December 28, 2015
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has expressed its strong concern about the photo exhibition “In between wars”, staged by the NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) (Doctors Without Borders) which opened in Paris this week. Parts of the exhibition about the Israel-Palestinian conflict focus on Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, and a Palestinian terrorist killed by Israeli forces, though it never mentions his crimes. The exhibition, which accuses Israeli prisons of torture, also fails to mention Hamas’s deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians, its use of civilian shields, and its utilization of medical facilities and schools to fire rockets on southern Israel.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“According to its mission statement, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is supposed to be a non-political, humanitarian organisation, helping people worldwide and providing emergency medical aid to those affected by armed conflict, epidemics and disasters. By taking sides in this dispute and demonising Israel, it is damaging its credibility. This exhibition is unabashedly propagandistic and is a one sided dumbing down of a complicated conflict which charges Israel with absolute culpability for the situation in Gaza and fails to even mention Hamas. The lack of context and balance is disturbing. Where are the photos and words showing what it is like for an Israeli child to be woken by a siren and to have 15 seconds to run to a shelter because of Hamas’s indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets at millions of civilians? Why doesn’t MSF mention that all the goods and infrastructure Israel left behind in Gaza in 2005 have been turned into rocket launchers? Or that Hamas caused the death of more than 160 children who were forced to dig tunnels for the purpose of murdering Israelis? Or that Hamas is willing to sacrifice the lives of its civilian population, including defenseless children, by using them as human shields? Or that Hamas has hidden rockets in schools and hospitals? A more accurate exhibiting would have explained that Hamas has openly declared that it wants to eradicate Israel that it has fired more than 15,000 rockets at Israel while causing unspeakable suffering among its own people and that Israel has rightly defended itself against this genocidal movement.”
For further information please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on (03) 9272 5677
Join the ADC on Facebook
or visit our website at antidef.org.au