farmdoc's blog post number 639

The Republic of Haiti is a former French colony in the Caribbean [1, 2, 3]. In 1804 it became the first Central American country to gain independence. Haiti’s first Jewish resident – Christopher Columbus’s interpreter – settled there in 1492. Its maximum Jewish population was about 300. In 1937 the Haitian government issued passports and visas allowing 100 Eastern European Jews to escape the Nazis. In 1947 Haiti voted for the United Nations partition of Palestine that created the State of Israel. Haiti and Israel maintain full diplomatic relations. [4] Last Tuesday a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti and killed perhaps 1% of its 9M population. To my knowledge Australia’s pledged a few million dollars but no direct material aid [5]. Australia, where the bloody hell are you? Contrast Israel which last Thursday sent on two jumbo jets a 220-person team comprising a 90-bed Home Front Command field hospital (including 40 doctors and 25 nurses), a search and rescue unit (including IDF search dogs), and units from Magen David Adom and the Israel Police [6, 7]. Last Sunday at the Israeli field hospital a Port-au-Prince woman delivered a son [8]. As a token of her appreciation and gratitude, she poignantly named him Israel. Another positive is that arguably the State of Israel could send such a big humanitarian team because in 2009 there were no suicide attacks in Israel [9]. Good news among bad.