Morocco, Kuwait and Bahrain pledged $1 million US Dollars each in aid to be delivered in various ways through each country’s Red Crescent organization.

Jordan, which lost 3 peacekeepers in the quake, has sent two planes of aid and a medical team to set up a medical field facility in Port-au-Prince.

Qatar and Bahrain sent in planes each loaded with tons of food and medical aid.

Lebanon flew in an official delegation that distributed aid, checked on the Lebanese community in Port-au-Prince and evacuated three Lebanese, ten Syrian nationals and five Palestinians. In addition carrying tents, food aid and water.

The United Arab Emirates has established a relief air bridge to Haiti and has already delivered tons (50) of food and medical aid. The charity ‘Dubai Al-Attaa’ is coordinating with NGO’s such as CARE and UNICEF to provide educational assistance to 200,000 Haitian children.

In Gaza, modest individual efforts were made to collect goods and food to send to the devastated people of the earthquake-ravaged nation. This move impressed some in Arab media to highlight the effort and commend it. It is not clear how this aid will be coordinated to reach its destination.

In conclusion, there certainly is no such thing as “Arab aid” to Haiti. (Nor should there be – RP) What you will find is individual countries, organizations and even citizens doing what they can to help the people of Haiti.

Source: Anderson Cooper :CNN
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/22/arabs-and-haiti-aid-trickles-in/
in an otherwise highly disparaging article

“Qatar yesterday (14 Jan 2010, a day before Israel ) sent a C-17 strategic transport aircraft carrying 50 tons of aid to Haiti. They also sent an action group of 26, including members from the Qatari armed forces, the internal security force (Lekhwiya), police forces, and the Hamad Medical Corporation.

In contrast Israel sent a medical team of 12 from IsraAID, an early response relief group that springs into action after natural disasters, plus a further 200 others, including teams from Magen David Adom and Israel Police.

Qatar has a population of 825,000, while Israel has 7,100,000. It also lacks a large and sophisticated military infrastructure.

“The Painful Truth: The Haiti Disaster is Good for the Jews

As sorry as we are about the horror in Haiti, the current positive attitude to Israel – thanks to the IDF delegation – shows that the country must engage in proactive as well as reactive hasbara.” [Excerpt from article in Maariv, "Israel’s second most popular newspaper, . . . written by Tamir Haas who identifies himself as a "publicist" and "media consultant."] For the full article in Hebrew see http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/043/715.html For an English translation of the article (Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel) and links to two separate rebuttals of criticism of those “discussing how Israel’s supporters are using the disaster in Haiti for propaganda purposes” see Adam Horowitz: “Israeli media consultant in Maariv: ‘The Haiti Disaster is Good for the Jews’” http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/israeli-media-consultant-in-maariv-the-haiti-disaster-is-good-for-the-jews.html

Also of interest

JPost story on Israelis adopting Haitian children — [Excerpt] “Israel is looking into adopting Haitians orphaned by the January 12 earthquake, Minister of Welfare and Social Services Isaac Herzog told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday. . . . Herzog said that all children adopted from Haiti would undergo the standard conversion process to Judaism.”
http://www.jpost.com/servle/Satellite?cid=1263147960538&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

I would recommend Goldberg’s book, by the way: Prisoners. I am certainly to the left of him politically (and I imagine that he would say that I am too far left for him, were he to know me!), but I have a great deal of respect for the intellectual and emotional struggle that he is so open about on the issue of Israel and the occupation. He made aliya as a gung-ho new Israeli, joined the army, served time, and much in the manner of many of the men in Combatants for Peace (see: the blogroll), in the course of his service, discovered that there were actually very few clear answers.

This quote particularly captured for me my own struggles as an American-Israeli living through the first intifada: “I was failing to make myself an Israeli, and there were moments when I no longer believed I should have this as my goal. The coarseness of life in Intifada Israel was sometimes too much for me to bear. My love for Israel was so bottomless that my disappointment with it was bottomless, too. This wasn’t fair, I knew: Israel is a flawed place, with flawed people, just like everywhere else. But it is no so easy to shake off dreams of Utopia.”

And I’m quite cynical about Israel’s propaganda–er, PR efforts in Haiti. The passage you quoted from Ms. Scheindlin is instructive. Note the contradiction here:

do I think the government participated in this aid effort for publicity? Absolutely not,” she said. “I don’t think it was a cynical move….But Israelis do try to use these things to try to leverage a better image for themselves around the world.”

Of course the Haiti relief was a naked PR grab & of course it was leveraging a better image (though this will wear off the next time Israel kills a 10 yr old Palestinian child in a another wk or two).

The fact that this otherwise intelligent woman can’t see the contradiction in her own statement indicates that Israelis live in a bifurcated world & can’t tolerate really understanding what they’re doing to their enemies & themselves.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144507.html

N’siah G’dolah Hiyah Sham …. and Shabbat Shalom

Yes Israel does good. I’m Israeli, and I’m proud of the good things my country does.

But look at all the coverage the Israeli effort in Haiti has gotten. Far more, that I’ve noticed, than (say) the Japanese, or French.

On the other hand, what the world consistently ignores, or downplays, is the horror that my country is responsible for on a daily basis in the lives of millions of Palestinians, in the name of a security that military means have never yet supplied.

If my fellow Israelis want to live a secure life and have their various successes and acts of kindness feted, they would be wise to be honest about their failings, not try to sweep them under the rug of other, unrelated good intentions, and genuinely engage in a sincere peace process.