June 12, 2014
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.598313
i'm stealing an article from Haaretz because it's so important. I've been silent about this for weeks hoping a more logical solution could be found...
Israeli doctors who force-feed Palestinian prisoners risk trial abroad
Israel Medical Association says it could not protect member physicians outside country; Knesset bill would allow jails to ask court for permission to force-feed hunger-striking prisoner whose life is in danger.
Doctors who force-feed hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, even if protected by Israeli law, could be successfully prosecuted abroad, the Israel Medical Association chairman told Haaretz on Wednesday.
“Doctors who do that are liable to be denounced by the global medical community, and it will be hard to defend them if they are prosecuted,” said Dr. Leonid Edelman.
There are currently dozens of hunger-striking administrative detainees in eight of Israel’s hospitals. The prisoners have been deemed security threats and held without trial for lengthy periods of time. They are demanding to either be charged and tried, or released.
Force-feeding is considered torture and forbidden by the Israel Medical Association’s code of ethics and various international resolutions, including the World Medical Assembly’s Tokyo Declaration — Guidelines for Physicians Concerning Torture (1975) and its Malta Declaration on Hunger Strikers (1991). A physician who force-feeds a prisoner thus risks being prosecuted abroad, even if a law allowing force-feeding of prisoners passes in Israel, the association says.
On Monday, the Knesset approved the first reading of a bill authorizing the Israel Prison Service to petition a district court for permission to force-feed a hunger-striking prisoner whose life is in danger.
At a recent conference, the Israel Medical Association, senior physicians, heads of scientific unions, representatives of the Health Ministry, representatives of the Red Cross and the Prison Service chief medical officer all reiterated their position against force-feeding.
“Medical ethics trump the law,” said Edelman. “Even if they pass a law obligating us to do this, doctors must refuse. In dark regimes, doctors followed laws that contravened ethics and that led to the worst things in history."
Edelman, who held an 11-day hunger strike during the 2011 doctors’ struggle for better terms, said force-feeding is “terrible torture.” He said there are two ways to force-feed — through a nasal or oral feeding tube, or intravenously. Both methods are very difficult to impose on patients who resist, he said, and in both cases, patients have to be restrained so they are not injured. “Sometimes we have to do this to patients with impaired judgment, and we know how much force needs to be used. It's forbidden to do this to an aware patient against his will — it’s true torture,” he said.
Edelman said that aside from the moral and ethical questions, force-feeding does not always save lives and can even hasten death in some cases. “This type of nutrition doesn’t always restore the body’s balance immediately or even in the short term. A prisoner who’s close to death is liable to die even if we start to feed him.”
He said that the government must take into account that force-feeding might spark as great an international outcry as the death of a hunger striker. “The Red Cross has explained to the Palestinians that Israeli doctors are following all the rules, and that they cannot force feed because of the ethical constraints.” He added that the Red Cross representatives told him that countries like Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia tried to pass force-feeding laws, “but those governments dropped it because the doctors objected.”
Asked when the first hunger striker might die if the situation does not change, Edelman could not say. “This is a type of hunger strike that the medical community doesn’t know enough about. The prisoners are drinking, some are taking vitamins, some are even getting sugar from time to time. This isn’t as familiar from the literature as is total avoidance of food and drink. They don’t want to die,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Israel Medical Association sent a letter to all the internal medicine departments and emergency rooms where the hunger strikers are being treated to remind them of the ban on force-feeding. Starting Sunday, the association will open a hot line for doctors treating such prisoners.
/june 13, 2014 The immorality of this government seems to be everywhere and affects everything. Ordinary citizens with no access to the government are almost totally helpless and we escape to the beach, to extreme religion, to elsewhere. How did Macbeth end? Remind me...
You miss one news broadcast around here you miss everything. Even though nothing is clear now the possibility of three young men being kidnapped is overwhelming and turns around all yesterday's news upside-down.
June 14, 2014 As usual we are doing everything wrong. Lots of news,talk, film of our searches in Hebron, etc. Big mistake. We should have hunkered down and shut up. So I am NOT going to watch Bibi's speech on tv now - rare though his public speeches to the people are. I'm going to do something else, and bite my nails. I cheated. Couldn't help it. And he says all the things i thought are wrong for this situation. Blame doesn't help. Reminding everyone of all the other attempted kidnappings this year doesn't help. Say we can only trust ourselves when we absolutely need the cooperation of the Palestinians now is stupid. Complaining to the world that we told you so is even more stupid.
what would I have said? Well if i was in charge we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place, would we. But this is the time to remember what Rabin said about making peace with enemies - who you going to talk to if not your enemy. And i am sure we are doing that in private. we must be cooperating somewhere...
June 15, 2014 and now for another side of the story. You know I have many different kinds of friends. One of them called today from the spa she is reveling in and asked me what I think of the kidnapping. I have learned that all I need to do is wait and the question will be answered on the other side. "Revenge!" she shouted. "We need to show them that if we can't sleep they can't sleep! We need to kill all the leaders!" Now my friend is usually a comic - if enigmatic - poet. I didn't dare answer her. Only prayed we'd wake up from this strange warped self-image we have. June 16, 2014 Why do I feel like I'm visiting a nursery school in New York City when I go to the nursery school here? There's Chinese, Korean, Russian - and the nursery-school-parent-task list is where they learn Hebrew. Or English.