Israel gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent
Sunday 27 January 2013 18:51
Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.
The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs. According a report in Haaretz, suspicions were first raised by an investigative journalist, Gal Gabbay, who interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically.
One of the Ethiopian women who was interviewed is quoted as saying: “They [medical staff] told us they are inoculations. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.” It is alleged that some of the women were forced or coerced to take the drug while in transit camps in Ethiopia.
The drug in question is thought to be Depo-Provera, which is injected every three months and is considered to be a highly effective, long-lasting contraceptive.
Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has been questioned by some rabbis. Last year, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the health portfolio, warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state”.
Haaretz published an extract from a letter sent by the Ministry of Health to units administering the drug. Doctors were told “not to renew prescriptions for Depo Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment”.
Sharona Eliahu Chai, a lawyer for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said: “Findings from investigations into the use of Depo Provera are extremely worrisome, raising concerns of harmful health policies with racist implications in violation of medical ethics. The Ministry of Health’s director-general was right to act quickly and put forth new guidelines.”
www.independent.co.uk
Porn run on seized TV channels, say residents
April 1, 2002 — 10.00am
Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations in Ramallah are broadcasting pornographic movies and programs in Hebrew, irate residents say.
Soldiers occupied the offices of three local television and radio stations on Saturday morning, and started broadcasting the porn clips intermittently on Saturday afternoon on the Al-Watan, Ammwaj, and Al-Sharaq channels, the residents said.
"I have six children at home; they have nowhere to go with what is going on here and can't even watch TV," Reema, a Palestinian mother, said.
"It's not healthy really. I think the Israelis want to mess with our young men's heads."
Anita, a mother of three, complained about "the deliberate psychological damage caused by these broadcasts".
"I am furious. These are the people who are shooting at us that also play this disgusting trick on us," she said from her house in east Jerusalem, where the channels are also available.
"Luckily, there is no electricity in half of Ramallah."
A fourth local station, whose premises were not seized by the army, ran a message across its screen letting people know it was the Israelis who were behind the graphic scenes.
The Israeli military denied that it had anything to do with the pornographic programming and instead blamed the Palestinian leaders.
www.smh.com.au
Israel strikes U.N. deal to send thousands of African migrants to Western countries
April 2, 2018, 9:49 AM EDT / Updated April 2, 2018, 9:49 AM EDT
JERUSALEM — Israel said on Monday it has canceled a plan to deport African migrants to Africa and reached an agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to send more than 16,000 to Western countries instead.
Other migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum, will be allowed to remain in Israel for at least the next five years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home. The right-wing government is under pressure from its nationalist voter base to expel the migrants, while others are calling for them to be taken in.
In February, Israel started handing out notices to 20,000 male African migrants giving them two months to leave the country or risk being thrown in jail.
The Israeli government has offered migrants, most of whom are from Sudan and Eritrea, $3,500 and a plane ticket to what it says is a safe destination in another country in sub-Saharan Africa, which Israeli media reports identified as Rwanda.
But rights groups advocating on behalf of the migrants say that many of them fled abuse and war and that their expulsion, even to a different country in Africa, would endanger them further.
The groups had challenged the deportation plan in Israel's High Court, which on March 15 issued a temporary order that froze its implementation.
"Israel and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have reached unprecedented understandings for the departure of at least 16,250 migrants ... to Western nations," the Israeli statement said, without naming the countries.
A UNHCR spokeswoman confirmed that an agreement had been reached but gave no details.
The U.N.'s refugee agency had urged Israel to reconsider its original plan, saying migrants who have relocated to sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years were unsafe and ended up on the perilous migrant trail to Europe, some suffering abuse, torture and even dying on the way.
A fence Israel has built over the past few years along its border with Egypt has all but stopped African migrants from entering the country illegally. Since 2005, prior to which the border had been porous, a total of 64,000 Africans had made it to Israel, although thousands have since left.
In February, Israel started handing out notices to 20,000 male African migrants giving them two months to leave the country or risk being thrown in jail.
www.nbcnews.com
