Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Shaima Naji, a 21-year old from Gaza, has never attended classes at Bethlehem University where she is enrolled to study occupational therapy. Naji registered at the university four years ago, but security forces forbade her entry into the West Bank. Occupational therapy, commonly called OT, has become a vital aspect of rehabilitative treatment in the Gaza Strip since the intifada began, but Naji may only receive professional training in Bethlehem because there is no similar course of study in the Gaza Strip.

Naji's inability to attend class represents only one aspect of a larger problem, the Israeli defense system's sweeping prohibition of movement of Gaza Strip students and residents into the West Bank - despite the fact that many of them do not represent a security risk. Israel imposed this broad ban on movement at the inception of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

Tomorrow, more than 250 academics and lecturers from universities throughout Israel will submit a petition to the prime minister and the defense minister demanding that students from the Gaza Strip be permitted to attend institutions of higher learning in the West Bank, based on the outcome of individual security examinations.

Normally, OT certification requires many hours of clinical experience but Naji and nine other Gaza students have been forced to train by "remote control." First, they attended courses in Wafa Hospital and the Islamic University of Gaza. Later, Norwegian lecturers arrived in Gaza to conduct classes. During the third year, according to Mohammed al-Azaizeh, another student in the course, "The situation in Gaza deteriorated. Foreign lecturers couldn't come because of warnings from their embassies." At some point, he says, classes ceased for three months.

Students also traveled to Egypt to receive some of their practical training, but the cost of staying in Egyptian hotels was limiting. When they returned, they listened to lectures provided by Bethlehem University by means of video-conference call. But according to Naji, "There are technical problems during class. We can't talk to lecturers. We use the Internet to ask them questions."

Four days ago, their fourth-year term opened. Azaizeh, age 24, from Dir al-Balah, says classes take place at the Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. But according to him, some courses are taught via the Internet, on home computers, but the Israel Defense Forces bombing of the central Gaza Strip power station, in June, and subsequent power outages, disrupted these courses. Azaizeh says all the students suffer financial difficulties and require the assistance of grants.

Grave Need

The need for occupational therapists in the Gaza Strip is grave. The disability rate is high: 1.7 percent of the population (or about 24,000 individuals). Most of this disability results from disease, accidents, IDF bombing and shelling and crime. But, to date, there is only one trained occupational therapist in Gaza. The only place in the Palestinian Authority where residents may study OT is Bethlehem University. Students' requests to travel to Bethlehem were denied despite the fact that Israel has not maintained that they pose a risk to security, in the majority of cases.

Naji and Azaizeh lack many hours of clinical experience and they do not know how they will complete them. "Maybe, we'll travel to Cairo," Naji says. "But there are many obstacles in the way. We may not receive an exit permit for Cairo and Israel might close the Rafah border crossing. In any case, we are talking about going for two weeks because we lack money to stay in a hotel. During those two weeks, we will complete a 70-hour course which takes three months at Bethlehem University."

According to Naji, "Occupational therapy is a new, unknown field here that is vitally needed. Many wounded people lost body parts in the intifada. We must rehabilitate them so that they can return to their lives and feel normal. They were wounded while attempting to defend themselves and their land. Our job is to help these people and do something for our homeland."

The nonprofit Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement in Israel and the Territories initiated the petition signed by Israeli academics. Prof. Kenneth Mann, Gisha's legal adviser, says the petition is exceptional in the history of Israeli academics; although Israeli academics take part in leftist political organizations, they rarely voice common opinions pertaining to human rights issues in the territories as an academic body or as representatives of a public institution. In the past, British academics cited the apathy of Israeli academics to circumstances, including a lack of academic freedom in the territories to justify their attempt to impose an academic boycott on Israel.

In December 2005, Gisha and 10 occupational therapy students appealed to the High Court to cancel the sweeping ban to permit students to enter the West Bank. Two Palestinian nonprofit organizations, that require OT to treat Gaza residents, also joined the appeal. The petitioners accept the claim that Israel has a right to protect its security interests but maintain that the sweeping prohibition disrupts the balance between those interests and rights to move freely and study.

According to statistics presented in the appeal by the nonprofit organization, the prohibition caused a decrease in the number of students from Gaza, from 350 to only 35. Additional limits on travel to Egypt prevent an additional few thousand students from attending institutions of higher learning - even after the disengagement.

In response to the appeal, the state wrote that even if a student does not intend to engage in dangerous activity when he enters the West Bank, "that intention may arise during his stay, when terrorist organizations take advantage of his connections in the Gaza Strip." In response to a request from the State Prosecutor, Gisha members agreed to postpone deliberation of the appeal to facilitate a meeting between the nonprofit organization and the Defense Ministry. The ministry has not announced the date of the meeting.

The academic infrastructure system in the territories is situated in the West Bank, where most universities are located. Vital medical and paramedical professions like physiotherapy, communications therapy, and medical administration are taught only in the West Bank. But the broad prohibition of movement means that students from the Gaza Strip cannot attend these institutions.

Because of this prohibition, about 300 students, in a variety of medical and paramedical professions, are forced to study by means of video, correspondence, Internet, travel to Egypt, and the intermittent visits of foreign lecturers. According to Gisha director and attorney Sari Bashi, the prohibition particularly harms academically limited students and women, who are typically not permitted to travel abroad, or lack the necessary funding to do so, to complete their education.

According to Prof. Shaul Sofer, dean of the faculty of medicine at Ben-Gurion University, who signed the petition, this sweeping prohibition represents prevention of vital health services in the Gaza Strip. "Minimally speaking, there are at least a few students who are not culpable. Why not conduct this simple security check? At best, this represents laziness and passivity and, in the worst case, it is mean-spirited and collective punishment. The longer we tarry, the greater the negative influence of this prevention of academic study will be for many more years. Even if we allow students to study in the future, there will be a missing 'generation' of occupational therapists."

In Hiding

According to Bashi, the ban imposed by Israel actually prohibits residents to stay outside Gaza rather than denying them passage from Gaza to the West Bank. She maintains that the IDF is attempting to deport students to the Gaza Strip, who began studying in the West Bank before the intifada, and they are currently in hiding while completing their studies.

"The army opposed alternatives we proposed to provide an answer to the theoretically real risk of permitting passage through Israel," Bashi says.

Officials in the Defense Ministry respond that they are not the address for questions regarding the sweeping prohibition of movement and lack of individual security examination of individual students - they cite the IDF. The Defense Minister's Office failed to provide a response by the time of this writing.

Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories responds, "The entry of students was prohibited for security reasons because students represent an element which motivates and plays a role in many events. Since Gaza became a Hamas state, we want to bring in as few agitators as possible." When asked whether this treatment is a violation of students who pose no risk to Israel, Dror said, "Every passage of this type represents a risk. Violation? Sderot residents were violated too? There are more violations on that side, directed at us."

A shocking new study reveals how key figures in the pre-state Zionist establishment proposed castrating the mentally ill, sterilizing the poor and doing everything possible to ensure reproduction only among the `best of people.'

Castrating the mentally ill, encouraging reproduction among families "numbered among the intelligentsia" and limiting the size of "families of Eastern origin" and "preventing ... lives that are lacking in purpose" - these proposals are not from some program of the Third Reich but rather were brought up by key figures in the Zionist establishment of the Land of Israel during the period of the British Mandate. It turns out there was a great deal of enthusiasm here for the improvement of the hereditary characteristics of a particular race (eugenics). This support, which has been kept under wraps for many years, is revealed in a study that examines the ideological and intellectual roots at the basis of the establishment of the health system in Israel.

In the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) in the 1930s there were "consultation stations" operating on a Viennese model of advice centers for couples that wished to marry and become parents. In Austria, with the Nazis' rise to power, they served for forced treatment. Here the stations were aimed at "giving advice on matters of sex and marriage, especially in the matter of preventing pregnancy in certain cases." They distributed birth-control devices for free to the penniless and at reduced prices to those of limited means. In Tel Aviv the advice stations were opened in centers of immigrant populations: Ajami in Jaffa, the Hatikvah Quarter and Neveh Sha'anan.

These are some of the findings of a doctoral thesis written by Sachlav Stoler-Liss about the history of the health services in the 1950s, under the supervision of Prof. Shifra Shvarts, head of the department of health system management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They were presented at the annual conference of the Israel Anthropological Association at Ben-Gurion College.

The father of the theory of eugenics was British scholar Francis Galton. It was he who coined the term - which literally means "well-born" - at the end of the 19th century. The aim of the eugenics movement was to better the human race. Galton proposed a plan to encourage reproduction among "the best people" in society and to prevent reproduction among "the worst elements."

Forced sterilization

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Galton drew many followers and his ideas spread rapidly to other countries in Europe (among them Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium), to the United States and to some countries in South America. In various countries laws were passed that allowed for the forced sterilization of "hereditary paupers, criminals, the feeble-minded, tuberculous, shiftless and ne'er-do-wells." In the United States, up until 1935, about 20,000 people - "insane," "feeble-minded," immigrants, members of ethnic minorities and people with low IQs - were forcibly sterilized, most of them in California. The Californian law was revoked only in 1979. According to Dr. Philip Reilly, a doctor and executive director of the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, in 1985 at least 19 states in the United States had laws that allowed the sterilization of people with mental retardation, (among them Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Vermont, Utah and Montana).

"Eugenics is considered to be something that only happened in Germany," says Stoler-Liss. "Germany was indeed the most murderous manifestation of eugenics, but in fact it was a movement that attracted many followers. In every place it took on a unique, local aspect. It is interesting to note that both in Germany and in Israel a link was made between eugenics, health and nationalism."

Stoler-Liss first encountered the eugenics texts of doctors from the Yishuv when looking for instruction books for parents for a research project for her master's degree. "I presented a text at a thesis seminar and then the instructor of the workshop said to me, `But why aren't you saying that this is a translated text?' I replied: `No, no, the text isn't translated.' `In Israel,' he said, `there are no such things.'"

She decided to look into whether there was only anecdotal and non- representative evidence, doctors and public figures here and there who supported eugenics - and she found many publications that promoted eugenics. Supporters of the idea were key figures in the emerging medical establishment in Palestine; the people who managed and created the Israeli health system.

One of the most prominent eugenicists of the Mandatory period was Dr. Joseph Meir, a well-known doctor who acquired his education in Vienna, served for about 30 years as the head of the Kupat Holim Clalit health maintenance organization, and after whom the Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava is named. "From his position at the very heart of the Zionist medical establishment in the land of Israel in the mid-1930s, he brought young mothers the gospel of eugenics, warned them about degeneracy and transmitted the message to them about their obligation and responsibility for bearing only healthy children," says Stoler-Liss.

Thus, for example, in 1934 Dr. Meir published the following text on the first page of "Mother and Child," a guide for parents that he edited for publication by Kupat Holim: "Who is entitled to give birth to children? The correct answer is sought by eugenics, the science of improving the race and preserving it from degeneration. This science is still young, but its positive results are already great and important - These cases [referring to marriages of people with hereditary disorders - T.T.] are not at all rare in all nations and in particular in the Hebrew nation that has lived a life of exile for 1,800 years. And now our nation has returned to be reborn, to a natural life in the land of the Patriarchs. Is it not our obligation to see to it that we have whole and healthy children in body and soul? For us, eugenics as a whole, and the prevention of the transmission of hereditary disorders in particular, even greater value than for all other nations! ... Doctors, people involved in sport and the national leaders must make broad propaganda for the idea: Do not have children if you are not certain that they will be healthy in body and soul!"

'Problematic and dangerous'

In its full version, the article, which was published in the "Health Guard" section of the now defunct labor Zionist newspaper Davar, the doctor proposed castrating the mentally ill. Stoler-Liss found many more examples in the "Mother and Child" books that were published in 1934 and 1935 and in journals like Eitanim, which was edited by Dr. Meir.

"The support of Dr. Meir and other senior people in the health system for these ideas has been kept under wraps for many years," claims Stoler-Liss. No one today talks about this chapter in the history of the Yishuv. In the mid-1950s Dr. Meir's articles were collected into a book that came out in his memory. The article mentioned above was not included in it. Stoler-Liss found a card file with notes scribbled by the editors of the volume. They defined the article as "problematic and dangerous." "Now, after Nazi eugenics," wrote one of the editors, "it is dangerous to publish this article."

During the latter part of the 1930s, adds Stoler-Liss, when word came out about the horrors that eugenics in its extreme form is likely to cause, they stopped using this word, which was attributed to the Nazis. Overnight eugenics organizations and journals changed their names and tried to shake off any signs of this theory. Dr. Meir, however, during all the years he was active, continued to promote the ideas of eugenics. At the beginning of the 1950s he published an article in which he harshly criticized the reproduction prize of 100 lirot that David Ben-Gurion promised to every mother who gave birth to 10 children. "We have no interest in the 10th child or even in the seventh in poor families from the East ... In today's reality we should pray frequently for a second child in a family that is a part of the intelligentsia. The poor classes of the population must not be instructed to have many children, but rather restricted."

"I'm not making a value judgment," says Stoler-Liss. "Zionism arose at a certain period, in a certain ideological atmosphere - there were all kinds of ideas in the air and there were also eugenicist Zionists. Some of the doctors were educated in Europe, and at that time the medical schools taught not only medicine but also the theory of eugenics."

Judaism of muscle

Dr. Meir was not the first Zionist leader who supported eugenics. According to studies by Dr. Rapahel Falk, a geneticist and historian of science and medicine at Hebrew University, other major Zionist thinkers - among them Dr. Max Nordau, Theodor Herzl's colleague, a doctor and a publicist, and Dr. Arthur Ruppin, the head of the World Zionist Organization office in the Land of Israel - presented the ideas of eugenics as one of the aims of the Jewish movement for national renewal and the settlement of the land.

Prof. Meira Weiss, an anthropologist of medicine at Hebrew University, describes in her book "The Chosen Body" how the settlement of the land and work on the land were perceived by these Zionist thinkers as the "cure" that would restore the health of the Jewish body that had degenerated in the Diaspora. In Nordau's terms, a "Judaism of muscle" would replace "the Jew of the coffee house: the pale, skinny, Diaspora Jew. "At a time when many Europeans are calling for a policy of eugenics, the Jews have never taken part in the `cleansing' of their race but rather allowed every child, be it the sickest, to grow up and marry and have children like himself. Even the mentally retarded, the blind and the deaf were allowed to marry," wrote Ruppin in his book "The Sociology of the Jews." "In order to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [with signs of degeneracy - T.T.] must refrain from having children."

"Many people dealt with eugenics as a theoretical issue," says Stoler-Liss. "They even set up a Nordau Club with the aim of researching the racial aspects of the Jewish people and ways of improving it. What was special about Dr. Meir and the group that joined him was that for them eugenics was a very practical matter." They wanted to pursue applied eugenics.

The main institution was the advice station. The first station was opened in 1931 in Beit Strauss on Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. The aim was to work in "pleasant ways," through persuasion and choice. As Stoler-Liss explains: "Why should people work against their personal interests? It is here that the connection to the national interest comes in. If I understand that by having a baby I will harm the national interest, the building of the land, the `new Jew,' I will refrain from giving birth. But just to make certain, Meir told the doctors, in the event that a woman comes to you who is `a risk' for giving birth to a sick baby, it is your obligation to make certain that she has an abortion."

"Gynecologist Miriam Aharonova also wrote extensively on the subject of eugenics," adds Stoler-Liss. "In articles for parents under headings such as `The Hygiene of Marriage' she gives a list of eugenic instructions for parents - from the recommended age for giving birth (between 20 and 25), to the recommended difference in age between the father and the mother (the reason for which is the betterment of the race) to a list of diseases that could infect the spouse or "be transmitted through heredity to their descendents after them." In the diseases, she mentions "syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, alcoholism, narcotics addiction (fondness for morphine, cocaine, etc.) and diseases of the mind and the nerves." In the volume of "Mother and Child" published in 1935, says Stoler-Liss, the publication and discussions by doctors who supported eugenics was greatly expanded. Why, in fact, did they not use force? The establishment had a great deal of power over immigrants and refugees.

"The medical establishment's power was limited at that time. This was an establishment that developed hand in hand with the system it was supposed to strengthen and suffered from constant shortages: a shortage of doctors, a shortage of nurses and a shortage of equipment. It had to examine, treat, inoculate and so on. We are talking about the period of the British Mandate. When at long last there was a state, eugenics theory declined. My explanation is the change of generations: that generation had come to an end professionally, and a new generation with more national motivation came along that was not educated at the European universities during that period. They had already seen what the Nazis had done with it and the ideological identification was lower. The ideas themselves seeped in but they're not using the same rhetoric."

Have eugenics really vanished?

The eugenic chapter in the history of Western culture has been closed, but have eugenics really disappeared?

"Eugenic thinking is alive and well today," asserts Stoler-Liss. "It is expressed mainly in the very high rate of pre-natal tests and genetic filtering [of genetically deviant fetuses]. Mothers are very highly motivated to give birth only to healthy children and the attitude toward the exceptional, the different and the handicapped in Israeli society is problematic."

At hospitals today future parents are offered a plethora of genetic tests that diagnose the fetus before birth. Some of them are aimed at identifying serious disorders, like Tay-Sachs disease, a degenerative disease that causes a painful death in infancy. Others, however, are aimed at screening fetuses with conditions like deafness and sterility, the bearers of which can lead full and satisfying lives.