Paulette Varghese Altmaier

Israel’s Channel 13, prime-time news, November 7. Correspondent Suleiman Maswadeh introduces Michigan’s new senator, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed with the typical Israeli casual racism. Anchor Eyal Berkovic: “They also say Ahmad Tibi is a doctor. So they say. Let him bring the diploma.” Maswadeh, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, corrects him on air: “But Ahmad Tibi is a doctor.” The banner calls El-Sayed “the anti-Israeli.” It is clear the idea that a Muslim is an actual doctor is ridiculous to them.

A horrific child abuse scandal, yes another one, rocks Israel. Ariel is a settlement in the occupied West Bank. On Sunday, Israeli prosecutors charged three women from the private "Luchik" daycare there with more than 400 acts of abuse against 17 babies and toddlers, aged six months to three years. You will not be surprised to hear that this occured in Ariel, a major West Bank settlement: 1) The accused are director Natalya Kislevsky, 37, and caregivers Darina (Dasha) Khalufa, 37, and Anna Pagelsky, 40. The indictment runs almost 100 pages and describes "punishment methods." 2) The first was "the choking method." The caregivers blocked toddlers' airways with hands, paper or cloth and pinned them to mattresses by the neck. They kept doing it after the children "choked, turned red and fought for breath, to the point of clouded consciousness." 3) The second was "the binding method." Children were wrapped tight with their arms pinned and laid face down. Some were force-fed while tied, with their heads tipped back and their jaws forced open. Others were locked alone in a dark room while they cried. The other toddlers watched all of it. 4) Palestinian children get the same methods as procedure. UNICEF found they are blindfolded and tied with plastic ties, and called the ill-treatment "widespread, systematic and institutionalised." Save the Children found 60% of former child detainees it consulted had been held in solitary. Rights groups said in April that about 350 children were in Israeli prisons, "bound and blindfolded." 5) Israel even passed a law in 2015 that allows force-feeding of Palestinian hunger strikers. In Ariel, force-feeding a tied-up child is one of the charges. When the victims are Israeli toddlers, Israel calls binding, force-feeding and dark rooms abuse and files a 100-page indictment. When the victims are Palestinian children, it calls the same things security. Israel is a sick and violent society and it is now eating itself.

Israel did not create the rainstorms hitting Gaza. But it made sure that the people there have no shelter. Gaza’s first winter storm hit this weekend. Within 12 hours at least 70,000 tents had flooded. The UN, EU and World Bank put housing destroyed or damaged at 76.6%. The UN’s housing rapporteur says 92%. He called his report “Domicide.” OCHA, November 5: Gaza needs about 121,000 tents. The UN has about 2,800 inside. Timber is “being rejected by Israeli authorities.” The Shelter Cluster says tents and tarpaulins are “limited to one day per week.” 5,000 mobile homes from Egypt and Qatar are sitting at the Egyptian border, per the Times of Israel. Gaza Municipality says what’s left of the drainage can carry about 20% of the rain “under the best circumstances.” COGAT says more than 20,000 tents went in during one month and cites “genuine security concerns that Hamas could exploit certain components.” Even on its numbers, that’s a fraction of what the UN says is needed. The Israeli policy is that Gazans should have no shelter. It makes them more liklely to die or leave.