Ringworm and Radiation
By Barry Chamish August 19, 2004
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/3998.htm
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten
television screened a documentary 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 documentary"
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 documentary 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, Shimon 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 Incorporated, 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: Shimon 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.
Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.