Sick, Poor Suffer Most in Israeli Shelters

[DoYouEverWonder]

August 8, 2006

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel -- Shimon Almakayiss, a 25-year-old cerebral palsy patient, is curled in a ball, his feet twitching as he sucks his thumb and rests his head on his mother's lap. After four weeks in bomb shelters, his medication has run out, and his mother is in despair.

"When I call the welfare services no one answers," said Rivka Almakayiss. "It has become intolerable." Shimon groans and waves his hands when his mother asks how he's doing.

Even the strongest willed Israelis are starting to lose patience after their prolonged underground existence in cramped, smoky shelters protecting them from the relentless barrage of rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

In this town, where some 700 rockets have fallen since fighting erupted July 12, those who haven't fled to safety elsewhere in Israel are mostly the poor, the sick and the elderly.

A week ago, residents could risk brief excursions for showers and meals. But recently the number of rockets fired daily has doubled, police say. In the past four days alone, 215 rockets have rained down on the city. Sirens wailed at least a dozen times in a two-hour stretch Monday morning.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-mideast-fighting-stir-crazy,0,1614677.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Zhade]

1. That sucks, just like Israel not letting the UN repair bridges...

... in Lebanon to allow in relief sucks.

I want this killing to stop. Please?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. The people who fight and support war

usually don't think about the suffering and consequences even for their own people.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. Or for those they consider the "villians." n/t

[ERF]

6. Don't the sick and poor, by definition, always suffer the most?

The premise of the story seems a bit obvious. The reporter wouldn't have had to leave the Tel Aviv Hilton to write this one.

[Bridget Burke]

7. So--should we ignore them?

Apparently the reporter DID leave the Tel Aviv Hilton.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. So this story shouldn't be told?

I think it's a little more relevant and important then whether or not Mel Gibson is really sorry.

[mom cat]

9. This ia another good reason for an immediate ceasefire!

The human suffering on both sides is intolerable, as is the human suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan. These US wars of aggression to remake the middle east must all stop.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. That's if they're lucky enough to have shelters

Many residents of Wadi Nisnas, one of the best-known Arab neighborhoods in a city often celebrated as a model of peaceful Jewish-Arab coexistence, expressed frustration Monday that the Israeli municipality had not built any shelters here or found other solutions for the residents.

Some say that is a symbol of the persistent disadvantages faced by the nearly 20 percent of Israel's citizens who are Arab.

"It's not only that there are no shelters in this neighborhood, but that there is a system of discrimination in all kinds of services," says Jafar Farah, the director of the Mossawa Center, a local Arab rights organization. "We were asking them since the second day of the war open something and they have refused."

An Israeli government spokeswoman says that the lack of shelters in Wadi Nisnas has nothing to do with the fact that it's an Arab neighborhood, and everything to do with the fact that Israel stopped building public bomb shelters in the early 1990s.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0808/p01s01-wome.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Apparently the Israeli leadership

is not much better then the leadership here. Neither government gives a damn for their own people anymore. How can anyone expect them to give a damn for anyone else?