In Israele, durante gli anni ’50, in barba alla Legge Mancino, gli ebrei di origine europea friggevano il cervello con i raggi X ai “fratelli minori” di origine sefardita.
E’ proprio vero: Paese che vai, usanza che trovi …
(in calce testo originale in inglese)
Con il pretesto di combattere la tricofitosi
(ringworm) nella testa dei bambini sefarditi
immigrati, per lo più dal Marocco, o rapiti dallo Yemen, il Ministero della Sanità israeliano, sotto la supervisione di Simon Peres, acquistò nel 1951 negli Stati Uniti sette macchine di Raggi X e li adoperò per
un esperimento nucleare di massa su un’intera generazione di cavie umane sefardite. A 100.000 bambini sefarditi vennero sparate in testa e sul corpo
(non coperto da protezioni) dosi 35.000 volte superiori alla soglia massima di raggi gamma. Tali da friggergli il cervello. Per avergli risparmiato gli esperimenti, a quel punto ufficialmente proibiti, sui propri detenuti, o malati mentali, il governo USA versò a quello israeliano 300 milioni di sterline israeliane all’anno, per una somma che oggi varrebbe miliardi di dollari. 6000 bambini morirono subito, gli altri svilupparono tumori che hanno continuato a
uccidere e uccidono anche oggi. In vita, le vittime hanno sofferto e soffrono di epilessia, amnesia, Alzheimer, psicosi, emicranie croniche. Essendo stato esposto l’intero corpo, i bambini svilupparono difetti
genetici. La generazione che sopravvisse diventò in perpetuo la classe più povera, malata ed emarginata del paese.”
Originale in inglese:
Running rings around the victims
Tens of thousands of immigrants underwent radiation against ringworm in the 1940s and `50s. Now, 60 years later, they are still fighting for compensation from the state for illnesses said to be due to the treatment.
By Aryeh Dayan
On the Israeli national agenda, the ringworm affair is in a class with the affairs of the Yemenite children (some of whom were allegedly kidnapped and put up for adoption) and the spraying of new immigrants with DDT. Like those affairs, it is a symbol of the arrogant and alienated attitude of the veteran Ashkenazi (Jews of European origin) establishment in the 1950s toward the new immigrants from the Arab countries. And like those affairs, this one refuses to die away.
Ten years after the legislation of the law that was designed to eliminate the resentment caused by the ringworm affair, it is apparently about to erupt again, and the victims are once again embarking on a battle, claiming that not only does the state pay absurd compensation, but it prevents even that small sum from reaching a large percentage of the victims. Naturally, at the same time there will be a renewal of the bitter debate about the limits of responsibility of the Israeli government for what was defined about 50 years ago as a medical-humanitarian campaign meant to benefit the olim (new immigrants) from the Arab countries, and turned into a terrible humanitarian tragedy.
The government radiation campaign began in the late 1940s, when a fear arose in the country of an outbreak of a plague of ringworm, a skin disease that grows in the roots of the hair and quickly spreads among children who live in crowded conditions, with poor hygiene. The prejudices of the establishment toward the Mizrahi (Jews of North African and Middle Eastern origin) immigrants contributed both to intensifying this fear and to the means used to solve the problem.
The top echelons of the Ministry of Health and the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces decided to begin a comprehensive treatment and prevention campaign, which was to include radioactive treatments of the heads of all the children up to age 15 who had immigrated from Arab countries. In all, about 100,000 children underwent these treatments.
At a certain stage of the campaign, which lasted until 1960, it was also decided to transfer radiation machines to the Jewish Agency transit camps in Marseilles and other places in Europe and to carry out the treatments there, while the children were still in transit from North Afric
