, and this is one reason in spite of all our ingenuity, we still need the One who, after all, created us. But having said that, after being blessed with three healthy children, whom I love dearly, I was always grateful for good prenatal care and post-natal care!
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Gábor Fränkl
1:06 am
Jan 18, 2012
Clearly, the woman is a base, malicious abject neo-Nazi, just like her Satanic “Der Stürmer” Christian paper in Holland. Our motto: NEVER AGAIN! I say: let these digsuting Hitlerian Nazis go to Hell and persih.
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ErwinS
12:38 pm
Jan 18, 2012
In the Netherlands the full mass media is anti jewish except maybe 1 news paper and they always depict muslims etc etc as victims … its insane and loads and loads of people here hate it … WE HATE IT. There is no journalism to be found overhere in this sad country, only 1 sided continual bashing no matter the type of gov. THis is the result of years and years of lefties that have foced all the problems we deal with upon us and also that is nowhere to be found in the mass media. I just hope the whole of the sad EU enslaved states people will wake up and that the people will take their countries back.
another sad story bout the pathetic state my once great country is in
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