Hillel: If Not Now, When?
"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?"

Israel's Field Hospital in Haiti: a small, hopeful miracle in a sea of misery

Israel has set up the only surgically capable field hospital in Haiti
Watch this 2 minute CNN clip!



The reporters shock is apparent as she tours the Israeli facility with full imaging equipment, ventilators, and functional operating rooms. Israel, coming from half a world away, got a fully functional hospital set up by Saturday, while the American hospital, coming from Haiti's backyard, is not more than a first aid unit.

Not well known, is that Israel was denied landing clearance by the Americans controlling the airport. After a 14 hour flight they were to be diverted to the Dominican Republic. Somehow the Israeli pilot found out about my friend's brother, a prominent and wealthy Jewish man whose family has been in Haiti for generations. He has many businesses there, and even though he could leave, decided to stay to help. From the cockpit, the pilot called my friend's brother by satellite phone and he directed the plane to an open field on his property. The Israeli pilot landed a Hercules (that is one big plane!) between two warehouses in an open field and it was offloaded there. They were operational 18 hours later. That's getting the job done!

There is also video footage on Israeli TV showing crowds in the streets chanting "Israel Good Job. Israel Good Job" This special medical unit was disbanded 9 years ago for lack of funding and only reconstituted a few months ago. I think this is one of the most important things that Diaspora Jews can support during the Haitian crises. It seems to be the mot effective care on the ground- and puts Israel's best face forward at the same time. See article below.


Israel's Haiti field hospital: a microcosm of a country's turmoil

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The Israeli field hospital in the earthquake-stricken Haitian capital reflects the streets of the city, fluctuating between despair and hope amid the looting, violence and stories of miracles. Each account takes on great importance against the background of the earthquake that devastated the Western hemisphere's poorest country.

A baby around 18 months old lies on a bed in intensive care. She was admitted with an open sore and a massive infection throughout her body. The respirator shakes her every time it forces air into her. She has already been resuscitated a few times, and the team is not optimistic.

In the children's ward, located in a tent, is a baby under a year old; someone left him here after he was pulled out of the rubble Sunday morning. He has open sores on his leg and does not make a sound except for a slight chirping when the doctor checks his leg. The doctors say he is in shock.

"His condition is stable and pretty good considering what he's been through. He'll get antibiotics and surgery on the leg - it's a rare case of survival; apparently he was in an air pocket," says Dr. Assaf Amit, who heads the children's emergency department. "When he came here his condition was life-threatening."

His parents aren't here - perhaps they are dead - but the Israeli nurses caress him and give him a warm bottle of milk. "Apparently it's genetic, the ability to survive - he was lying in the rubble without food for five days," says Gali Wiest, the delegation's head nurse.

"We were shocked by the sights, and the nurses here have to cope with providing nursing care - it's a third-world country," she says. "I have four children myself and I was an emergency-room nurse, but the sights here are very difficult and you need a lot of mental fortitude. We've already taken in 87 children, most in moderate to serious condition; there have been a few operations and amputations, and they keep coming."

But no one stays for long. The hospital has a two-week mandate - nothing compared to the time it takes to recover from complex injuries.

"We're all thinking about the fact that we discharge them into the street, in effect, because they have no home," says Dr. Avi Yitzhak. "But you have to make the right decision: Either you take in 40 people and treat them for two weeks or you try to save as many as possible to at least stop the primary injury."

Yitzhak immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia in 1991 and says he feels a special connection to the patients here. He says he knows the problems of practicing medicine in the developing world.

"There's no organized network of clinics here, there's nowhere to discharge them to and we have to treat as many people as possible, as long as it's still possible to save them," Yitzhak says.

"When I went out on rescue yesterday I saw what was happening in the streets, the bodies, the people who didn't know what to do. It's obvious that the work is very intensive and I assume that we could burn out at a certain stage. But for now we're full of energy and we're thrilled by our ability to help."

Willsmith Joseph, 9, had surgery Saturday to amputate his toes, which had developed gangrene. Sunday morning he was in a deep sleep in the children's ward. His older brother knelt beside him. They will have to leave before noon. The nurse gives him two packets of antibiotics and some acetaminophen and tries to explain in English when to take them.

"Where are you going?," I ask the older boy. "We have no place to go. To the tent encampment," he says. "Our house was ruined." Willsmith's face contorts in pain as he walks with his new crutches.

"Had we not amputated his toes the gangrene would have spread and he would have died within days," Dr. Yitzhak explains. "Yes, it hurts, and there's an infection, but he'll live. It's a drop in the ocean, and it's frustrating, but we have to do the maximum to help as many people as possible."

Most of the wounds are infected and neglected - some people were pulled out of the rubble after being trapped for a few days, others simply couldn't get to a hospital or were turned away. Max Darlene Azur, 29, came to the Israeli hospital with open wounds on both sides of her leg. For four days she shouted and writhed in pain in the town square. The bodies of two of her cousins were still inside her home.

"I was in my room, and the wall simply collapsed onto my leg. But now I feel much better," she says.

The hospital also had its first birth Sunday. Jeanne-Michelle was brought in with labor pains and delivered a beautiful boy, her fourth child. Jeanne-Michelle sits indifferent most of the time, but when she says her newborn's name - Israel - a broad smile spreads across her face. "I feel fine," she says. She will be discharged within a few hours, to make room for other deliveries.

"It's very symbolic," Dr. Dar Shir says. "In a place where even without the disaster infant mortality is among the highest in the world and most women don't give birth in hospitals, the best experts in Israel delivered her baby. It's very moving, and balances out a little the things that are happening here, and reminds us that a woman who is ready to give birth will do so even when there's an earthquake. It's what keeps the human race going. Of course it's a problem to discharge them under these conditions, but at least she delivered safely and both mother and baby are in excellent condition."

According to the field hospital's commander, Dr. Itzik Kreis, "Throughout the night we continued to deal with saving lives; we received a number of patients in very poor shape who needed surgery and intensive care.

"For now the other medical teams don't have the ability to provide more than first aid. We are focusing on saving lives," says Colonel Kreis. "Most of the injuries are a result of the earthquake, but in a few days the situation can change and regular patients will start to come in as well."

How to donate via Israeli organizations:

Foreign Ministry:
Tel (+972) 2-659-4222

ZAKA:
Online at https://www.zaka.us/haiti.asp
Or via bank account:
Zaka-International
Bank of Jerusalem
Branch # 30
18 Keren Hayesod, Jerusalem, Israel
Account No: 300060134
Swift Code: JERSILIT

Magen David Adom:
Magen David Adom Trumot Lakaribim
Israel Discount Bank
Branch # 151
Yad Eliahu, Tel Aviv
Account No: 17926

"Vast Majority of Residents Are Decent"

On Sunday, the Miami Herald published my letter to the editor regarding Councilman Blynn's racially hostile comments about closing down the basketball courts, available here. I am also publishing a copy of the text here on my blog.

Vast majority of citizens are decent

I grew up in Keystone Point, and always enjoyed using the basketball courts in the park. I'm a white Jewish guy, and the park was one of the only places where people from all over North Miami of different races could play and interact with each other.

I valued that experience as a child, and enjoyed making friends with my fellow North Miami residents, including many African Americans.

One bad apple breaking the law and bringing a gun to the park is no reason to close down the entire basketball court [Official recommends closing court, Neighbors, Dec. 27]. Closing the courts would be a sad and wasteful disposal of community resources, and even worse, it would be motivated by apparently racist intentions. Shame on you, Michael Blynn, for fanning the flames of racial insensitivity and discrimination. Your comments show a deep hostility and disrespect for thousands of North Miami citizens, the vast majority of whom are honest, hard-working, taxpaying citizens of our city. It's disgraceful.

ADAM SCHWARTZBAUM

NORTH MIAMI

Blynn makes racial politics get ugly in North Miami

For the first time ever, there was a shooting at the basketball courts that stand beside the tot lot near my childhood home in Keystone Point, a peninsular-island community of mid- and upper- class homes aside the intercoastal waters of North Miami.

Shootings are certainly troubling, and they're not just happening in Keystone Point. Just yesterday, a woman was shot in the parking lot outside the Aventura Mall. In North Miami, my local councilman, Michael Blynn's response to the shooting was to suggest that we shut the basketball courts, apparently because of the large number of black teenagers that congregate there. Should we shutter Aventura Mall as well, because it is known to attract a large number of "African-American teenagers"? Obviously not. Yet it is by that very same logic that Michael Blynn wants to close the North Miami basketball courts.

There are reasonable ways to deal with violence that secure our common spaces for the good of many, rather than squandering the space for the actions of a few. Our communal, recreational spaces are as or even more precious and than our commercial ones, and their protection is our entire city's responsibility. Yet my own City Councilman, Mayor Michael Blynn, is on the record that the park should be closed indefinitely. Why has he taken such an extreme position after one isolated incident?

Blynn first made his thoughts first heard at a Keystone Point Homeowners Association Meeting. The Miami Herald reported:

"Although North Miami Police Chief Clint Shannon described the shooting as an isolated incident, Blynn warned residents that crime 'cannot be controlled' and that their quality of life will be affected if the court remains open.

Blynn added, 'No offense, but the African-American unemployment rate has increased in this area.'"

In all fairness, the Herald reporter must have thought, this is pretty outrageous statement. When he contacted Blynn later by phone to give him a chance to "clarify," Blynn said:

"a worsening economy exacerbates crime and unemployed African-American teenagers are more prone to commit crimes than whites.

'Crime statistics indicate that certain people commit more criminal activities than others,' he said.

'That's just the way it is.'"

So let me get this straight. By Blynn's logic, since "a worsening economy exacerbates crime and unemployed African-American teenagers are more prone to commit crimes than whites" and "crime cannot ever be controlled," the only way to assure that our "quality of life" is "not affected" is by shutting down the basketball courts indefinitely . . . because many African-Americans recreate there?

I'm positively baffled. We live in a city with a Haitian-American mayor. Many of our councilmen are black men. My sister teaches at North Miami Middle School, where well over 90% of her students are people of color. Is Michael Blynn sending 130 of my sister's Middle School students a message that the Keystone Point basketball courts are not open to people of their kind? That they are unwelcome on "our" side of Biscayne Boulevard? I struggle to find any way of forgiving the facially discriminatory and racially hostile tone of his rhetoric. It seems to echo from an ugly, segregationist American past that once ghettoized our nation's cities. The heritage of segregation and slavery is one whose ill effects linger on in our uneven and underfunded public education system, and in the very disparate incarceration rates that Blynn cites to support his noxious reasoning.

Reasonable and well meaning people can disagree about how best to provide security at the tot lot. No doubt, many good suggestions will be provided in the coming days by a variety of community stakeholders including our local police, councilpeople, and fellow citizens of every race. Some are already being discussed. What isn't needed is reactionary rhetoric that divides and marginalizes whole swaths of our community. I hope my councilman will apologize and reflect upon the reasons why his comments are so deeply offensive to his own constituents.

Read the full Herald article here.
Take action: let Michael Blynn know this kind of divisive racial rhetoric is unacceptable in our community. Reach him here to let him know exactly how you feel.

Facebook is designed to keep you from contacting too many of your "friends" at once

I first noticed this problem when I was helping manage the Facebook group "Save the Rose Art Museum" in the early days following Brandeis University's announcement that it was closing the museum and pawning off its $300 million collection to pay its bills in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The day I learned of the crisis, I joined a burgeoning group made by Brandeis student Zev Rowlett, the largest of three that had sprung up within hours of the release of President Reinharz’s statement announcing the Boards unanimous decision. Working with fellow alum Jenna Weiss, the two of us quickly got many of our Facebook friends to join the group and tell their friends about the news. Word spreads like wildfire on the Internet, particularly when people are passionate about something like the Rose, and so our group membership swelled from 200 700 to 3000 members within a week or so.

As our movement to save the Rose grew, I sent out one short message each day with an update on recent developments in the situation, links to breaking news and commentaries on sites around the web, and information on who to contact to write letters and make phone calls to voice opposition to the University's decision. Members of the group often wrote me back with tips, insights and their own unique perspectives on the unfolding events, allowing me to better understand how my Brandeis community and the larger world of Art lovers could collaborate to save the Rose. Facebook gave me the capability to gather insights about how to effectively communicate and collaborate with the members of the group and exercise leadership in helping it grow. It was Facebook at its most democratic (with a small "d") best: providing simple online tools to allow the quick and successful formation of like-minded individuals into groups dedicated to advancing an important value in our society and enabling those persons to work together to achieve a common end.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the social movement. One day, as I hit "send" on an update to the group, a box popped up to scold me that I could not send a group message to more than 5000 members at a time. Facebook put a cap on me. To this day, the group has 7,656 members, and the only way I can communicate with them is by posting messages on the wall or discussion board of the group itself, an arguably inferior method of directly reaching into the Facebook mailbox that acts as a more direct conduit to a person’s attention.

For some reason, Facebook has decided to cut off an Administrator's ability to send out messages to more than 5000 people at a time. And that's just one of many examples of a method by which Facebook keeps you from contacting too many of your friends, too much of the time, by limiting the capabilities of its platform and preventing users from trying to take up too much of each other's attention.

Of course there must be some rationale for these kinds of rules. It is undoubtedly cheaper for Facebook to keep its servers from allowing users to connect with only a limited numbers of "Friends" at a time because maximum usage strains expensive hardware resources responsible for efficiently processing so much information every second of the day. It also helps avoids the MySpace problem of letting too many spammers reach you electronically too much of the time, particularly in your inbox.

But it also has its drawbacks. No longer could I send direct updates to my members about the quickly changing and quite dramatic events surrounding Brandeis' decision to shutter the Rose Art Museum. Facebook witnessed the power of its own software and decided I'd had enough. As you may have noticed, the limit on how many people a group Administrator can send a message to is just one of all sorts of Facebook limits: on how many friends you can tag in a note, send a message to at once, or invite to a group or game at a time. Forgot about being able to easily agglomerate your friends’ email addresses; you’ll have to open up their profile pages one at a time for that luxury.

It makes it deliberately more difficult for an organizer like me with a good faith reason to contact the “friends” he is trying to most immediately reach.

Facebook is risk-averse. It doesn’t trust users like you to take some action to limit your interactions with the groups or individuals you no longer wish to hear from, whether by contacting the individual sending the message directly to tell them why they no longer chose to receive those messages, leaving a group, or even defriending someone. Nor does it make it easy to manage our relationships with our contacts on Facebook in easier ways. Facebook doubts our ability to control our own experience on its site, and so denies us the tools to manage our experience with its software. And it is influenced by a bias that we'd rather hear less from our associates than more.

This might be the case, but it shouldn’t be, and today I discovered another reason why. Today Alan Khazei, the president of Be the Change, Inc. and co-founder of City Year, was endorsed by the Boston Globe in the Democratic Senate race to fill the great political and moral position once held by Ted Kennedy. I was excited to see the mainstream Globe’s endorsement of the scrappy public servant with a grassroots movement ("Khazei is Massachusetts' best chance to produce another great senator”) and buoyed by recent polls showing Alan commanding a larger share of the vote than ever before.

Despite these hopeful signs, the reality is also that Alan’s numbers are nearly half that of the Democratic front-runner, and because he’s taken no money from special interests and is only running for public office for the first time, he’s been less able to mount the kind of effective campaign to win the support of the greater universe of Democratic voters in Massachusetts outside the national service world who have simply never heard of him. In low-turnout primary elections, name recognition is a big boost, and for Alan, the battle has always been uphill. But the dynamic of a primary, with its endemic anemic voter turnout levels, also empowers small groups of dedicated people with the ability to turn out enough votes to sway the election.

It is with that goal – to inform people about the Globe’s endorsement, and introduce them to the man I hope they will vote for next Tuesday in the primary election in Massachusetts – that I published a blog post on my website earlier today with the news. Because my blog links to my Facebook account, the post was published on my wall within an hour.

After a friend re-posted the note on her own wall, I realized it could be very helpful to directly contact the my Facebook friends who are in networks in Massachusetts to politely tell them about Alan’s bid and ask for their support. I wouldn’t normally send such a large message to such a diverse group on Facebook, and good etiquette dictates I not send a message again unless in response to a direct contact, save for perhaps one additional message the day before the election reminding people to vote. In such a way, I would be able to effectively and politely use the power of Facebook to make the powerful kind of political impact that campaigns always dream about and work diligently to make through traditional and more costly methods like phone banking parties and door-to-door grassroots advocacy. Yet Facebook denies me that ability. It tells me that if I want to contact all these people at once, I’m going to have to work harder to get their attention.

It is primarily for that reason that I am posting this note today. While I’m writing this putting for the general interest all Facebook users share in how the platform operates, I am specifically tagging my “maximum” in this note because I believe these individuals may be Massachusetts residents with a common interest in filling the United States Senate with honorable men of integrity dedicated to public service and democracy. You'll find my original post here. If you are one of those people, I ask you only, and with great respect, to consider your civic duty as an American and make a principled decision about how to vote in nine days with the hope that my candidate will inspire you to cast your lot with him. And of course I’d be happy if you could forward the information about Alan along to any friends or family you know in the great state of Massachusetts, where I earned my bachelor’s degree.

I also hope that as Facebook grows, it will reconsider some if its limits on its members’ ability to organize and reach one another. Social networking is fast becoming one of the most democratic mediums of all time, but it will only improve if we, the users of its resources, demand it.

Alan Khazei for Senate -- Vote in Massachusetts next Tuesday!

It is exceedingly rare when a candidate runs for higher office who is so inspiring, so unconnected to special interests, and so truly driven by idealism and a passion for service, and even rarer when such a person has a chance of actually winning the nomination of a major political party. Yet in Massachusetts, this kind of opportunity is now represented by the candidacy of City Year founder Alan Khazei.

Alan is a person who has dedicated his life to serving our nation, bringing Americans together to improve our civic life, and being a positive agent for change in our society. Today, the Boston Globe has formally endorsed Alan as the right candidate to win the Democratic primary 9 days from now in Massachusetts.

I am no longer a Massachusetts resident, but having lived there for four years, and being a faithful Democrat, I can think of no person better suited to continue the legacy of Ted Kennedy than Alan Khazei -- a man who will serve as a truly inspirational leader in the United States Senate.

To all my friends in Massachusetts, I urge you to get out and vote for Alan Khazei next Tuesday. Primary elections have notoriously low turnouts, and the efforts of just a few thousand young people getting out and voting when they normally wouldn't could make the absolute difference in this campaign. Make it a priority to get out and elect Alan next Tuesday, and remind your family and friends in the area to do the same. Together we can assure this great American is elected to the Senate in 2010!

Learn more about Alan's campaign and how you can get involved in his grassroots effort!

Famous People

President Barack Obama


Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House


Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz


Israeli President Shimon Peres


Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader


Professor Goodwin Liu, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society

Earth warming faster as catastrophe draws nearer

On global warming, we're playing with fire. Jeff Goodell published a powerful little article in Rolling Stone this week detailing the fact -- not surprising, in my opinion -- that global warming is happening faster then the world's leading scientists ever thought possible. Scientists once thought the Arctic would be completely melted by the end of the century; now, they believe the entire ice mass will be gone in the next couple of decades. The Arctic is dramatically smaller than it was even ten years ago because the ever expanding open waters melt ice faster, which warms the water quicker, assuring that the sum temperature of the waters are higher and less and less ice refreezes every winter. In short, positive feedback.

Here's the really scary part. Beneath the Arctic is a layer of permafrost "more than 1000 feet thick in some places" made of "partially decomposed trees, plants, woolly mammoths and other organic matter that lived in the region thousands of years ago." The terrifying reality is this:

As it thaws, all that rotting debirs send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Worse, the debris is a feast for microscopic bugs that transform it into methane, a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than CO2. All told, there are some 1 TRILLION metric tons of carbon buried in the Arctic - the equivalent of the oil, gas and coal reserves on the entire planet."

It gets worse.

"A similarly huge amount of methane is frozen in the floor of the shallow seas surrounding the Arctic. As the water warms, these bubbles of methane ice can bubble to the surface and release million of tons of methane -- more or less cooking the planet overnight."

Think of the enormity of that sum of methane - "equivalent to more than all of the oil, gas and coal reserves on the entire planet," doubled. Then recognize that methane is TWENTY times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. What we are talking about is no less a global meltdown that would raise sea levels by as much as nine feet by the end of the century. Such a rise in water levels would leave major cities like Miami, London, New York and Shanghai under water. It would also flood entire countries in low lying areas like Bangladesh, destroying the homes of millions of people.

The time to take action to stop global warming has come; in fact, it may have already passed.

One year ago tonight: a night to remember

For all of you who, like me, are still waiting for the most sweeping change to come, and might be feeling a little down from all the negativity and political bs of Washington, remember that one year ago tonight, we made history when we elected Barack Obama President of the United States. This is a great country where great things can happen; let us never forget it!