Unbelievable
A doctor of Palestinian origin in Blekinge in Sweden refused to treat an American-for the sole reason that she was an American and because he disliked America's Middle East policies.
But the most remarkable thing about this story is not that a Palestinian discriminated on the basis of nationality in obvious violation of the antidiscrimation rules that doctors have to follow. The most remarkable thing was what the Swedish media wrote about it:
Nothing, nothing at all. Complete media black out. Browsing through the web pages of the 4 biggest news papers in Sweden ( Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet) and the news page of Swedish state radio, I found absolutely nothing about this story. Private Swedish TV-channel TV4 reports about it briefly, but fails to mention the relevant fact that the doctor was of Palestinian origin and did it because he disliked American foreign policy.
The only ones reporting about the incident and all the relevant aspects are, apart from the above link, a few members ( see for example here where I first saw the story ) of the Swedish "right-wing" blogosphere and the American TV-channel Fox News (scroll down).
While I've always considered the Swedish media to have a pro-Palestinian bias, this was shocking even to me. We can be very sure, that had some Swedish doctor refused to treat a Palestinian because he objected to suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israelis, it would have made frontpage news. Thanks to the Internet though, news are not as easily supressed as in the past by the "mainstream" media.
But the most remarkable thing about this story is not that a Palestinian discriminated on the basis of nationality in obvious violation of the antidiscrimation rules that doctors have to follow. The most remarkable thing was what the Swedish media wrote about it:
Nothing, nothing at all. Complete media black out. Browsing through the web pages of the 4 biggest news papers in Sweden ( Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet) and the news page of Swedish state radio, I found absolutely nothing about this story. Private Swedish TV-channel TV4 reports about it briefly, but fails to mention the relevant fact that the doctor was of Palestinian origin and did it because he disliked American foreign policy.
The only ones reporting about the incident and all the relevant aspects are, apart from the above link, a few members ( see for example here where I first saw the story ) of the Swedish "right-wing" blogosphere and the American TV-channel Fox News (scroll down).
While I've always considered the Swedish media to have a pro-Palestinian bias, this was shocking even to me. We can be very sure, that had some Swedish doctor refused to treat a Palestinian because he objected to suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israelis, it would have made frontpage news. Thanks to the Internet though, news are not as easily supressed as in the past by the "mainstream" media.
posted by stefankarlsson at 11:00 PM
1 Comments:
As a Swedish-American who does NOT support America's middle east policy, I find the whole episode (the doctor's behavior and the media's silence) disturbing.
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