US state department stops issuing visas for Gaza’s children to get medical care
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-5504634/state-departmen...
Are there similar organizations operating in other countries?
> the World Health Organization supported the transfer of 32 children and six adults to Italy, Belgium and Turkey, but more than 14,800 patients are still waiting.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/16/malnourished-p...
Why the US plays on both sides?
The US taxpayer has always paid for Israel’s citizens healthcare, while US citizens go without healthcare and ration their necessary medicine. Makes you wonder how such leverage can exist.
What is your source for this claim?
Most US military aid to Israel goes to US defense contractors. The US hasn't provided any significant economic aid to Israel in decades.
A lot of articles discussing the consequences of the Trump administration’s pressure on other NATO countries to spend more of their GDP on defense and its public hesitation to protect Europe militarily have discussed how some of European governments’ nonmilitary expenses may have to be reduced as a result.
Here in Sweden we had this even back in the day when we spent 5% of GDP on defence, mostly materiel, and upon that had mandatory military service.
The US healthcare system is more expensive than a Swedish-style healthcare system. Another fun fact: our university education is cheaper per head than our high school education.
I think the education of physicians is maybe 1.5x as expensive as high school education, but that's an unusually expensive program.
Ultimately, the person I'm replying to is giving a false impression of what the US is doing.
- it's about civilians and at least the official stance is that the US helps Israel to fight terrorist, not civilians.
- a government isn't a single person
- this doesn't just involves the US government but also humanitarian help groups
The US is not an enemy of Palestinians in general. Policies historically reflect conflicting goals and problematic facts on the ground. And problematic facts on the ground are often not the US's fault.
The biggest problematic thing is outsiders that support Palestinians armed conflict with Israel. And then get butthurt and double down due to the predictable results.
The “US” doesn’t do anything- it’s people in the country that ultimately act
That seems like a reasonable goal all by itself.
Saying Israel seeks to kill Palestinian civilians is as absurd as saying that the US Federal Highway Administration seeks to kill American civilians in car accidents.
Should the government stop me? Am I a bad person for doing this?
Frankly, it is absolutely fucking insane to me that people somehow think that this decision is somehow based in the Trump administration's desire for maximally efficient charitable giving.
Wouldn't they be able to treat more children if they didn't have to spend money on transportation, and paid cheaper healthcare costs in Egypt?
2. Some of these are likely complex cases in children that cannot easily be handled elsewhere. The US has some of the best hospitals and doctors in the world.
Free to whom? These arrangements invariably turn into immigration vectors. Data show that refugees and low skill/education emigres are multi-generational net takers from government social programs. They also tend to not assimilate.
Do you have data demonstrating that a significant number of people end up with successful refugee status applications that would have failed had they not come here for medical purposes and where their case is abusive? Or do you consider all refugees coming to the country for any reason to be bad?
Should all medical visas be stopped? Just those for Gazans? Just those for countries that you don't like?
Quite the leap. Do you have data to back this claim, or are you just making it up as you go?
These immigration scares are getting pretty thin. If anyone needs an escape hatch, it's kids in Gaza. And yes, the US shares some complicity in their plight.
> These immigration scares are getting pretty thin
Europe would like a word.
Europe —generally— isn't starting wars in the Middle East every few years, displacing millions. They rightly feel aggrieved that they have to burden the legitimate asylum claims caused by US action or US weapons.
Is running an inefficient charity so bad that the government needs to step in and stop it?
There could be an entirely different conversation about whether this particular group is effective. I really don't care about that. What I care about is that an organization is trying to do something nice to suffering people and then decision makers within the Trump administration decided that this was unacceptable and used an extreme legal hammer to put a stop to it where their only possible motivation is simply rage at Gazans.
That being said if we take in Palestinians we are effectively advancing the self proclaimed objective of the Israeli government: ethnic cleansing. The west should not take them in and the west should instead sanction Israel to the point of crippling their economy. Only then will the Israelis stop the abuse.
The majority of Israelis (45%) are Mizrahi or Eastern Sephardi [0] - primarily Moroccan, Iraqi, Yemeni, Syrian, Algerian, Iranian, Kurdish, Azeri, Tajik, and Egyptian in origin. The rest are Arab (20%) or Ashkenazi (33%) but these are overwhelmingly Soviet-era Jews who faced antisemitism during the Soviet era. You also have 1% who are Ethiopian in origin and 1% who are Indian (primarily Marathi) in origin.
The most rightwing Israelis are themselves 1.5 generation Mizrahi, such as Ben Gvir (Kurdish) and Karhi (Tunisian).
The same way Palestinians made homeless due to the 1948 war continue to resent Israel, similarly Mizrahi families continue to resent and distrust the Muslim countries their parents and grandparents were forced to leave from their mohallas.
Assuming Israel is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi is itself white normative and neocolonialist in nature.
> colonial rule
Same for plenty of Jews in Eastern countries.
For example, the Farhud [1] in Iraq as Iraqi Sunnis viewed Iraqi Jews as collaborationists with the British (this was also caused by Nazi propaganda during WW2) and the 1945 Libyan Riots [2] instigated by British occupation forces to coopt Libyan Sunnis.
[0] - https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic...
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud
[2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_anti-Jewish_riots_in_Tr...
In most Western countries (except France), the Jewish community is overwhelmingly Ashkenazi in origin, and that is what sets the tone for how these countries view the conflict.
Mizrahi Jews have significantly different practices, and Israel is fundamentally their state, as Mizrahi culture has become the default culture in Israel. Even pop Hebrew music is overwhelmingly Arab in musical style now (eg. Daniel Saadon) and Arabic, Farsi, and other Mizrahi languages terms have become a major part of colloquial Hebrew now (יאללה anyone).
IMO, I think Israel becoming culturally Mizrahi is what is causing Israel to lose it's clout. Israeli and (non-religious) American Jews are increasingly separated from each other as they consume different media, speak different languages, and don't even go to the same Synagogues (or Temples as Ashkenazim call them). Israel has become much more insular as it has also become a richer country (it's not like 30 years ago when Israelis had to immigrate to the US to get paid a real salary).
That being said, the ancestry and the history doesn't change the actions being committed today.
Yep. But it adds nuance, which has been lost in discourse.
This is fundamentally an Eastern conflict that can only be resolved by Mizrahis and Arabs.
Westerners converting Israel-Palestine into a culture war are doing more harm than good, because it breeds resentment from both sides, as both view the West as the lackey of the other.
Sisi has protected the Coptic community and Lebanon continues to have an active and prominent Christian community (which is split 50-50 between supporting Saudi and supporting Iran)
Morocco has also continued to protect the Jewish community there due to clan, tribal, and Berber ties trumping Arab or religious ties.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-...
Yemeni Jews didn't ask to be genocided out by Imam Yahya's Ghazis, just like an Arab families in Galilee didn't ask to get forcibly removed from the Levant during the same year.
Plenty of people did bad things - evil knows no border.
The kisas has been paid. Let them deal with it. This is a problem that can only be resolved by regional players acting in good faith.
Alternatively, the Enlightenment never happened in Baghdad, Aleppo, Oujda, etc. If Hamas and factions of the PA can argue for Shariat, then factions in Israel can argue for Halakha.
Of course, this is unrealistic, so the only answer is to nut up and negotiate. Reality is, the politicians and governments are in constant contact based on personal experience.
The moment Israel makes a sweetheart deal with Qatar instead of the current one with the UAE and the previously planned one with KSA, all of the Hamasniks would be in Ramla in hours.
The Thanis (whose country funds and owns the MEM like AJ) still haven't forgiven the Nahyans and al-Sauds for considering invading them if Tillerson didn't intervene.
I guess in the end: people are predictability and the predictability of masses makes them vulnerable to manipulation. What we get out is endless cycles of rule by the zero-sum cynical.
I guess even the faithless will end up resigning to pray for peace.
> The majority of Israelis (45%) are Mizrahi or Eastern Sephardi
That's irrelevant to the OP's point. Mizrahi Jews only started arriving after Israel was founded. The people who founded Israel were almost 100% Ashkenazi Jews, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe.
Israelis like Geulah Cohen, Moshe Barzani, Eliyahu Hakim, Shimon Tzabar, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, Mordechai Alkahi, Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, Eliezer Kashani, and Shmuel Tankus were all prominent Mizrahi leaders and commanders in Lehi, Irgun, and the Haganah.
Kurdish, Iraqi, Levantine, and Turkish Jews had been a prominent demographic in what became Israel well before 1948 due to it's former Ottoman status along with communal incidents in Kurdistan, Iraq, Syria, and Turkiye well before 1948.
In addition, in the late 19th and early 20th century, most of the Ashkenazi who arrived in the Levant at the time aligned with "Ottomanization" [0] or assimilating into Ottoman Turkish culture and dropping any trappings of European culture, hence David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi becoming students at the Dârülfünûn-ı Şâhâne in Istanbul and assimilating into Turkish culture during their formative years.
The Labor Zionist movement tended to be primarily Ashkenazi, but they were not alone in founding Israel. Mizrahis were overrepresented in the Irgun and Lehi, both of who's political wings became the Likud.
[0] - https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/16111/13/16111%20TALBOT_Jew...
Almost every important Israeli politician in the founding years was Ashkenazi (and to this day, every prime minister has been Ashkenazi, surprisingly enough). Yes, you can name various individual members of the pre-state militias / terrorist groups who were not Ashenazi, but they were a tiny minority in a movement dominated by people from Central / Eastern Europe.
In theory it will be for highest need. In practice various parties will find ways to make sure every applicant meets the bar.
In theory it’s temporary. In practice majority will find ways to stay.
It will a sudden exodus of 100.000 Gazans to the US. Israel wins as they will probably in the end kill 10-20% of the population (we know that they’ve killed 5% but many organizations estimate that at least as many are under the ruins and there are excess deaths to count too eg those starved because of Israel’s blockade), they will maim 10-20-%, and finally find ways to expel most of the remaining to various countries.
Bottom line: why can’t we compel Israel to meet their medical needs? Or for example to stop bombing hospitals in Gaza so they don’t have to come here for need?
Israel’s responsibility isn’t really relevant to visas being issued for medical care being paid for by private charity.
One day women that was treated for cancer (and iirc was healed) arrived to follow up checkup in suicide vest.
Gaza borders many kibutzim (kind of socialistic communal settlement) which are very left leaning, pro peace, 2 state solution, etc, etc. People from those kibutzim used to pick up sick gazans from border crossing and drive them to hospitals in Israel for treatment and back. On Oct7 those kibutzim were hardest hit with some of them I think loosing 50% of members.
The Geneva Conventions are international laws that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war since 1864. They extensively define the basic rights of wartime prisoners, civilians and military personnel.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war. War crimes include shooting on disarmed civilians, denying medical treatment, food or water to captive wounded soldiers from the enemy, or deliberately starving people to death.
Israel MUST provide reasonable medical care to civilians wounded by its army, because this is required by the international laws and treaties signed previously by Israel.
And actually, Geneva Conventions don't really apply to a military action against a Gazan terrorist organisation that is committed to genocide.
The second claim is interesting because avoiding to declare formally a war has been a common trick for decades to bypass the Geneva Conventions. The legal category of Crimes against humanity still apply in those cases.
The point was not the war declaration or the lack of it - the point is - if someone announces he's going to kill you and then does basically everything to prove that it's not a bluff and no one else is stopping him, then you're allowed to do whatever it takes to save your life.
Not. Individuals and countries work in a different way. Humanitarian International laws are not optative if you want to be accepted by the international community. The "convenience" of assassinating journalists, physicians or nurses routinely is not debatable.
The new generations breastfeed with videogames and blockbusters forget sometimes that war has rules and laws. Created for the benefit of ALL parts involved. To follow this laws is good for you. Ignore them at your own risk.
Israel in my stupid opinion should erase this silly smirks on TV, show some humility and stop pretending that they live in an alternate reality. Their bad choices and reckless behaviour had destroyed lots of sympathy all around the planet, and this is not wise.
Not if you still want tourism. Not specially when you depend on a protector that is driving directly towards an economical recession; and could find more and more difficult to justify the need to allocate precious resources to support you, while their own citizens struggle to survive.
They should work hard to rebuild the broken relationships. Smiling because you bought the big politicians only works while they remain in power. European politicians are slowly waking up to the fact that supporting a genocide is expensive and a fast path to the unemployment queue. The people is really furious about this.
> The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Islamophobe”.
> In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, Loomer had shared video of badly injured Palestinian children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims that their shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and that they were “doing the HAMAS terror whistle”.
...
> After misrepresenting the children, including amputees arriving to get prosthetic legs, as “Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone”, Loomer demanded to know “who at the US State Department under @marcorubio signed off on the visas for Palestinians from a HAMAS hot zone”.
> “Is Rubio even aware of this?” Loomer wrote, in reference to the secretary of state who was at the time in Alaska meeting Vladimir Putin.
> “Why would anyone at the State Department give visas to individuals who live in Gaza, which is run by HAMAS?” Loomer wrote, before falsely stating that “95% of GAZANS voted for HAMAS.”
(The articles notes that in fact Hamas got 44% of the votes, not 95%, and only won 2 of the 5 districts, and that the last election in Gaza was in 2006).