Israel admits Ethiopian women were subjected to birth control without their knowledge

hatrickpatrick

...or consent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gave-birth-control-to-ethiopian-jews-without-their-consent-8468800.html

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”.

Eager to see how the usual suspects manage to stand by their mantra that Israel is a lone beacon of civilised democracy in the Middle East :rolleyes:

And regarding the last quote by Netanyahu, can one genuinely call a country democratic if it strives, even through horrifically abusive means such as these, to artificially preserve a demographic "gerrymandering", maintaining one particular ethnic group's democratic dominance over the rest?
Not sure how the concepts are compatible. Democracy suggests rule by the citizens, not just by some of the citizens.

Finally, to pre-empt the inevitable hijacking of the thread with this tired argument - why am I singling out Israel when plenty of other governments do far worse things? Because there is not a considerable body of voices defending those countries, unlike Israel which has its legions of supporters on forums such as these. So we'll have none of that please.

Sickening..

seamus

It's worse than gerrymandering, it's genocide. Surreptitious and bloodless, but that's the end-goal of this policy - the deliberate eradication of a cultural group from Israel.

The officials involved in reality should be tried for crimes against humanity.

A sad irony that the country which was born out of the outrage against the Nazi's genocide should go on to commit genocide themselves.

mackg

seamus wrote: »

It's worse than gerrymandering, it's genocide. Surreptitious and bloodless, but that's the end-goal of this policy - the deliberate eradication of a cultural group from Israel.

The officials involved in reality should be tried for crimes against humanity.

I believe the correct term is eugenics

Eugenics is the applied science of the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the
genetic composition of a population, usually a human
population.[2][3] It is a
social philosophy which advocates for the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher
reproduction of more desired people and traits, and the reduction of
reproduction of less desired people and traits.[4]

seamus

mackg wrote: »

I believe the correct term is eugenics

Possibly that too, but it's also genocide;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[3]

im invisible

Godwinned

mackg

seamus wrote: »

Possibly that too, but it's also genocide;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

Yeah you're right actually, certain aspects of eugenics falls within the category of genocide.

hyperborean

This does not suprise me, the Isreali's have been up to some serious amoral shit for the last 50 or 60 years, they have the backing of a good tribe of apologists to facilitate it to so expect them VVV

woodoo

They are every bit as bad as the Nazi's. A very racist people.

woodoo

mackg wrote: »

I believe the correct term is eugenics

Its not eugenics. Eugenics is trying to get the best from a population. Removing criminals, unhealthy people etc.

This is straight forward genocide. They don't want ethiopians giving birth full stop. It is unbelievably racist.

Cavehill Red

Israelis are revealed as institutionally racist filth. Why am I not surprised? Oh yes, because committing genocide is nothing new to them. They've been doing it to the Palestinians for seventy odd years now.

mackg

woodoo wrote: »

Its not eugenics. Eugenics is trying to get the best from a population. Removing criminals, unhealthy people etc.

This is straight forward genocide. They don't want ethiopians giving birth full stop. It is unbelievably racist.

I'm not getting into a sily argument about this suffice to say the definition of eugenics is in my post.

Muckie

Frighten stuff, mad to think of the things done to them as a people.

Maybe they weren't the right colour for the Chosen People.

Seaneh

Its really sad to say but this doesnt surprise me at all.

Cavehill Red

I can only presume the Falash Mura were bombing Israeli children. At least, that's the excuse when the Israeli authorities inflict genocide on Palestinians.

feelgoodinc27

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Israelis are revealed as institutionally racist filth.

Thats a pretty despicable racist statement to make.

walshb

Hell of a lot of hatred for Israelis here. Hell of a lot of racists?

Nodin

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Israelis are revealed as institutionally racist filth. ...........

Some are. It was an Israeli journalist who exposed the story.

Cavehill Red

feelgoodinc27 wrote: »

Thats a pretty despicable racist statement to make.

Really? It's not me was involuntarily sterilising black citizens. Direct your ire where it is deserved.

feelgoodinc27

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Really? It's not me was involuntarily sterilising black citizens. Direct your ire where it is deserved.

It wasn't all Israelis either.

Cavehill Red

Nodin wrote: »

Some are. It was an Israeli journalist who exposed the story.

I said INSTITUTIONALLY racist. As in, the institutions. I've been to Israel and worked with Bt'selem among others. I'm well aware of the minority of Israelis who object to the racist origins, practices and genocidal activities of their nation.

jaykay74

walshb wrote: »

Hell of a lot of hatred for Israelis here. Hell of a lot of racists?

Interesting that you choose to discuss the other posters than the topic at hand.

Scofflaw

I appreciate the subject of the thread is outrageous - however, try to contribute something more than expressions of outrage, and try not to load your contribution with terms that will in turn outrage others. Otherwise, the thread has to be locked and people get banned/infracted.

Genuine trolls, flamers, derailers and racists should be reported, and will be sanctioned.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Cavehill Red

I've been racking my brain seeking any other contemporary example of this sort of behaviour in any other part of the world, and am drawing a blank. The Chinese single child policy obviously permits at least one child and provides financial penalties for breaching it. That's considered very out of order by Western standards, but it doesn't come anywhere near forced involuntary sterilisations.
The closest I can think of, outside of obvious genocidal events like the interahamwe, would be those cases in the United States and Guatemala, where black people and indigenous Guatemalans were deliberately infected with syphilis against their wills and monitored. Those were 60 years ago.
There is simply no modern day precedent for what Israel has been doing to the Falash Mura.
When it comes to genocide, and criminal attachment to racial purity, Israel has no equal in my living memory. Even the apartheid government in South Africa wasn't sterilising its dark-skinned populace. (There is some research which indicates they looked into how it could have been done, but they never followed through as the Israelis have done.)

Sponge Bob

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I've been racking my brain seeking any other contemporary example of this sort of behaviour in any other part of the world, and am drawing a blank. The Chinese single child policy obviously permits at least one child and provides financial penalties for breaching it.

The Chinese one child policy, as far as I know, "provides" enforced abortions for some as well as financial penalties ... the penalties apply to those who actually produce a child. Certain ethnic minorities (non Han) in China are even exempt from the one child policy.

I doubt if the Israeli government had a policy about dosing the Falashas with long term contraceptives any more than our government had a policy about exporting babies born in Magdalene laundries, as happened.

Cavehill Red

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I doubt if the Israeli government had a policy about dosing the Falashas with long term contraceptives

Doubt no longer. This is from the Ha'aretz article:

Observers note that the ministry’s response side-stepped the allegation raised that the authorities were targeting Ethiopian women. The response did not say whether there were explicit policy guidelines underlying prescription of the drug or for how long government-funded health facilities have administered the drug to African women of Ethiopian origin. The response also gave no hint about how many women of Ethiopian origin were involved.

The allegation that the Israeli authorities were targeting Ethiopian women for prescription of the drug Depo-Provera was first reported five years ago. The National reports that in 2009, Eyal supervised a study that showed that 57 percent of Depo-Provera users in Israel were Ethiopian, although their community was less than 2 per cent of the population.

Scofflaw

Certainly if the application of contraception in these circumstances was a regular feature of government-funded centres, then the existence of a policy is beyond doubt - the alternative, that they each separately and individually set about it, fails the reasonable doubt test. It could be that the policy was an informal one, spread from centre to centre by staff contacts and exchanges, but it should then have spread to non-government health centres as well as missing some government centres.

The question of targeting of this particular community seems entirely beyond doubt, given the Eyal study Cavehill's quote references. From that study, it seems Depo-Provera has something of a history in this respect:

Even at the first stages of developing the Depo Provera injection, it was thought of as a contraceptive method suitable for underprivileged populations. Between the years 1967-1978, the Grady Memorial Family Planning in Atlanta, Georgia, undertook medical research to examine the efficiency of Depo Provera as a contraceptive method. 13,000 low-income women participated in the research, half of whom were black. Many of the participants were not even informed that they were part of a research project and they did not sign a consent form of any kind or get any information regarding the side effects of the drug. Following participating in the research, some of the women became ill and a several women died. The research manager, Dr. Robert Hatcher, and his associates did not report the severe side effects the participants suffered. This information was revealed only after the Black Women’s Health Project (BWHR) managed, despite the lack of organized records, to locate some of the participants and found out that some of them suffered severe illnesses including cancer, clinical depression and suicidal tendencies.

...

In South Africa, Depo Provera was given to young black women without their consent. In Thailand, in the refugee camp Kaol-I-Dong (near the Cambodian border), families were handed out food supplies (including chicken meat) only if they agreed to use Depo Provera. In the Philippines, using Depo Provera as a contraceptive method was approved in exchange for receiving the support of the United Nations' Population Fund (UNFPA) for the local government's family planning programs.

And:

Following many cases in which women of Ethiopian origin complained to her that they are suffering from pregnancy-like syndromes (morning sickness, swollen abdomen, fatigue, etc,), she accompanied them to a gynecologist in Pardes- Kats' Clalit HMO. Thus she was exposed, for the first time to the fact that once in three months they had received birth control injections- Depo Provera. After insisting on getting an explanation, the clinic manager told her that his staff had received instructions to administer Depo Provera injections to these women, but refused to reveal from whom they had received these instructions.

Seems that propaganda is also thrown into the mix:

Most of the interviewees reported that the information about Depo Provera reached them either via The Joint (A Jewish-American aid organization) staff, the Jewish Agency, or the Immigration Absorption ministry's staff, in the form of lectures given to them in Ethiopia or during their first days in Israel. For instance one of the interviewed women said that "we were told, here in the immigration absorption center that there is not enough money for raising children".

This in a state which certainly doesn't appear to have any objection to very high ultra-orthodox birth rates...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Cavehill Red

I'm not sure this drug was used in South Africa actually. I was reading up on this earlier, and it seemed that the apartheid regime were researching how to create a vaccine that would have sterilising effects instead, but were unable to bring the project to fruition. I didn't come across any use of Depo-Provera in what I read. Their motivation was to do it surreptitiously and it was thought then that it would not be possible simply to dose black women with drugs regularly because it would soon become evident that they were doing so, whereas a dedicated vaccine that developed antibodies rather than hormonal disruption might be harder to detect.

Sponge Bob

The population subjected to deliberate birth control in recent years is the Falash Mura who are explained very well here > http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/falashmura.html perhaps read the last 3 paras first then from the top down.

I would expect the next serious scrape involving Israel to be the creation of a 'Greater Druzistan' later this year, now that will be rather complex to say the least.

Enduro

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I've been racking my brain seeking any other contemporary example of this sort of behaviour in any other part of the world, and am drawing a blank.

Maybe try googling. The first result back gives this very long list :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization

Granted, not all contempory, but plenty of known examples from modern times. (and I'd be inclined to think that more will be added to this list)

The list of countries which you all need to direct your rage at is extremely long indeed.

Sponge Bob

Enduro wrote: »

The list of countries which you all need to direct your rage at is extremely long indeed.

Very Long. and Still Ongoing .

BFDCH.

mackg wrote: »

I believe the correct term is eugenics

the opposite to what we do in Ireland.