(posted on March 6th 2018, by Aboud Dandachi)

In December 2017, the website Israel21c published an article by Abigail Klein Leichman on the assistance the IDF gave to open a brand new Syrian maternity hospital over the border inside Syria itself. Staffed by Syrian medical staff using equipment donated entirely by Israeli citizens, the hospital has treated over 200 pregnant women, and witnessed 30 births.

According to the article, “the hospital reportedly was opened in November in response to an urgent request from Syrian doctors who saw that many women could not get to the existing maternity hospital due to the difficult conditions.”

It says alot about the current state of the Middle East, that when Syrian doctors were desperate for assistance in providing medical care for pregnant Syrian women, they could not turn to the Iranian-backed despotic regime in Damascus, nor the Arab League, nor the increasingly ineffectual United Nations to provide something as non-controversial and straightforward as maternity medical care.

But such is the state of dysfunction of the Arab world, that it was Israel, a country that had every excuse and reason under the sun to stay above and out of the conflict, who stepped up and provided life-saving assistance to pregnant Syrian mothers and their newborns. Not Iran, nor the Russians, nor the Lebanese or Jordanians, and especially not the Assad dictatorship. Yet again, one is left utterly speechless and at a loss for words at the unprecedented and astonishing humanitarian actions of Israel and its citizens and army. Syrian babies will now be born into the world in a safe and healthy environment thanks to the efforts and donations of a country their parents were taught to regard as the ultimate evil in the region.

And while Israel’s detractors cannot even bring themselves to acknowledge Israel’s humanitarian efforts to Syrian victims of the conflict, not even they will be able to spin Israeli aid to maternity health care as “supporting ISIS and Al-Qaeda”. Of course, to the despotic regime in Damascus and their disgraceful backers, even Syrian babies in opposition areas are “ISIS and Al-Aqaeda”. Fortunately, Syrians have a far more humane neighbor in Israel. It cannot be said enough times, if only more of Syria’s neighbors were as humane as the Israelis, there would have been alot less Syrian refugees in this world.

The entire article by Israel21c is available here.