Haiti+Tuberculosis+Aid= A better Haiti

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

Did you know that 6-10 people in Haiti share a single tent made for two? (Humanitarian News and Analysis). Haiti is know as a country of extreme poverty for many year. Haiti have receive help from different places and organizations. Like in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains we see the way Paul Farmer, helps Haiti via Partners in Health. However in the book we can also notice that many of his patients have tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a sickness that starts with the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, attacking the lungs first and then weakens the immune system. The symptoms can be such as spitting blood and if it is not treated it will eventually lead to death.  (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

(Source: 88.7 Kuhf.fm News)

Haiti has a history with a lack of health care. In the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder it shows the correlation between poor people and  the risk to have tuberculosis. However this is not because this is not just only because they’re poor but because they can’t afford food, clean water, a place to sleep, or any of those basic necessities.Clean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floors, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights. (Paul Farmer, 91) There is even women that are prostitutes not for money but in exchange to get water. Not eating properly or drinking weakens the immune system leaving it to easily catch a disease such as tuberculosis, malaria, or cholera. A normal citizen will complain to the government and the government will try to fix it. However Haiti there was a lot of violence like the major being killed. Because of the unstable government in Haiti instead of spending the little money they have on vaccines they spend it in different things or in themselves selfishly, leaving people to die slowly. That is why most of Haitians do not even get to live up to their 40. (Farmer, Why Global Fund Matters)

The earthquake in Haiti (2010) brought back the attention of other countries. Haiti receive aid because of the damage that the earthquake cause. However because of the earthquake a lot of people die, and diseases spread faster than before. The rate of tuberculosis raise, and cholera started since dead people bodies were in the streets not doing anything about it. (Verger, Paul Farmer's Fight for Haiti) At that moment, when the Haitians needed their leaders the most, the president of Haiti left to the United States. However even though the country had to go through the worst during the earthquake and after the earthquake they overcome it. The amount of help they got from  different countries, made the current Haiti overcome its past. Partners in Health, and the United Nations receive more money to help Haiti, which they used to makes better hospitals, and ways to treatments the tuberculosis, schools, houses and even they are rebuilding the houses that were destroyed in January . Even though the Haiti is not at its best, and still needs a lot of more help, it is reconstructing. In few years, we have to let Haiti be independent and not dependent on the help from other countries. (Costantni,Op-ed: What Will Help Haiti Recover from 2010 Earthquake)

(Source: The Daily Beast)

Partners in Health started with a few amount of people such as Paul Farmer and few others wanting to help Haiti. At those moments Haiti was very dangerous. The reporter, Tracy Kidder wrote that the major had been killed,and mutilated. This proves how Haiti didn't had a stable government even in the 90s. Even though some of Farmer’s friends and other helpers were killed because they wanted to cure people, he still never gave up. He didn't give up and continue persevering to get the Haitians help, helping himself by treating people for free. Clearly most of us can’t go to a country a help, but we can still make a change. We can make fundraising and collect that money to not necessarily give it to Haiti, but other countries that are  in the necessity of that help in the health. We can inform others about tuberculosis and how can this be easily prevented to happen. We can make posters to inform the ones that already have tuberculosis about how the treatment is, and for them not to be sentenced to die. Maybe we can’t help all tuberculosis patients from the world, but by starting little thing humans can do immense things.

“The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.”

― Hugh MacLeod

Tear Down This Wall

 Micah Dicker - 10A

According to Israeli Member of Knesset Merav Michaeli, the term “occupation” has become almost like a taboo in Israel; no one wants to talk about it, so it’s almost as if they’re not allowed to.  For many, the polarities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are being pushed so far apart that one simple reference to the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank can make you a self-hating Jew.  Similarly, acknowledging the right of a Jewish state to exist where it once did millennia ago can make you a supporter of a so-called apartheid state.  

The reality is that a quietly-growing number of people on both sides of this issue are becoming aware of the other side and are beginning to distance themselves from their former affiliation.  According to Suzanne Weiss,

a Holocaust survivor, 

“...the Israeli government’s actions

toward the Palestinians awaken horrific 

memories of my family’s experiences 

under Hitlerism: the inhuman walls, the

checkpoints, the daily humiliations, killings,

diseases, and the systematic deprivation.”   

One would expect to hear the exact opposite of 

this from a Holocaust survivor, but Weiss 

has experienced the definition of genocide, 

and is therefore a trustworthy source to point out

when and where a genocide is occurring.  

In her article, Weiss says that she is on the Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T.) list, which contains the names of over 7,000 liberal Jews and peace-promoters that support a realistic future for both a Jewish and an Arab state coexisting peacefully, and criticize Israeli actions against the Palestinians. Others on the list include rabbis and Jewish politicians, journalists, and musicians, some of whom are even Upper West Side

residents.  The antagonization of all these people, likening them to Hamas and Hezbollah, groups everyone who does not support the occupation of Palestine into one category, and treats them with differing degrees of intragroup discrimination.  Some like, Weiss, are simply looked down upon, while others, like Norman Finkelstein, are not allowed in Israel at all.

This exemplifies what Oren Yiftachel calls “creeping apartheid” in Israel.  In his article named after this concept, he describes the Israeli occupation of Palestine as an “ethnocratic regime,” which justifies the taking over of the Palestinian territories with “Judaization,” through which a Jewish state is created by getting the land they believe they are entitled to.  Yiftachel compares the separation of Israelis and Palestinians to that of whites and blacks during the South African Apartheid.  Unsurprisingly, Yiftachel is also on the S.H.I.T. list.  

What is important to realize about both Suzanne Weiss, Oren Yiftachel, and the other members of the S.H.I.T. list is that many of them are not seen as Israel critics or anti-Zionists, but simply liberal Jews who believe that the only way for Israel to be a successful country is if they guarantee peace with their Arab neighbors.  Without these so-called self-haters, the two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will just keep polarizing themselves.

This conflict has been going on since 1948.  Why would adolescents want to get involved in a conflict that seems be going on mainly between much older people?

Almost every teenager believes that countries should put aside their weapons and stop fighting with each other.  What they don’t realize is that ending a war is harder than starting one.  Men and women born in 1948 are now in their mid 60s, and judging by the progress that Israel and Palestine haven’t seemed to make since then, members of that generation will not be alive to solve all of the problems in that part of the world.  Portraying any Israel-supporter as an evil Zionist or any

Palestine-supporter as a terrorist only shades in the line between perceived right and wrong.  Telling teenagers to support one or the other in this conflict will result in, and has resulted in, blindly following their predecessors, turning a large conflict into a bigger one.

Although many teenagers turn away from faith temporarily or permanently, interfaith

groups are among the greatest ways to find similarities between different groups of people, and could definitely work between Jews and Muslims, and Israelis and Palestinians, so they do not continue standing on their differences.  Similarly, non-religious humanistic programs, Facebook pages, and websites view everyone solely as a human being  instead of a member of a member of a certain nationality or religion.  Comparing and contrasting the views of both Israelis and Palestinians is the only realistic way that can lead to a solution that will satisfy the ageless desires of both groups of people.

One of the greatest lessons of history is learning which courses of action led to war and destruction of humanity’s objective morals, and this lesson definitely needs to be taught today.