Paging Dr. Pig...Paging Dr. Ape...Please report to the ER

Time for a fun round of News Story Juxtaposition...

Exhibit 1 is a Reuters story from Tuesday April 1:

Hamas TV puppet "kills" Bush for helping Israel

GAZA (Reuters) - Brandishing "the sword of Islam", a Palestinian boy stabbed President George W. Bush to death in a new puppet show for children aired by Hamas-owned television in the Gaza Strip."You are a criminal, Bush, a despicable man. You made me an orphan. You deprived me of everything," said the hand-held puppet, representing a child and accusing the U.S. president of killing his family in Iraq and in Gaza in collusion with Israel.

The program was broadcast on Hamas's al-Aqsa television, which has used puppets and cartoon characters in the past to illustrate the Islamist movement's battle against Israel and opposition to U.S. support for the Jewish state.

No one was available at the station to comment on the show.

Lovely. All that's missing was the obligatory "Jews descend from apes and pigs" exhortation so popular in the Palestinian community.

I should point out, however, that a root cause may explain, at least partly, the anger and vitriol Palestinians aim at their Jewish neighbors. It's a problem which, according to some American presidential candidates, even plagues working families in the United States: access to affordable health care. Exhibit 2 (from March 31) explains:

Sick Gazans die in "avoidable tragedies": WHO

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has turned away more sick Palestinians from Gaza seeking treatment since Hamas seized control of the enclave and several have died each month unnecessarily, a U.N. agency said on Tuesday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Israel denied entry permits to 18.5 percent of patients seeking to leave the Gaza Strip in 2007 versus 10 percent in 2006.

In December 2007, 36 percent were denied permits compared with 8.5 percent in December 2006.

The WHO said the number of applicants and the percentage of those turned away surged after Hamas Islamists seized control of Gaza in June, the crossing to Egypt was closed and Israel tightened restrictions on the enclave.

Israel could not provide figures for how many sick Gazans were granted travel permits last year. A senior defense official denied the system caused unnecessary death, but said Israel was wary of would-be suicide bombers using illness as a cover.

Shortages of medicine, equipment and trained medics, which local officials blame on Israeli restrictions, mean advanced health care is virtually non-existent in the Gaza Strip.

If you want to search the article for the sentence, "Leaders of Arab countries swimming in petro-dollars could not be reached for comment," or perhaps, "EU officials expressed outrage over the billions in Palestinian aid squandered or unaccounted for," don't bother.

Anyway, the point here is that taken together, the two articles provide a near perfect summary of the Palestinian-Israeli divide. In 2005, Israel ceded control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority (PA), even evicting Israeli citizens from Gaza settlements at gunpoint to ensure complete withdrawal. Since then, in lieu of looking after its citizenry, the PA allowed terrorist organizations such as Hamas to launch thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israeli population centers. In 2007 Gazans voted into power Hamas to administer local affairs. Of course Hamas is very open in its desire to destroy Israel, and as many Jews as possible in the process. To keep the body politic focused on that goal, all public discourse in the Strip is geared toward, as it were, negative campaigning against Israel (see Exhibit 1). Meanwhile, Israeli hospitals have continued to treat approximately 80% - 90% of Gazans seeking medical care, with a low point of about 65% in December 2007 when relations with Gaza were at a...um...low ebb (see Exhibit 2). The "international community's" conclusion? Israel is at fault for the "avoidable" deaths of people bent on its obliteration.

Question: Whose fault will it be should it come to pass that Palestinians can't find some nice Jewish doctors to take care of them?

Excuse me. Can you recommend a good Zionist pediatrician?