blog.caleval

Letter to Peres: Save these kids

Shimon Peres
President of the State of Israel
The Office of the President
3 Hanassi Street
Jerusalem 92188, Israel

Dear Mr. President:

I am a Canadian citizen living on the dryland prairies of Saskatchewan. In Canada, Saskatchewan is known as the “birthplace of Medicare” as it was in this province that universal access to necessary medical treatment was first legislated and given status equivalent to a human right.

Sir, I am writing you because I must seek your rapid intervention to ensure a group of children receive a similar right — a right to necessary medical treatment.

Here, thousands of miles removed from their plight, I have learned of the emergency situation of Sami Atwa Abu Ishaq (m), aged 5 months; Ahmed Nahid Mohsin (m), aged 1.5 years; Soheb Wael Alqasas (m), aged 5 years; Hamza Hassan Abu Habel (m), aged 1.2 years; Ahmed Talat Abu Omar (m), aged 6 years; andMohammed Ashraf Abu Ajwah (m), aged 1.2 years.

We are talking about infants of five months to youngsters of six years. These children have serious, life-threatening, heart conditions. They live in Gaza. It is reported that your forces are preventing the female adult guardians of these children from escorting them to the required medical care that is in fact being made available. Equally distressing is the report that Israeli forces prevented doctors from entering Gaza on October 8, 2008 as part of the medical mission to treat these children.

A group of Italian cardiac specialists is prepared to treat the children the week of November 6th. If you do not intervene, sir, to ensure these children are allowed to travel to the Makassad Hospital in that time, it will effectively be the Government of Israel declaring that a couple of women and six very sick kids present a threat to Israel so extreme that they must be allowed to sicken and die.

It is inconceivable that Israel has been so weakened that it cannot monitor and mount effective defense against five month old infants and their grandma. If I am missing something, if these children have acquired weapons of mass destruction, or their mother is transporting modified bubonic plague, then I stand ready to be educated.

But if the refusal to allow this treatment to occur is simply an expression of Israeli security policy, then it says more about the dishonour of the Israeli government than it does about any serious threat to the people of Israel.

Even here in the middle of a grassland a world away, people are watching how you choose to deal with these kids. Please allow us to know that Israel does not discard sick Palestinian children in the name of dealing with the real monsters that lob missiles at Israeli children.

Sincerely,

Glenn Caleval

See the Amnesty International Urgent Action Appeal.