A month after a fake story about a Gazan child suffering from cancer died alone in a Jerusalem hospital was debunked, the smear is enjoying a new lease of life. Taking to The Independent, member of the British Labour party Dr. Rosena Allin-Khan MP has now made a similarly unfounded claim about Gazan babies dying alone in Israel.
In her op-ed, Dr. Allin-Khan alleges that doctors told a Gazan mother over the phone that two of her prematurely-born babies died “as [she] had to return to Gaza days after giving birth”. Allin-Khan further claims that this arose as a result of Israel not granting her a permit to exit Gaza for the Jerusalem hospital where the mother had given birth.
However, according to multiple news sources, the mother was with the boys when they died. Rather than being far away in Gaza, the reports clearly indicated that the mother was actually with her children in Israel until their final moments, and only then returned to Gaza in order to bury them.
Allin-Khan’s op-ed, published on June 8, was pre-dated by a string of tweets on May 31 in which she wrote, “two of the babies died in hospital – their parents were told over the phone.” Within hours, multiple Twitter users responded with comments and links showing that Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit stridently refuted the story.
Another user, Mark Humphrys, linked to and quoted a Jerusalem Post article about a similar story, noting that the policy of the relevant Israeli authority “requires parents to escort their minor children for medical treatments.”
Is this story actually true? Serious question. "CLA [Coordination and Liaison Administration] Gaza policy requires parents to escort their minor children for medical treatments" Maybe @cogatonline could reply. https://t.co/x5fpYnIx7a
— Mark Humphrys (@markhumphrys) June 1, 2019
Despite receiving this information, Allin-Khan refused to consider the possibility that the narrative shown to her was partial or false. Faced with a mass of contradictory evidence from reputable and authoritative news source, she nevertheless submitted her op-ed to The Independent.
According to numerous sources, Israel’s policy is for sick Palestinian children to always be accompanied by a parent. When that’s not possible, Israel requires children to be chaperoned by another family member. Indeed, a report in Hebrew published on Israel’s Channel 13 website on May 31 said that:
The hospital repeatedly asked the Palestinian Authority to request a permit from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories for Shahd’s mother or father to come back to Israel and reunite with their daughter. ‘We tried over and over, but they refused.’
Israeli media also reported that one permit request was made, but was faulty and therefore denied. Despite the refusal of the Palestinian Authority to apply for a permit for the mother to re-enter Israel, she was issued a special permit by COGAT after the intervention of Channel 13. None of this was mentioned by Allin-Khan.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, it has been alleged that Allin-Khan’s visit to the region was sponsored by Medical Aid for Palestinians, an outspoken anti-Israel organization. This, however, was not mentioned anywhere in the piece.
1/5
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan @DrRosena, a Labour MP for Tooting, was sponsored by Medical Aid for Palestinians; an anti-Israel org with links to terrorism, to bash Israel.https://t.co/LcLPvUgl79https://t.co/PGs8Xf8filhttps://t.co/GOGkRgHERJ— Sami Saviv סמי סביב #Protected (@_samisaviv) June 1, 2019
Criticisms aimed at Israel exclusively, entirely miss the fact that questions must be asked of Hamas (and the Palestinian Authority, to a lesser degree) which directly governs the Gaza Strip.
Similarly, the fact that Gazans with medical permits have been caught providing information for terror attacks and smuggling explosives into Israel underscores the need for vetting. In one case, two sisters from Gaza smuggled explosives disguised inside medicine containers into Israel as they were headed for cancer treatment at a Jerusalem hospital. In another, a Gazan woman with a travel permit to accompany her sister, a cancer patient who received medical treatment in Israel, exploited the opportunity to pass on a phone and instructions to a Palestinian from the West Bank. The recipient then used the phone and instructions to start preparing bombs.
Also missing from this @Independent op-ed is the fact that Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which has at times totally sealed off that frontier. The Rafah Egypt-Gaza crossing is described by the World Health Organization as 'highly unreliable'.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 10, 2019
Then there’s the Gazan internal aspect. Allin-Khan might want to blame Israel, but a fair examination of the circumstances yields tough questions for Hamas, its regard for international law, and its commitment to the human rights of the very people it purports to represent.
That Hamas regularly diverts international aid money to its own leaders over-inflated bank accounts is undisputed. Instead of investing in homes, schools and medical clinics, Hamas has taken away desperately needed funds and poured them into terror infrastructure, wasting countless millions of assault and kidnap tunnels built dug deep into Israeli territory. Hamas has also taken over Gaza’s medical services, with the Washington Post describing Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital in 2014 as the “de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”
The article also fails to mention that the Palestinian Authority recently declared its refusal to pay for medical expenses in Israeli hospitals. The move came in protest over Israel deducting the amount of money the PA pays in salaries to imprisoned terrorists and families of “martyrs” and withholding the equivalent sums from tax money Israel collects on behalf of the PA. As a result, hundreds of Palestinian medical patients are currently left in the lurch regarding their treatment.
With the reality for Palestinians in Israeli hospitals so complicated by regional geopolitics, Palestinian terrorism, and Israel’s attempts to secure its borders, there’s plenty of room to discuss the situation in a nuanced way. Unfortunately, in spreading a demonstrably false story, the British politician’s op-ed only serves to create more friction rather than helping the Palestinians she professes to want to help.
