The New York Times · New York, New York · 9 March 1982

CP-1982-053

Israelis Survive Storm Over Bedouin Baby’s Death

By DAVID K. SHIPLER

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, March 8 — The Israeli authorities involved in driving seminomadic Bedouins off their ancestral lands in the Negev desert appear to have weathered a controversy over the death of a Bedouin baby after an eviction on a cold morning in December.

Officials of the “green patrol,” a squad of tough young Israelis hired by the Agriculture Ministry to monitor land use, say that their policies and tactics remain unchanged in the wake of the incident, which brought condemnations from several Israeli politicians, local newspapers and a few representatives of American Jewish groups.

The officials have brushed off an autopsy report, made public late last month, showing that the two-month-old boy, who died about 22 hours after he and his family were ousted from their goat-hair tent into near-freezing temperatures, had suffered from pneumonia and a heart ailment. The autopsy, performed by Dr.

Bezalel Bloch, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, found “signs of interstitial pneumonia” and a “slight thickening of the endocard,” which is the inner muscle of the heart.

The report did not make clear whether the heart problem was the result of a congenital disorder or a bacterial infection, nor did it discuss the possible effect of exposure to cold on such illnesses. Dr. Bloch said he could not elaborate because he had been ordered by the police to say nothing.

‘Not Good for a Sick Infant’ But two leading Israeli physicians who read the report said that exposure to low temperatures could adversely affect an infant’s chances of surviving such problems. “When a two-month-old infant takes ill and is exposed to low temperatures without appropriate protection,” said Dr.

Shimon Moses, “the combination of the two factors, the illness and the cold, are liable to be to his detriment. From my experience with infants suffering from a known infection, they tend not to retain their body temperatures when they are exposed to the cold. It is not good for a sick infant to be in other than optimal conditions.” Dr.

Moses is head of pediatrics at the Soroka Medical Center and a professor in pediatrics at the Beersheba Medical School. Because the autopsy report calls the death “natural and not caused by any blows,” the Israeli authorities have decided to interpret the findings as absolving the green patrol from any responsiblity.

“The truth has been revealed; another blood libel against us has been ended,” the head of the patrol, Allon Galili, told the newspaper Davar.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or page date line survives on this clipping — it is trimmed to the headline. The internal dateline reads “JERUSALEM, March 8”, consistent with a March 9, 1982 paper, and the byline credit reads “Special to The New York Times”, consistent with `pub`; but the date itself could not be verified against a masthead.

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