Jennifer Hanin . com

The Jerusalem Post just char­ac­ter­ized Israel’s prompt response to Haiti’s earth­quake vic­tims as the Israel’s “pub­lic rela­tions knight in shin­ing armor.” That couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth. Israelis and non-Israeli Jews have a long his­tory of help­ing those in need. One of the beliefs rab­bis teach young Jews and new Jews alike is tikkun olam, which means repair­ing the world. Another belief is tzedakah, which means char­ity. And a third and equally impor­tant belief is social jus­tice. Unlike edu­ca­tion in most Arab coun­tries that focuses on hatred towards Jews and the West (Amer­i­cans), the val­ues Jews embrace are about giv­ing, mak­ing life bet­ter and equal­ity to all. To com­part­men­tal­ize Israel’s response as a PR move is ter­ri­bly mis­guided and dis­counts what the Jew­ish state stands for.

Let’s look at the facts. Israel sent more than 250 Israeli doc­tors, med­ical offi­cers, nurses, para­medics, medics, lab and x-ray tech­ni­cians and admin­is­tra­tors soon after news out­lets reported the exten­sive dam­age. The team arrived via an El Al Boe­ing 777 com­plete with a 90-bed field hos­pi­tal that included a full sur­gi­cal unit and the capa­bil­ity of treat­ing 100 patients at a time. Within two days of arriv­ing, the country’s del­e­ga­tion installed a field hos­pi­tal, admin­is­tered emer­gency care from the Port-au-Prince sta­dium and res­cued more than a dozen liv­ing sur­vivors beneath col­lapsed build­ings. But there’s more. Israeli doc­tors with IsraAID-F.I.R.S.T (the Israel Forum for Inter­na­tional Aid) deliv­ered a healthy baby boy in an IDF field hos­pi­tal. The baby’s mother, Gubi­lande Jean Michel, was so thrilled she named her son Israel in honor of the nation who helped her achieve this blessing.

This doesn’t sound like a PR cam­paign to me. And I should know. I have an MA in Pub­lic Rela­tions. What it sounds like is a coun­try that always gets the raw end of the deal no mat­ter what noble acts it serves. While it’s great to see so many coun­tries come together to aid Haiti, the ones who are notice­ably absent are the 22 Arab League nations.

Bash­ing Israel for sav­ing Haitians is a low blow. The world should be hail­ing the efforts by a tiny non-oil pro­duc­ing coun­try that is 640 times smaller than its 22 Arab oil-producing neigh­bors. Yes, the world has spent the last year con­demn­ing Israel on human rights abuses over the Gaza war and the Gold­stone Report. But it has con­ve­niently turned a blind eye on the seven Arab nations that invaded Israel in 1948 and caused the refugee prob­lem, which now is esti­mated at over 4 mil­lion. The world also looked the other way when it came to human rights abuses made by Israel’s Arab neigh­bors such as Saudi Ara­bia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.

I have a mes­sage for any­one talk­ing smack about Israel. Review the his­tory before you launch ver­bal grenades. “Pales­tini­ans” are Arabs that only began using the term when the Pales­tin­ian Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO) came into power in 1964. The PLO has had numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to build a future for the fast grow­ing refugee pop­u­la­tion but repeat­edly chose to leave them in poverty with­out edu­ca­tion, elec­tric­ity and oppor­tu­ni­ties with only one goal in mind: the destruc­tion of Israel. So it started it’s pro­pa­ganda cam­paign, even gain­ing money from gullible West­ern­ers. Neigh­bor­ing Arab coun­tries have used the refugees as polit­i­cal pawns, refus­ing to help the same fam­i­lies they rejected so many years ago. Those that con­demn Israel’s right to pro­tect itself and its cit­i­zens need to reserve judg­ment and exert energy towards coun­tries that have his­tor­i­cally shown dis­re­gard toward human life. And guess what? They are the same coun­tries that are notice­ably absent in aid­ing Haiti.

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