Haifa hospital
Haifa hospitalIsrael news photo: Flash 90

A CNN report on a three-year-old Gaza girl suffering from a disease caused by kidney failure has the makings of a great human interest story. However, the network turned it into an article that  is uncomplimentary to Israel while ignoring Israel's care for the child's health as opposed to Palestinian Authority indifference.

The girl from Gaza is Aya abu Mouwais. The CNN report effectively creates deserved sympathy for her, beginning with the description, “The second she opens her eyes she starts crying. The 3-year-old is in pain every waking moment and has been for two years.

“She is suffering from oxalosis, a condition which occurs when the kidneys fail. Doctors in Israel say if the Palestinian girl doesn't have a liver and kidney transplant she could die within months.”

Instead of praising Israel for accepting Arab patients from terrorist-run Gaza, CNN leads the reader to think that Israel is the villain.

The article describes the family having to drive back and forth to a Haifa hospital every day, including a wait at the Gaza crossing. No mention is made that the passage point has been used by terrorists in ambulances and on crutches.

Last year, a sick woman in Gaza used the crossing on her way to Soroka Medical center in Be’er Sheva, where she planned to blow herself up in a suicide attack. She was stopped by attentive guards before she could activate the explosives. Soldiers were once killed when they rushed forward to help an Arab on crutches who turned out to be a suicide bomber.

After CNN continues to describe the plight of the little girl, who undergoes dialysis treatments that have “made her bones brittle” to the point that she has a broken arm, the writer then points out the medical care is paid for by the Palestinian Authority but then adds the PA has no money for liver and kidney transplants in Belgium, at a cost of approximately $700,000.

Instead of noting the medical care the girl receives at Haifa, CNN implicitly blames Israel for not providing an organ transplant because “only Israeli citizens are allowed organ transplants in Israel unless the patient sources organs themselves.” The article fails to note that the policy is very common in many countries, who consider their own citizens a priority.

CNN also does not refer to the general shortage of organs in Israel, a small country where many Israeli Arab and Jewish patients have died waiting for a donor.

No questions are raised in the article why there are no organ transplants available in Gaza and why the Palestinian Authority has not asked for financial help from the United States or European countries, which have channeled billions of dollars to the PA in the past several years, which has been spent on new vehicles and paying Arabs to take over and build on Israeli government land in Judea and Samaria.

The author also ignored the fact that despite the takeover of Gaza by Hamas terrorists, Israel each month allows hundreds of sick Arabs to receive care in Israeli hospitals, often at government expense, while forwarding humanitarian aid to the region, much of  which is confiscated by Hamas or sold at a profit, rather than delivered to the intended recipients.