Today's headline news about fighting intensifying near Gazan hospitals is in stark contrast to the aid that Israeli hospitals have been giving to Gazan babies for many years, and babies from other Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq.

I witnessed this first hand 10 years ago when I toured Israel with a group of Christians. The tour guide was an Arab Christian from the West Bank.

Babies and young children with heart defects from Israel's neighbours are brought to hospitals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for open heart surgery. The service is free to the parents and is organised and paid for by an organisation and community called Shevet Achim. Have a look at some of the testimonies below. I support Shevet Achim in a very small way. It is so encouraging to see people work for the good of humanity regardless of nationality or race.

www.shevet.org
www.shevet.org.uk/ about

A recent email from Shevet Achim (unfortunately without the photos it contained):

Friends, brothers, and sisters,

Greetings from those of us in Ashdod.

Those of you who read this letter probably also read my father’s Sunday letter; if so you are aware of the tragic death of Um Naim’s children in Gaza, killed in an airstrike last Sunday.

Her loss shaped this week for us all. It has been heavy. We passed much of our time sitting with Um Naim, sharing in her grief as best we could; we have all wept with her. She is a strong woman, and she mastered her grief quickly. She already smiles and laughs again, albeit rarely. Yesterday my father asked her how her heart is feeling; all she said was “Tired.”

meal with families

The first day was the hardest for Um Naim. I will not go into the details of her suffering here. But I bore witness to two powerful things on that day that I will share with you all.

I wrote last week about tensions in the family house; our Kurds and Gazans were not getting along well, their cultural differences exacerbated by their stress and anxiety. But Sunday I saw our Kurdish mothers running to comfort Um Naim just as fast as those from Gaza: holding her, weeping with her, trying to get her to eat.

Um Naim comforted

Their hearts broke with hers, and their love swelled in turn. Now they are dwelling together, united in their grieving, and their tension has largely vanished.

The second thing I saw on Sunday was Hur’s grandmother going up to Um Naim as she wept, cradling her, and saying: “You have lost three, I have lost six. Still God is good.”

I do not know who the six relatives she has lost are; I have not yet asked. All of our Gazan families know the loss of family. But she continues to believe in the goodness of God despite those blows, and now she supports Um Naim with that same faith in turn. None of our community has lost as terribly or as intimately as Um Naim has lost. We cannot understand the depth of her pain these days, though we try and walk with her anyway. But praise God that she has someone with her who has suffered similarly and who keeps faith all the same.

Friends, let us pray that we might have such faith.

Things were quieter in Ashdod this week; we have a good number of coworkers and increasingly less work, and so we had more than one stretch of time in which there was nothing to be done except sit and share.

Milad from Kurdistan, however, had a whirlwind time. On Sunday he had a follow-up echo at the Sheba Medical Center; the doctor was concerned about the worsened condition of his heart and recommended hospitalization. Further examination revealed that some of the stitches from his last operation had given way, and his heart was experiencing fresh leakage.

milad echo

On Tuesday, he went in the early morning for surgery and didn’t come out till the late afternoon, but he was stabilized, and the operation was successful. Thursday we learned he received a blood transfusion to strengthen him due to residual weakness from his surgery. Pray for him, that he will be healed.

milad post second op

I have mentioned often that his mother is anxious for her son, and indeed, she has been very anxious. In many ways her fears are reasonable. The doctors assured her everything would be well after Milad’s first successful recovery, but here he was, needing a second surgery. She wonders: how can I trust this? How many more surgeries are there going to be? Is he even alright now? And events such as yesterday's blood transfusion do nothing to reassure her in this.

Sunday, when we were hospitalizing Milad, his mother and I took him to get an x-ray performed. While we were waiting for the examining room to open, she apologized to me for always being so fearful over her son. I told her that her fear was a sign of love; if she wasn’t afraid, I would wonder why not. She smiled and told me that she did love Milad very much: “He’s all I have left in the world.”

Baby Mohammed from Kurdistan returned to the hospital yesterday for his first follow-up echo post-discharge, and he’s in good condition. There are some small holes present that the doctors aren’t concerned about, but he also has some lung blockage we’re keeping an eye on—if he grows sick or deteriorates, we’ll immediately bring him to the hospital.

mohammed and mother

Pray for him! If his health keeps up in the next two weeks, he may well be able to go home to Kurdistan.

And speaking of two weeks, Kurdish Asmeen’s long-awaited CEVUS kidney exam is just two weeks away. Our searches at other hospitals for potentially earlier appointments proved fruitless, with most of them saying it was either impossible or it wouldn’t be available until well into next year; so we are grateful for this November date, late though it is.

Asmeen sitting

Please pray that Asmeen's exam happens and that nothing delays it. Please pray also that the surgery afterwards to remove her non-functioning kidney can happen quickly, if needed, and that Asmeen will recover quickly.

Tonight, her mother showed me pictures of Asmeen’s sister, Enas, who was born just before Asmeen and mother left for Israel:

Enas

She has grown from a sleepy one-month-old to a bright-eyed and laughing six-month old, and her mother hasn’t been able to be present for any of it. She needs to go home and be reunited with her family.

Our Gaza families and staff staying in the West Bank are doing well, praise God. They are able to walk around freely and go shopping, and they have a house and a firepit they can sit around in the evening. They are a little bored, though; there aren’t many people around to talk to, and little Leen misses having friends she can play with.

families in WB 2

We are still interacting with the thought of moving them to Bethlehem, if we can find reasonable accommodations. There is better access to medical care, and more people around so more potential friendships for our families. Please pray that we’ll have insight in this matter.

And please pray, of course, for Um Naim and Naim. We thank God that they still have each other for comfort; but their hearts are pained. Pray that we will be able to comfort them and share in their grief as they learn how to live with their deprivation.

naim and mother

We continue by the grace of God, one day at a time, one step at a time. Pray for our community that we will keep up our strength, that we will work faithfully with our Father, that we will be able to rest in him.

That has become the deepest prayer of my heart these days as we witness such suffering and pain: that God will be swift to bring his justice, and that through his justice he will bring restoration, and that through his restoration he will bring healing.

There is no power in this world that can erase pain once it has been inflicted. We must all learn to bear our scars. But we look to what is, to me, one of the greatest mysteries in scripture, the promise given in John's Revelation:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

And he that sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."

We look to the day when all these pains and scars and tears will be wiped away; when all things are made new.

Um Naim weeping 2

Our hope remains.

May the God of peace and love be with you all,

A good read for reflection B&A
Thanks

Read this on the train back to the 'Stow last night. Just don't know what sources you can believe or trust these days. It was the same with the Ukraine conflict. I also realise the irony of displaying an article from a conservative centre-right publication.

Stephen Daisley in the Speccie writes;

The problem with the BBC's Israel coverage.

Since the 7 October massacre, various institutions across the West have damaged their reputations when covering the murder of 1,200 Jews. Chief among them is the BBC which outdid itself in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Around midnight, the Israel Defence Forces released a media statement announcing that it was launching an operation against Hamas in a part of Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which the terrorist organisation uses as one of its command centres. The Reuters agency relayed the information via its news wire service, relied upon by journalists across the world. This is the story in its entirety:

Nov 15 (Reuters) – The Israeli military said its forces were carrying out an operation on Wednesday against Hamas within Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al Shifa.

In a statement, the military said: “Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.”

The military said: “The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.

At 12:09am, a newsreader on BBC News Channel picked up on the story. Or a version of it.

At this moment we are hearing from Reuters, that is reporting that Israel – it says its forces are carrying out an operation against Hamas in Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital and they are targeting people, including medical teams as well as Arab speakers. They are also saying that Israel is calling on all Hamas operatives in the hospital to surrender at this point.

Once again, we are hearing from Reuters that Israel says that its forces are carrying out an operation against Hamas in that hospital that we had just heard of there, targeting Arab speakers as well as some of the medical staff there, and they are asking all Hamas operatives in that hospital to surrender.

So, the IDF said it was taking specially trained medical teams and Arabic speakers into Al Shifa Hospital to minimise harm to civilians and the BBC reported that as the IDF targeting medical staff and people who speak Arabic.

Quite apart from the breakdown in journalistic standards from a global broadcaster, it’s hard to overstate the incendiary nature of this broadcast. The BBC is a global news source. It is a highly trusted one, though incidents like this certainly call that into question. Like Reuters, it is relied upon by journalists the world over. Unlike Reuters, it is also broadcast on televisions across the globe. Its reach is vast.

This was a terrible mistake made in a rush, and went out on only one bulletin (although the correction took nine hours). But why the rush? BBC News Channel is jokingly called Sky News +1 because it’s so late with breaking news: if that lateness means it’s taking extra steps to verify, then fair enough. But we see a rush, here, to get out implausibly bad news about Israel. There ought to be several protocols on every new development to make sure every fact is checked, layers of editors to check accuracy. It’s obvious that, even now, no such system exists. The BBC is still being jaw-droppingly cavalier with the truth.

It’s hard to overstate the incendiary nature of this broadcast
And this after several scandals. After the explosion at Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison editorialised on air that it was ‘hard to see’ how it could have been caused by anything ‘other than an Israeli air strike’. He provided no evidence to support his assertion. BBC News deputy chief executive Jonathan Munro described this as a ‘mistake’. When an anti-Semitic mob stormed Dagestan airport in Russia, saying ‘We are here for the Jews, we came to kill them with knives and shoot at them’, the BBC described them as simply ‘anti-Israel’ (the BBC says it later updated the piece to reference that the mob targeted Jews). When the Israelis arrested Palestinian Ahed Tamimi for incitement – she is accused of posting on social media: ‘We will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke, we will drink your blood and eat your skulls’; her mother denies she wrote the post – the BBC described her as ‘an international symbol of resistance to Israel’s occupation‘. In fact, Tamimi became an international symbol because she was jailed in 2018 after admitting to the aggravated assault of an Israeli soldier and incitement to violence (the BBC does mention her crimes in the piece). When Emmanuel Macron of France told the BBC: ‘These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed’, the Corporation reported the allegation without quotation marks in its headline: ‘Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies’. (The BBC says ‘Macron calls on’ is sufficient for there to be no quotation marks).

While it is content to run headlines like that and describe Tamimi as a symbol of resistance to Israel’s occupation, the BBC refuses to describe Hamas as a terrorist group, saying this would compromise the objectivity of its reporting. This despite its reporting of the 2011 Norwegian massacre speculating whether it was ‘a terror attack’ and its Paris correspondent previously identifying the 2020 church stabbings in Nice, a stabbing attack outside Charlie Hebdo’s former offices and the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty as ‘terrorist attacks’ (the Corporation said guidelines introduced in 2019 dictate that the term shouldn’t be used without attribution). Last month, the BBC News website reported the shooting dead of two Swedes in Brussels as a ‘terror attack’, before apologising that it had not initially attributed the words. The BBC said it has been criticised by both sides, but denied that was proof that ‘we’re getting things right’.

BBC News issued an apology for its false claims about the Al Shifa Hospital operation:

And now an apology from the BBC. BBC News, as it covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital – we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report. We should have said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers. We apologise for this error which fell below our usual editorial standards. The correct version of events was broadcast minutes later.’

At this point, we’re more than familiar with the BBC’s editorial standards.

A BBC reporter was taken under Israeli army guard into the hospital on the main news last night.
She was only allowed to broadcast images that the Israeli forces had censored, but they admitted that no tunnels had been discovered. The broadcast didn't contain anything that you wouldn't expect to see in a building that had been under fire from outside forces.

Bangitintrnet wrote: November 17th, 2023, 11:14 am A BBC reporter was taken under Israeli army guard into the hospital on the main news last night.
She was only allowed to broadcast images that the Israeli forces had censored, but they admitted that no tunnels had been discovered. The broadcast didn't contain anything that you wouldn't expect to see in a building that had been under fire from outside forces.

And the BBC has since 'fact-checked' the footage supplied by the IDF and found discrepancies in the timing, location and numbers of weapons shown and an apparent edit in footage that was supposed to have been a single shoot.

The first casualty of any war is the truth.........

I'm really angry that my post about the benevolence of an Israeli community and hospitals, which I have supported for years and witnessed first hand, has been hijacked by posts about the current situation in Gaza's hospitals.

Can people please start new threads.

Blackandamber wrote: November 17th, 2023, 3:22 pm I'm really angry that my post about the benevolence of an Israeli community and hospitals, which I have supported for years and witnessed first hand, has been hijacked by posts about the current situation in Gaza's hospitals.

Can people please start new threads.

Nope. Israel are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of many more Palestinian children than they have saved.

Bangitintrnet wrote: November 17th, 2023, 1:21 pm The first casualty of any war is the truth.........

So true.

Blackandamber wrote: November 17th, 2023, 3:22 pm I'm really angry that my post about the benevolence of an Israeli community and hospitals, which I have supported for years and witnessed first hand, has been hijacked by posts about the current situation in Gaza's hospitals.

Can people please start new threads.

Sorry about that. My fault.

Chepstow'sFine wrote: November 17th, 2023, 6:24 pm

Bangitintrnet wrote: November 17th, 2023, 1:21 pm The first casualty of any war is the truth.........

So true.

Can't take credit for it, nor that the second casualty is the cook.

Exile 1976 wrote: November 17th, 2023, 5:12 pm

Blackandamber wrote: November 17th, 2023, 3:22 pm I'm really angry that my post about the benevolence of an Israeli community and hospitals, which I have supported for years and witnessed first hand, has been hijacked by posts about the current situation in Gaza's hospitals.

Can people please start new threads.

Nope. Israel are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of many more Palestinian children than they have saved.

Nope. The Israeli government and their military are responsible for the deaths of babies and children in Gaza. The Shevet Achim community and collaborating hospitals have saved the lives of many Gazan, Iraqi and Syrian babies and children for many years. Shevet Achim and these hospitals are still performing these life saving open heart operations. I get regular emails and photos with detailed stories.

Blackandamber wrote: November 20th, 2023, 11:55 am

Exile 1976 wrote: November 17th, 2023, 5:12 pm

Blackandamber wrote: November 17th, 2023, 3:22 pm I'm really angry that my post about the benevolence of an Israeli community and hospitals, which I have supported for years and witnessed first hand, has been hijacked by posts about the current situation in Gaza's hospitals.

Can people please start new threads.

Nope. Israel are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of many more Palestinian children than they have saved.

Nope. The Israeli government and their military are responsible for the deaths of babies and children in Gaza. The Shevet Achim community and collaborating hospitals have saved the lives of many Gazan, Iraqi and Syrian babies and children for many years. Shevet Achim and these hospitals are still performing these life saving open heart operations. I get regular emails and photos with detailed stories.

They still kill far more than they save sweetie. Fact