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The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated 100,000 Israeli Kid

Barry Chamish/Israel Insider | 31.10.2005 06:44 | Anti-racism | World

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.

Barry Chamish/Israel Insider

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

abuse in the name of science

31.10.2005 11:55

The story isn't quite current, but the facts should be known by all, as with all examples of mass abuse of humans by the state in the 'name' of science, for instance:

-mass female genital mutilation in the US (at least up until the 50's) to prevent masturbation and sexual curiosity.

-mass sterilization of various human groups in the name of eugenics. Based on the pseudo-science of race mostly invented by jewish so-called scientists in the US during the early 19th century (to justify the slave trade), and continued with the massive eugenics movements that blossomed in the US across the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century. This eugenics movement was the basis of the Nazi program of extermination that killed so many slavs, gypsies, and jews. Very many nations of the West had secret sterilization programs, some of which ran into the 1970's.

-scientific experimentation on groups of humans identified as 'inferior' by the pseudo-science of race. So common as to represent standard medical practice. Many modern surgical techniques were developed by forced experimentation of living (without effective anesthetic) slaves and mental patients. Later, socially disadvantaged groups were targetted (and still are) for drug research. Consider the case of Black americans denied secretly denied treatment for syphillis, or the ongoing experimentation on New York kids in care with experimental AIDS drugs. I remember reading a recent uni textbook for psychology students that stated that they should use their local council estate to find victim families for their student experiments.

-the various brain operations lumped under the title of "lobotomy". Unbelievable, the US came within a hair's breadth of making this procedure the new "vaccination" or "tonsil removal". A significant part of the whole medical movement to describe the fantasy "hysteria-related-illnesses" as a major problem with females.

-castration and other extreme treatments for humans afflicted with the "illness" of homosexuality.

-and, now that women and gays are no longer prepared to pay victim, the whole raft of chemical and psychological methods targetted at kids. These revolve around the wholly invented conditions of ADD, ADHD etc., and the mass abuse of powerful drugs like Ritalin. For the drug companies, the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT GOAL is that as large a percentage of the Human Race as possible pays a significant percentage of its weekly income on "medicines" that must be taken daily across the whole of a person's life. Given that the 'curse' of modern medical science (via innoculation etc) was to make kids profoundly healthy, getting drugs into these healthy kids took a degree of ingenuity. Today, the single most violent reaction you are likely to see with any parent is when you suggest that their right to drug their kids should be taken away.

To get back to the original story- the biggest lie that is ever told on the subject is that anyone ever thought (in the scientific community) that radiation of this kind was safe. Just as those in the tobacco business were fully aware of the dangers of smoking, but had the greatest incentive to deny it, those scientists working in the various fields of dangerous radiation ALWAYS profitted by lying about the risks.

In the 50's, research into the consequences of radiological exposure in humans using actual living subjects was at a peak. This was the decade of "build a better nuclear bomb at ANY cost"- well, any cost NOT paid by the ruling ELITE that is. Given the background of the sickening EUGENIC movement, one can consider Israel as its main home base (ironic, given what most people know about the horrors of WW2). Many israeli scientists would have been proud to promote their evil theories of race, improve the income of their state, and progress nuclear bomb research ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

So, the US army wanted a long term study into the effects of GAMMA RADIATION (another name for x-rays). Be in no doubt, some loonies there would have thought that MAYBE x-rays would mutate people into super-humans. Think this is crazy??? Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (ne Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg) are the jews that created "The Incredible Hulk" in 1962- a comic figure straight from these self-same experiments ie., a man that took a massive gamma ray dose to the head. Their story is no coincidence. New York (where they worked) might as well border Israel.

Of course, the real reason for zapping a bunch of dark-skinned humans in the brain with Gamma Rays was to study potential effects of nuclear weapons, and nuclear battlegrounds. Remember, with medical experiments, it is NOT the initial treatment, but the quality of the follow-up that counts. Israel was seen as ideal EXACTLY because the victims would never be lost or forgotten. The very cause of the victims detailed in the documentary PROVES (from the point of view of the evil scumbags responsible) how well designed the experiment proved to be. Even today, EXCELLENT medical records are generated by the lab rats, allowing the experiment to perfectly continue to the moment of the victim's death.

What happens when a bunch of European thugs rape and torture and murder their way to a nation, and then use the very worst methods of behaviour known to man to grow and protect that rotten state. Our human race sits on the very edge of destruction because a bunch of people, through various accidents of history, have formed a repulsive "master-race" cult, and will go to any extremes to extend their power, and propogate their 'values'. That it is impossible to look at the history of Israel and see even one good thing must be almost unique in the history of destructive states.

twilight


Some Jews are More Equal than Others ...

31.10.2005 12:38

Yes, 'Master Race' is exactly what it's about. Note that this gruesome experiment was conducted against Sephardic and not Ashkenasi jews, ie North Africans not Europeans. Here is the proof that the modern Israel, from its beginnings, practised apartheid on its own.

Howevermuch the Likudists and their apologists might scream "anti Semite" at any who dare to question Israeli foreign policy, the blood-sacrifice perpetrated on these trusting innocents will always haunt them.

Sweet dreams, Shimon Peres ...

chutzpah


yeah

31.10.2005 14:04

Yeah right! Why not also "Israel behind the Tsunami", hold on! I think i have already read that somewhere in Indymedia! LOL

Luckily people has brain and knows how you make up news against Israel to impulse your views, as without lies freely spread because of the free speech you would not go anywhere

Karl


Chamish - the holocaust denier

31.10.2005 14:56

Barry Chamish recently (April 2004) spoke at "Major Revisionist Conference" hosted by the Institute for Historical Review, called by ADL "a leading voice in the international movement to deny the Holocaust and vindicate Hitler and his Nazi regime."

No wonder his views are given such credance by other holocaust deniers and Anti-semities such as Twilight and others on this site.

He is a conspiracy theorist who blames the Masons, Illumianti and of course the Jews for all the ills in the world. He has been consistently been unable to substantiate a single article he has written and yes, he probably does blame the Jews for the Tsunami.

There are no elders and there are no protocols.

Stop left wing hatred of jews.


Misleading with the truth

01.11.2005 00:21

Constructing misleading stories out of the truth makes the best propoganda. The above artilce is a parfect example. You are led to draw certain conclusions because while the "facts" presented are ture, you never knew (or had forgotten) OTHER facts which would have caused you to reach a different conclusion. Let me add a few of these other facts.

1) In the 50's (here in the US) kids with ringworm were treated woith x-rays. Had been for a couple decades. Except PERHAPS that ringworm is a little less likely among the carefully groomed, the method of treatment was not "by class". My father was not a poor black -- but his hair was always thin becuase he as a child had had ringworm treated with x-rays.

2) In the 50's (here in the US) kids had their feet fitted for shoes under the scope. Maybe you didn't in Britain but here we did, UNLESS you were poor > In other words, rich white kids were MORE likely to have been over-exposed by routine scoping.

3) The article didn't say how the Askenazi kids ringworm was treated. You are left to ASSUME by something other than x-rays. Want to make a bet that there was no difference.

Given THESE additional facts what conclusions do you reach? You most likely conclude that however unlikely this might seem, in the 50's people (including those trained in science) underestimated the dangers from radiation.

PS ---- Are any of you old enough to remember what it was like trying to get cured of the varous fungi of the genus tinea in the days before Tolnaftate? (ringworm is tinea corporis, athlete's foot tinea pedis, crotch rot tinea cruris --- but actually you can get most of these on other than their special places -- just their most frequently associated site).

Mike
mail e-mail: stepbystpefarm mtdata.com


Not Racist?

01.11.2005 06:26

Are some of you party poopers here seriously trying to claim that the actions of the state of Israel over the last half-century are not racist??? LOLRAOTF

The doses of gamma treatment given these Sephardi children were several hundreds of times over the then considered safe limit. As Chamish says, they were convenient guinea pigs for military research into the effects of high-dose radiation.

The proof that it did take place, despite the records apparently having been burned, is that there is now some sort of state compensation committee (but how do you compensate for lost lives, chronic pain and malignant tumours?)

I find some of the accusations made here, accusing me and others, of being "anti-semitic" pathetic, were they not quite so hollow. The world isn't going to allow itself forever to be blackmailed by a cabal of Zionist religio-supremacists who believe that their state somehow has the god-given right to remain above examination and criticism.

chutzpah


35,000 times the maximum dose!

01.11.2005 06:36

My apologies for stating mistakenly that they were given over hundreds of times the maximum dose. According to this article, that should have read 35 THOUSAND times the maximum dose ...

"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."

chutzpah


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