Anti-Israel propaganda helps people die - by Elder of Ziyon

The massive coverage over the past five weeks of a crisis that never happened crowds out coverage for the actual crises in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and other Arab and Muslim countries who have far more people at risk than the total number of Palestinians. Limited aid dollars are disproportionately sent to the one place where people aren't dying of COVID-19 and not sent to NGOs that can actually help millions of other Arabs.

Elder of Ziyon..
19 April '20..

I've seen lots of articles, retweeted hundreds of times by people who pretend to be humanitarian, about how Israeli prisons are going to be hotbeds of coronavirus because of crowding and lack of medical aid - both of which aren't true. Indeed, there are still no cases of COVID-19 in Israeli prisons with Palestinian prisoners.

But the prisons in the rest of the Arab and Muslim world? Practically no one cares:

Egyptian authorities have rejected pleas to free up overcrowded jails, continuing to imprison dissidents even as COVID-19 infections in the country rise.

One former detainee, who preferred not to be identified out of fear of repercussions, said there was a "catastrophe brewing in prisons" in the country because of unsanitary conditions and overcrowding.

He spent around two years in a cramped cell with some 25 other men in the Borg al-Arab prison, near the northern city of Alexandria, and recounted how a hole in the ground functioned as a rudimentary bathroom for showering and as a latrine.
"We had a tattered blanket that we used as a door for privacy, and the little running water we had... would wash away all the filth on an already dirty cement floor," said the former inmate, who was released in late 2015.

"We slept on our 'swords', meaning we lay on the floor next to each other on our sides. You couldn't sleep on your back, that was out of the question because of the lack of space," he added.

In war-torn Syria, the pandemic has put a spotlight back on the plight of political prisoners and long-term detainees.

In Iran, Reza Khandan, husband of jailed human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, described on Facebook the situation in Tehran's Evin prison, where family phone calls have been limited.

"The crowded meeting room is an ideal place for the virus to spread," he wrote, since many families have been forced to visit in person.

Because so many reporters are covering a non-existent crisis in Israel, there is no oxygen for real issues in the Arab world to be publicized.

And prisons aren't the only issue.

(Continue to Full Post)