Israel's Sea Turtle Rescue Center

Here's a bit of positive news about Israel you won't find on your local news stations (outside of Israel), on the efforts of Israeli Biologist/Zoologists and environmentalists in attempting to save and bolster sea turtle populations in the Mediterranean Sea.

It's Sea Turtle nesting season here in Israel, where every morning staff and volunteers from the rescue center scout the beaches for newly laid eggs from the previous night to collect them into protected nesting areas.

Here's a clip about the wonderful work this center does in English:

Israel's Secret 18 Month Air Lift of Food and Medicine to Biafra 40 years ago

This past week, channel 2 news here in Israel unveiled this amazing story from 40 years ago.

While the world stood silent, 40 years ago Israeli pilots and air-crews conducted a secret air-lift of food and medicine to the besieged Biafran nation. For 18 months in face of great risk and peril of being shot down by Nigerian Migs under the cover of night they flew red-cross propeller cargo plains into Biafra to bring life saving supplies. Now 40 years later, the pilots and crew meet at a reunion to retell their story.

The full reports from local channel 2 news, in Hebrew only can be found here: http://www.mako.co.il/news-channel2/Channel-2-Newscast/Article-5fd65dc2acec721004.htm

Elizabeth Cohen CNN: Wowed by Israeli Field Hospital in Haiti

Sky News Covers Israeli Rescue Team in Haiti

Story of Israeli rescue team that toils for 8 hours, cutting through metal and concrete in order to save 1 man under the rubbles, followed by the birth of 1 Haitian baby in the Israeli field-hospital. The first and only international hospital operating in Haiti during the 1st week of the international recuse efforts.

Two Iraqi children treated in Israel for open heart surgery

Back in October, two Iraqi children were successfully treated in Israel for emergency open heart surgery, as part of an Israeli initiative to treat children from around the world who would otherwise not have access to such operations.

The 5-month-old girl and 11-year-old boy were selected from among 40 other Iraqi children during a one-day cardiology clinic held in Jordan earlier this week by the Israeli-based organization Save A Child's Heart(SACH).View an online image gallery of this news item

SACH has performed heart surgery on 35 Iraqi children and over 1700 children from 28 other countries since its inception in 1996. Nearly half of the children treated are Palestinians or residents of other Arab countries.

The children are treated at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and are housed at the SACH Children's Home in Azur for the duration of their treatment.

Save A Child's Heart is an Israeli based, humanitarian organization and is one of the largest undertakings in the world providing urgently needed pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care for children from third world and developing countries.

All children, regardless of race, religion, sex, color, or financial consideration receive the best possible care that modern medicine has to offer. The entire surgical, intensive care, and nursing staff substantially volunteer their services and donate their time!

Editorial Comment
Israel makes up 0.1% of the world's population, it has no oil resources, and has been in an existential struggle for survival since its inception, threatened repeatedly by much larger surrounding Arab countries. And yet this humanitarian program, is one of the largest of its kind, with no comparable Arab program out there(despite hundreds of billions of dollars from oil revenue), and certainly no similar humanitarian program in the business of also saving Jewish children's hearts. Sadly, the approach in the Arab world is practically the opposite. Instead of humanitarian acts, demonization and indoctrinated hatred of Israel and Jews is too often common place across too much of the Arab world, where despot regimes and dysfunctional societies (see Yemen for example with 70% illiteracy amongst women), deflect the anger of their deprived masses by using Israel and the Jews as their scapegoat.

Short video clip of story:

Israeli satellite company employed in tracking human rights crisis in Darfur

The Israeli commercial satellite company ImageSat, is being employed by Amnesty International in order to track the worst human rights abuse crisis of this century in Darfur. ImageSat along with a few other international commercial satellite companies are providing many sizable discounts and donations of satellite imagery in order to help locate refugee camps and provide an indelible record of the unimaginable magnitude of this human rights abuse crisis.

These images along with explanations can be found on the site:
EYES ON DARFUR

Sudanese Mother and Child Reunion

A story of Israelis who held no bars to reunite Sudanese refugees with their child who got stuck on the other side of the border when they smuggled across the Israeli--Egyptian border.

The refugees retell how Egyptian border patrol used live ammunition with shoot-to-kill intent on the unarmed refugees as they attempted to flee from Egypt into Israel.



Editorial Commentary
Imagine how left-liberals in the west (Israel included) would have reacted if it were Israelis doing the shooting. But they (i.e. left-liberals), together with the UN and the rest of a so called enlightened-world is for the most part silent to Egypt’s dictatorship, brutality and litany of human rights abuses.

Even though the status of these refugees in Israel remains unclear, the story of Israelis providing shelter for African Moslems, fleeing Arab atrocities, for the most part goes untold and unnoticed.

And in a related item from Ha'aretz:
Sudanese refugees find home with Jerusalem family
By Amiram Barkat
20/07/2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/884086.html

The Gal family of Jerusalem has been hosting a family of refugees from Darfur for the past week...The Sudanese, two parents and four children, have settled into the two bedrooms of the Gals' children. Amir, the son, is in summer camp and Lior has moved to her parents' bedroom.

The apartment was filled with the smell of the Egyptian broad beans the guests were cooking in the kitchen yesterday.

Helen Gal says the two families had started sharing their meals and tasting each other's cooking. "They asked me why we don't like spicy food," she says.

...

Helen admits she had fears before the guests arrived. She even advised her daughters what to do if any inappropriate action was taken against them. "I heard they had a boy of 15 and it made me nervous," she explains. But the fears soon dissipated. The guests turned out to be quiet, polite and pleasant people. The 15-year-old boy turned out to be a girl, Amal, who made friends with the Gal's elder daughter Mia, who is a few months older.

Amal was surprised to learn that Mia is still going to school and asked if she could go too if she stayed in Israel. Mia was surprised to discover what had caused the small scar on Amal's forehead. "She told me she had been shot in the head. I asked her how she survived and she said she was in the hospital for months," Mia says.

Abdullah says Amal was shot in 2002 during an attack by the Janjaweed militias on their village. He says the militias set fire to the village and his old father, who could not run away, was burned to death. Abdullah journeyed with the injured Amal to a hospital in Khartoum and stayed with her until she recovered. But then he was warned not to return home and fled with his daughter to Egypt. The rest of the family joined them a year later.

They waited with tens of thousands of other Sudanese refugees in Cairo for an immigration visa to a Western country. Life became quite comfortable once Abdullah, who speaks fluent English, found work in a computer store. But things changed drastically in December 2005 after a demonstration the refugees held outside the offices of the UN's refugee commission.

The Egyptian security forces dispersed the protest violently, killing some 30 refugees in the process, according to Amnesty International. Abdullah said that life in Cairo became intolerable. "There was a terrible fear, at any moment the police could come and put you in jail," he said.

About a month ago Abdullah contacted Bedouin smugglers who agreed to take the family to Israel for $700. Beyond the border they were caught by troops of the Israel Defense Forces who gave them water and blankets. After a short stay in a military camp they were sent to a hotel in Be'er Sheva, and from there arrived at the Wohl Rose Garden in Jerusalem.

The Gal family's full name has been withheld at the family's request. David and Abdullah are fictitious names, used on the instruction of the UN's refugee agency.

For more information, see the Web site of the Israeli Coalition for Darfur and Sudan
Refugees, www.israel-for-darfur.org