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[Mongrel]

Holeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Shit:

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.

[Cthulhu-chan]

goddamn that's pretty, almost comedically, evil.

[TA]

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”.

[Mongrel]

Something about looking into abysses...

[Disposable Ninja]

Barack Obama submits to the Israeli Government a strongly worded suggestion that it would perhaps behoove them to not commit insidious acts of ethnic cleansing.

Republicans slam Obama for undermining Israel's right to exist.

[Mongrel]

ethnic cleansing.

That sounds hyperbolic at first, but if you actually look at the relevant UN definitions and if this is confimed as a deliberate program, this does in fact meet the legal criteria for genocide.

[Büge]

If so, aren't we supposed to go to war against them?

[Cthulhu-chan]

pfft technicalities.

[François]

The US didn't give a crap about a guns-and-machetes genocide in Rwanda, they sure aren't about to give a crap about needles.

[Royal☭]

Ha ha like America has ever gone to war to prevent a genocide.

[Mongrel]

A lot of people are poo-poohing this as "merely" a program where legitimate health care was delivered without proper education to poor, uneducated folk and adding that talk of ethnic cleansing and the like is inappropriate.

I'll grant that it's more attempted ethnic cleansing rather than a fully successful event, but I still think that hot potato labels like Genocide or Ethnic Cleansing are appropriate in this case. Even if you take the "it was a harmless misunderstanding" argument at face value, it still describes an incredibly paternal (and probably racist) viewpoint. Extreme labels should be used to throw this into stark focus, because the attitudes that made stuff like this possible have been hidden in the shadows too often.

I would honestly rather see them gun-shy about bad PR rather than getting too comfortable doing shit like that.

[Thad]

While we're talking about the technical definitions of hot-button terms: I was going to throw "eugenics" out there, but it only meets the definition of eugenics if it's to root out a perceived genetic defect.  If it was only intended to prevent poor people with a perceived inferior culture and/or education from reproducing, then it's technically not eugenics.

Doesn't make it any less horrifying, of course.  But I DO think it's important to the conversation to have the right word for it.  If it meets the UN definition of genocide then by all means, go with that one.  (Though I think Mordin Solus would point out that they didn't actually kill anybody.)

[Mongrel]

Well, when you boil it down, there's (almost certainly) no mustache-twirling conspiracy. It's just evidence of a horrifyingly paternal and possibly racist attitude among the Israeli medical community and possibly the Israeli public at large. The fact that internal Israeli elements were what first broke the story is reassuring - to a degree.

The thing is, I am 100% okay with them being tarred with the overreaction brush because it may just prompt some crucial self-reflection. like it or not Israel is absolutely going to be held to a higher standard here.

And, as a couple people have pointed out elsewhere, a decline in birthrate of 50% over a single generation "should have people's eyeballs popping out of their heads".

[Brentai]

The takeaway I'm getting from this is that it wouldn't be such a huge issue if it hadn't been Israel (unless it was China or some other country with a pattern of human rights violations that we've given a pass to).

Israel can whine about persecution all it wants but, let's be totally honest, they have really been asking for it for a long time.  Yes I realize I am probably quoting an actual Nazi verbatim here.

[François]

If it is ever a crime to be governed by ignoble sacks of shit, then the Israeli people is hardly the only guilty of it.

[Mongrel]

The takeaway I'm getting from this is that it wouldn't be such a huge issue if it hadn't been Israel (unless it was China or some other country with a pattern of human rights violations that we've given a pass to).

Israel can whine about persecution all it wants but, let's be totally honest, they have really been asking for it for a long time.  Yes I realize I am probably quoting an actual Nazi verbatim here.

I dunno, I think that if this happened in the US or something it'd be no less reprehensible.

As for Israel, it won't be the first or the last time I say that the modern State of Israel has arguably done worse damage to the image (and safety) of the Jewish people than any lunatic anti-semite of the past five hundred years.

[Mongrel]

Whoops, looks like I spoke too soon. It's getting a little more damning as further information trickles out:

http://www.euronews.com/2013/01/29/israel-admits-to-immigrant-birth-control-program-/

Ethiopian women received 57% of all Depo-Provera delivered in the country, although they account for less than 2% of the total population, according to a study released in 2009.

I'm sure it's probably just a whole bunch of miscommunications though.

[Royal☭]

Yeah, I've been reading a few reports that also say that the women were pretty much lied to point-blank about what they were receiving. In fact, the original article linked on here quotes a woman saying she'd been told it was just an inoculation.

Man, wait until the newspapers find out about the apartheid state they've been running in Palestine, as well.

[Brentai]

Not saying it wouldn't be less reprehensible, just that people wouldn't leap to "GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED MINORITY POPULATION SUPPRESSION PROGRAM" if it happened in the U.S., no matter how appropriate or true the allegations would be.

Basically the story wouldn't have gained any traction if it wasn't likely to be what it looks like and looking likelier every day.

[Royal☭]

People were kind of upset when they found out that we were forcing syphilis on Guatemalans. Or to blacks