Anti-Israel Bias Infects Medical Journals
As all doctors know, untreated gangrene in a single limb can spread quickly through the body and lead to death. The most effective way to halt the progress of gangrene is to cut off the corrupting limb, a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.
As with bodies, so with scientific credibility.
As Phyllis Chesler informed us in these pages on January 24, Lancet, once an impeccable source for authoritative medical research, has in recent years become more and more “Palestinianized.” In the just-published article she cites, “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study,” Palestinian husbands were found to be more violent towards their wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation” — “and … the violence increases significantly when the husbands are ‘directly’ as opposed to ‘indirectly’ exposed to political violence.”
Very clever. Being a Palestinian means you get to beat your wife without having to say you’re sorry, because, hey, it’s too bad about all those bruises, but the Israelis made me do it! That the statistics were gathered and the study was funded by the Palestinian Authority should have been a clue to its lack of objectivity. This is propaganda, not research.
It isn’t only Lancet, though. Editorial views in the prestigious British Medical Journal and the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians (recently renamed Clinical Medicine) have revealed a similar pattern of anti-Israel bias.
In the February 2009 issue of Commentary (requires a login), an official organ of the Royal College of Physicians of London, for example, an inflammatory “special” article erroneously claims, amongst other falsehoods, that Palestinian physicians were prevented from traveling abroad for training and conferences. This was especially galling to Israeli medical professionals because, as Hebrew University Professor Oded Abramsky wrote in an open letter to the Royal College of Physicians: “The level of cooperation between Israeli and Gazan hospitals and medical personnel and the cross-border treatment of the ill and wounded is without question greater than between any two other entities in the world who are nominally (and sometimes actively) at war. Therefore, please keep medicine and politics separate, for the good of all, as we try to do in Israel.” An apology by the journal was later (grudgingly) issued.
To prove that bias amongst British medical research elites is systemic rather than random, a group of Israeli medical academics, led by Prof. Yehuda Shoenfeld, editor-in-chief of the Israeli Medical Association Journal, assessed coverage of conflict-related deaths around the world.
Their study analyzed citations in the British Medical Journal, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association, finding that: for Europeans killing Europeans (Bosnia), there was one citation for every 2,000 deaths; for Africans killing Africans (Rwanda), one citation for every 4,000 deaths; for Arabs killing black Africans (Darfur), one citation for every 7,000 deaths; for Arab Muslims killing Kurds, no citation whatsoever; yet, for Israelis killing Palestinians, one citation for every 13 deaths.
Considering that a high percentage of the world’s medical innovations and research is coming out of Israel, one could speculate that jealousy is operant. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that good old-fashion anti-Semitism is at play.
“Why don’t Lancet and the others choose to write the good medical news about Israel? They could start with Israel’s stellar performance following the recent earthquake in Haiti, where by all accounts the Israeli field hospital and human and material resources rose head and shoulders over every other country’s.”
I’ll tell you why. Those infected with anti-Jewish everything are unable to accept that Jews have been the unwitting recipients of centuries of genocide practiced against them so that what remains is a culture that values quick-wittedness, innovation, high levels of organizations, and dare I say? superior intelligence ( cited by Charles Murray). It’s nothing more than jealousy coupled with self-hatred. The theme is, “If I/we aren’t, then it must be somebody else’s fault?” And who better than Jews to blame as they are examples of survival in a world of the Darwinian postulation that the best of the best survive?
Best advice: get yourself out of the UK if you can possibly afford the move. The UK, sadly, is going to Hell in a handbasket-try to escape going down in flames along with it.
Oh, by the way, that is actually the old alibi of “the devil made me do it”-the Little Satan and Greater Satan. So scientific,no ?
These publications produce what they think their readers want to see. It says a great deal about how they collectively see their readership that they produce this king of false and biased reporting.
They need to hear from their readership that this is not what they want to see. That’s the only way they will ever change their bad habits.
Palestinian husbands were found to be more violent towards their wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”
Eh, does that also apply to husbands in occupied Tibet? Because the Chinese are a lot rougher than the Israelis.
Lete’s not forget the Lancet’s publication of the shameless Soros-funded Johns Hopkins ‘study’ which alleged that US forces had killed over 600,000 Iraqi civilians. This number, often extrapolated to a million and beyond, is parroted by Leftoids and Islamists as “fact” to this day.
(Actual figure: 80-90,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, 90% of them at the hands of the insurgency)
The British Medical Journal and Lancet have for years published non-factual articles attacking Israel, using the Palestinians as their weapon of choice. At what point do doctors who read these journals (assuming they still do) start to doubt the credibility of any article they publish?
Also unrecognized is that Israel built or helped build most of the major medical facilities in both Gaza and the West Bank during the first decades of the now derided “occupation” (1967-1987). They built electricity, water and sewage lines as well – all neglected while those areas were under Egyptian and Jordanian control. Both Gaza and the WB also experienced rapid economic growth, and people moved freely between the territories and Israel itself. No checkpoints, no fence.
Then they decided to restart their war against the Jews. And everything went to hell. The present demonization should be seen in the context of the ongoing BDS strategy: boycott, disinvestment, and sanction.
There is more! The Canadian Medical Association Journal published in its March 17th issue two stories from Gaza very obviously biased against Israel. One contains the stunning statement “Gaza has the highest prevalence of traumatized children in the world,” which will, from now on, be prefaced by “According to the CMAJ”.
For your information, the CMAJ does not sell subscriptions. Instead, it is paid in large part by a mandatory fee taken yearly from all Canadian doctors.
Here are the two articles:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/180/6/610?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&title=gaza&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=30&sortspec=date&resourcetype=HWCIT,HWELTR
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/180/6/608?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&title=gaza&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=30&sortspec=date&resourcetype=HWCIT,HWELTR
BBC just reported tonight that the number of Anti-semitic (anti-Jewish) incidents recorded by the UK anti-defamation league was 900 for last year–the highest number in > 20 yrs.
I might mention that the British articles are also confounded by a causality direction issue–people who are violent both get involved in altercations with police AND beat their wives. It is very easy to find literature support that being an A-hole is associated with bad lifestyle choices impacting health. (yeah, bigotry is going to lead to bad science……)
stange how anti semitism has become the fashion for liberals.
There is a popular belief that not liking jews correlates with not liking blacks. But I now believe that a non black person can like blacks and hate jews at the same time.
I don’t get the position of liberal jewish people. It seems suicidal.
Anyone experienced with the arab muslim populations of the middle east will see the same cultural failure and dysfunction whether it’s the Palestinian, Libyan, Saudi, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc……
Why are arab muslim countries who are no where near Israel suffer the same chronic cultural dysfunction as the Palestinians. It can be argued that the Palestinians suffer the same dysfunction as all their arab muslim brothers and sisters except for one fact, the Palis are somewhat literate compared to the illiteracy rates of 50-90% in all muslim arab countries.
P.S.
The Palestinians can thank the charity of the west and UNRWA for their reading lessons.
To date the published scientific studies merely suggest that the Occupation is the cause of both trauma in Palestinian children and wife-beating among Palestinian adults.
I hesitate to accuse the Lancet and like medical publications of pro-Zionist bias but it seems to me they are ignoring the far greater threat to the health of the Palestinian people posed by the Occupation which is in the area of hygiene.
It is a scientific fact that since the Occupation Palestinians do not to pick up their garbage. Men, women and children alike, Palestinians under the Occupation live in filth. The Palestinian government has a large payroll but little of it goes toward trash collection. The Palestinian government has many pickup trucks to carry security personnel but none to carry garbage. Altogether, it is an ongoing private and public health disaster. The tiny Palestinian medical community is continuously overwhelmed by hygiene related sickness.
And all because the Occupation is causing Palestinians to ignore personal and public cleanliness. I look forward to the day that the Lancet or some more daring medical publication in Britain or Canada dares to report this Zionist crime.
Palestinian wife beating has less to do with exposure to political violence and more to do with devoutness of their religion
To blame is to feel superior. “I have identified the enemy and they are not me”. The rot begins at the top. The top Of Lancet and the top of the USA/Obama sickness. The proper treatment is removal. The beginning of the proceedure is to cut off the blood and money supply. If you read it – you feed it. If you fund it -you strengthen it. Your choice. The world cultures are in a race to the top of the “victim” heap as an effective method of extracting attention and money.Palestine is now joined by Obama. Stop subjecting yourself to the Lancet and acquire superior insights from Gary Larson’s Far Side.
Why is anyone surprised? Was there ever anything good for Israel out of Britain? They cut a major portion of the Mandate from the league of Nation and created a kingdom for a Saudi prince and called it Trans-Jordan. They hanged Dov Gruner by lifting him from the stretcher he was on, a broken body. Then The Arab Legion tried to cut Israel in two at it’s birth and only succeeded to cut Jerusalem in two and gave Israel a slim waist hard to defend. Britain has a love affair with Arabs ever since Lawrence “of Arabia.”
The BMJ writing anything about Israel can be expected to be just plain British garbage as usual. Expect nothing good out of Britain.
David Levavi’s contention that personal hygiene or trash collection by the Arab civil authority is a Zionist crime displays an ignorance of the situation at best.
It’s illogical to suggest that an “occupation” is the cause of the Palestinian Authority’s fraudulent misapplication of humanitarian aid funds for their war against Israel. Since the mid 90s Palestinian Arabs have had civil governance over nearly 100% of the Arabs in the area popularly known as the West Bank. Israel turned over the hospitals, utilities, municipal services, colleges, etc., it developed to the Palestinian Authority. At that time living standards, public health and safety had been dramatically improved compared to conditions during the 1948-1967 Jordanian occupation of former Ottoman Empire territory.
The PA, the entity whose creation was formed after Israel agreed to a five year transition period before gaining sovereignty in exchange for an agreement to end incitement and a commitment to dismantle terrorist organizations, is responsible for administration of civil affairs, including public health. Billions in humanitarian and development aid poured into their coffers. Where is it? After thousands of Israeli civilians were killed and injured by Palestinian Arab terrorism the Israeli army returned and life saving security measures were put in place. No terrorism = no security measures. No terrorism = A Palestinian Arab state.
I wonder why the British tolerate these writings with out proof.
I also seem to recall in 1943 when Britain was under siege the request for a Jewish Brigade to come help them.They were promised a land of their own.
Did the Arabs come to their aid no they helped the Germans.
They the British closed their eyes to what the Arabs were doing to the Israelis, and stepped in when the Israeli fought back and were beating the Arabs
Whom are British going to call now .That the Arabs have taken over England.
Phyllis Chesler claims – Palestinian husbands were found to be more violent towards their wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”
Putting the blame where it belongs…
Palestinian husbands found to be more violent towards their wives – is a result of Palestine’s Koran:
Koran 4:034 – Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and as to those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places – and beat them – then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them
hitting is completely wrong and immoral in all cases
Koran 4: 024 – Also prohibited are women already married, – except those whom your right hands possess {In western culture – this is sickness and it is also illegal)
Koran 2:223 – Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will
There are many more verses of their Koran that are brutal to women.
As for Palestine’s hatred (and her supporters) of the Jews?…(we can blame that on the Koran also)…
005.041 O Messenger!let not those grieve thee, who race each other into unbelief: whether it be among those whosay “We believe” with their lips but whose hearts have no faith; or it be among the Jews,- men who will listen to any lie
Let the U.N. put that one on their table – being the ‘humanitarians’ that they are (not)
But at least begin with putting the blame where it belongs Phyllis Chesler.
The British can be trusted to be anti-semitic, always, but only in politcially correct and acceptable terms to each other and other western nations.
If the rest of the western world ever really singled them out as people with serious issues they refuse to acknowledge, and therefore deal with, and it became embarrassing for them to continue their anti-jewish crusade in all it’s (politically correct, aka, bash Israel mercilessly and without any objective perspective) print forms they would stop.
But as long as all of us – especially Canadians and Americans – are willing to entertain their feable and ridiculously lame excuses of a simple case of “leftists” politics, supporting the “under-dog”, and any spurious song and dance they try to pass for legitimate points of view, the British will remain true to their roots.