Ringworm and Radiation
By Barry Chamish August 19, 2004
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten television screened a
do***entary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor
party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all
Sephardi youths of a generation.
"The Ringworm Children" (translated in Hebrew as "100,000 Rays"),
directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize
for "best do***entary" at the Haifa International film festival, and
in the past year has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film
festivals around the world. But it had yet to come to Israeli
television screens. The subject is the mass irradiation of hundreds of
thousands of young Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries --
Sephardim, as they are called today. The story goes like this:
In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr.
Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines,
supplied to him by the American army.
They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire
generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every
Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays
through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the
Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health
budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is
equivalent to billions of dollars today.
To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on
"school trips" and their parents were later told the x-rays were a
treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children
died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest
developed cancers that killed thousands over time and are still
killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders
such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, chronic headaches and
psychosis.
That is the subject of the do***entary in cold terms. It is another
matter to see the victims on the screen.
To watch the Moroccan lady describe what getting 35,000 times the dose
of allowable x-rays in her head feels like. "I screamed make the
headache go away. Make the headache go away. Make the headache go
away. But it never went away."
To watch the bearded man walk hunched down the street. "I'm in my
fifties and everyone thinks I'm in my seventies. I have to stoop when
I walk so I won't fall over. They took my youth away with those x-
rays."
To watch the old lady who administered the doses to thousands of
children: "They brought them in lines. First their heads were shaved
and smeared in burning gel. Then a ball was put between their legs and
the children were ordered not to drop it, so they wouldn't move. The
children weren't protected over the rest of their bodies. There were
no lead vests for them. I was told I was doing good by helping to
remove ringworm. If I knew what dangers the children were facing, I
would never have cooperated. Never!"
Because the whole body was exposed to the rays, the genetic makeup of
the children was often altered, affecting the next generation. We
watch the woman with the distorted face explain, "All three of my
children have the same cancers my family suffered. Are you going to
tell me that's a coincidence?"
The majority of the victims were Moroccan because they were the most
numerous of the Sephardi immigrants. The generation that was poisoned
became the country's perpetual poor and criminal class. It didn't make
sense. The Moroccans who fled to France became prosperous and highly
educated. The common explanation was that France got the rich, thus
smart ones. The real explanation is that every French Moroccan child
didn't have his brain cells fried with gamma rays.
The film made it perfectly plain that this operation was no accident.
The dangers of x-rays had been known for over forty years. We read the
official guidelines for x-ray treatment in 1952. The maximum dose to
be given a child in Israel was .5 rad. There was no mistake made. The
children were deliberately poisoned.
David Deri makes the point that only Sephardi children received the x-
rays: "I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They
asked our names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their
seats. The dark children were put on the bus."
The film presents a historian who first gives a potted history of the
eugenics movement. In a later sound bite, he declares that the
ringworm operation was a eugenics program aimed at weeding out the
perceived weak strains of society. The Moroccan lady is back on the
screen. "It was a Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to
know is why no one stood up to stop it."
David Deri, on film and then as a panel member, relates the
frustration he encountered when trying to find his childhood medical
records. "All I wanted to know was what they did to me. I wanted to
know who authorized it. I wanted to trace the chain of command. But
the Health Ministry told me my records were missing." Boaz Lev, the
Health Ministry's spokesman chimes in: "Almost all the records were
burned in a fire."
We are told that a US law in the late '40s put a stop to the human
radiation experiments conducted on prisoners, the mentally feeble and
the like. The American atomic program needed a new source of human lab
rats and the Israeli government supplied it. Here was the government
cabinet at the time of the ringworm atrocities:
Prime Minister - David Ben Gurion; Finance Minister - Eliezer Kaplan;
Settlement Minister - Levi Eshkol; Foreign Minister - Moshe Sharrett;
Health Minister - Yosef Burg;
Labor Minister - Golda Meir; Police Minister - Amos Ben Gurion.
The highest ranking non-cabinet post belonged to the Director General
of the Defence Ministry, ****mon Peres.
That a program involving the equivalent of billions of dollars of
American government funds should be unknown to the Prime Minister of
cash-strapped Israel is ridiculous. Ben Gurion had to have been in on
the horrors and undoubtedly chose his son to be Police Minister in
case anyone interfered with them.
Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan was rewarded for eternity with a
hospital named after him near Rehovot. But he's not alone in this
honor. Chaim Sheba, who ran Ringworm Incor****ated, had a whole medical
complex named after him. Needless to say, if there is an ounce of
decency in the local medical profession, those hospital names will
have to change.
After the film ended, there was a panel discussion which included a
Moroccan singer, David Edri, head of the Compensation Committee for
Ringworm X-Ray Victims, and Boaz Lev, a spokesman for the Ministry Of
Health.
TV host Dan Margalit tried to put a better face on what he'd
witnessed. He explained meekly that "the state was poor. It was a
matter of day to day survival." Then he stopped. He knew there was no
excusing the atrocities which the Sephardi children endured.
But it was the Moroccan singer who summed up the experience best.
"It's going to hurt, but the truth has to be told. If not, the wounds
will never heal."
There is one person alive who knows the truth: ****mon Peres. The only
way to get to the truth and start the healing is to investigate him
for his role in the mass poisoning of over 100,000 Sephardi children
and youth.
But here is why that won't happen. The film was aired at the same time
as the highest-rated TV show of the year, the finale of Israel's
talent-hunt show: "A Star Is Born." The next day, the newly-born
star's photo took up half the front pages. There was not a word about
"The Ringworm Children" in any paper, nor on the Internet. Until now.
http://web.israelinsider.com/views/3998.htm
Mirelle
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