Tragedy cannot be the end of our lives. We cannot allow it to control and defeat us.
My vision for the Middle East is of a peaceful, secure, cooperative and united place. That’s not going to happen with words alone. Each of us has to contribute to creating the harmony and take an active role in promoting the dream of coexistence.
Peace is a vague and unwieldy term in the region today. The efforts by so many to create treaties that would bring the two sides together and the continuous negotiations between countries in the region have failed to bring peace—and certainly failed to reduce the animosity, tension and bloodshed. The so-called news from the Middle East is invariably about war starting or war stopping.
People are fed up with the lack of progress and want to find new ways to alter the insecure facts of their daily lives. For that reason, I feel we should avoid formal declarations for now. Instead, we should seek ways to be together—at soccer matches, at conferences, at family dinners. The most important step now is getting to know each other and establishing mutual respect. We share so many fundamental values: the way we socialize, the way we raise our children, the way we argue loudly and embrace ancient mores and a sense of honour. What we need is to believe in our own ability to lift ourselves up out of this quagmire that threatens to choke all of us. We need a heavy dose of hope.
My core values, which are essentially medical, tell me that people are people. If we treat each other with decency and respect; if we refuse to take sides; if we see with clarity and take responsibility for our actions, then getting past the ugliness of war is possible.
In my opinion, coexistence and co-operation, partnership and sharing at the grassroots level, is the only way forward for Palestinians and Israelis. Rather than talking about peace or forgiveness, let’s talk about trust, dignity, our shared humanity, and the one hundred thousand other steps it takes to finally achieve peace and forgiveness. The conflict in the Middle East will never be resolved when there is so much hatred on both sides, when tolerance and compromise are not part of the equation. We know that military ways are futile, for both sides. Intellectually, we say that words are stronger than bullets. But the bullets continue to find their targets. My philosophy is simple, it’s the advice parents give to children: stop quarrelling with your brother and make friends—you’ll both be better off.
Consider the most contentious issue—that of the right of return. The argument presented by the hard-liners in the Israeli government is that Israel is a small land and there isn’t room for more people. But Palestinians can’t forget the fact that Israel has plenty of room to bring Russians, Argentinians, Ethiopians and others of the Diaspora to the Promised Land. Room is surely not the issue.
Increasingly, the international community is examining the deplorable situation for Palestinians. On October 27, 2009, Amnesty International launched an in-depth report on the lack of access to adequate, safe and clean water for the Palestinian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The 112-page report looked at how Israeli water policies have resulted in violations of the right to an adequate standard of living for the Palestinian population, including the rights to water, food, health, work and adequate housing.
The present standoff isn’t sustainable. The people who live on the two sides know that; opinion polls say both want the situation repaired—now.
My friend Dr. Shlomo Usef thinks I should have stayed in Gaza, that in Canada maybe I’ll have a rest and become a normal person. “You’ve never been like that,” he said. “You need to come back here and finish your mission.” I can assure Shlomo that I will be back and that, in the meantime, I’m fulfilling my mission from here.
Dr. Zeev Rotstein also had mixed feelings about my departure, and said to a reporter: “He has a mission right now. I hope it will carry him to a productive place—a symbol of the tragedy of two peoples. Strife and hostility is completely unnecessary, unjustified. Health can be a very important bridge between the two sides. It works: you save a life, another one, do it over and over again. You don’t give up. That creates an opportunity for the other side to see the face of Israelis and Palestinians rather than knowing each other only through rifles. For me, Izzeldin is a partner. He shares my vision. I want to help him in any possible way. Before this we’d been planning to establish better relations between physicians in Gaza, the West Bank and here in Israel. We were trying to establish a learning centre to improve relationships, of teaching, learning and coordinating treatment. I think he’ll come back to finish the job.”
What happened to my family still strikes me as unbelievable. I lost three beautiful daughters and a wonderful, loving niece. I cannot bring them back. But I have five more children to take care of. All my children are my hope for the future, my hope for change and a peaceful world.
What I can say is this: Let my daughters be the last to die. Let this tragedy open the eyes of the world. Let us ask each other, “Where are we going? What are we doing?” It’s time we sat down and talked to each other. As I have said many times since the tragedy, if I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, then I would accept their loss. There must be a new era, a new opportunity to think of each other with honesty. In the long years since the Oslo Accord was signed, peace talks have broken down, resumed, and then have broken down over a few square metres of proposed border—in other words, an externality. Let me tell you, there is no “magic” square metre, or hilltop, or valley, that if ceded by one side to the other will bring about peace in the Middle East. Peace can only come about after an internal shift—on both sides. What we need is respect, and the inner strength to refuse to hate. Then we will achieve peace. And my daughters will have been the last price anyone in this region has to pay.
Epilogue
MY HOPE FOR THIS BOOK IS that it has embraced and embodied the Palestinian people, and the tragedies we have faced, and has revealed the determination of the Palestinian people to face life’s challenges and to be strengthened—not weakened—by them.
This book is also about freedom. We all must work towards freedom from disease, poverty, ignorance, oppression and hatred. In one horrifying year, my family and I faced tragedies that mountains cannot bear. But as a believer, as a Muslim with deep faith, I fully believe what is from God is for good and what is bad is man-made and can be prevented or changed.
The first blow was the loss of my dear wife, Nadia. The blow that does not kill will strengthen you. My children and I survived Nadia’s death, becoming stronger through our need to take on additional responsibilities and to help each other survive our individual suffering.
Then in January 2009, I lost three precious daughters and a niece when an Israeli tank shelled my house in Gaza. When it is your children who have become “collateral damage” in a seemingly endless conflict, when you have seen their bodies literally torn apart and beheaded, their young lives obliterated, how do you not hate? How do you avoid rage? I vowed not to hate and avoided rage because of my strong faith as a Muslim. The Quran taught me that we must endure suffering patiently and to forgive those who create the man-made injustices that cause human suffering. This does not mean that we do not act to correct those injustices.
Our great philanthropists and leaders may live to see their names written in stone or metal on monuments. But our children and the poor only write their names in the sand, and only their survivors witness those names written in stone on their graves. I want to tell what happened to my family in order to pay tribute to all the innocent people who have died due to conflicts throughout the world. Through my foundation, I hope my daughters’ names will be remembered and written in stone and metal on schools, colleges and institutions that support the education of girls.
I want this book to inspire people who have lost sight of hope to take positive action to regain that hope and to have the courage to endure that sometimes long and painful journey to peace and a peaceful life. The most holy things in this univers
e are humanity and freedom. I learned from the Quran that the whole world is one human family. We were created from a man and woman and made into nations and tribes so that we may know one another and to appreciate the diversity that enriches our lives. This world must embrace much more justice and honesty in order to make this a better place for all people. I hope my story will help open your mind, your heart and your eyes to the human condition in Gaza, and help you avoid making sweeping false judgments.
I hope to inspire people in this world, afflicted with violence, to work hard at saving human lives from destructive hostilities. It’s time for politicians to take positive actions to build, not destroy. Leaders cannot be leaders if they are not risk-takers; the risk they must take is not sending in the soldiers, but finding the moral courage to do the right thing to improve the world’s human face in the face of criticism from the haters.
We must work diligently on this journey to peace. Hatred and darkness can only be driven out with love and light. Let us build a new generation, one that believes that advancing human civilization is a shared project among all peoples and that the most holy thing in the universe is humanity and freedom. If we want to spread peace throughout this planet, we should start in the holy lands of Palestine and Israel. Instead of building a wall let us build bridges of peace.
As a physician, I do not lose hope as long as the patient is alive. But faced with deteriorating health, I need to be willing and creative enough to search for a new course of treatment. We all need to search for the causes of our failure in the human journey to peace and discover why we are not happy, satisfied and secure. The cause is inside us, not outside us—in our own hearts and minds. Hate is a chronic disease and we need to heal ourselves of it, and work toward a world in which we eradicate poverty and suffering. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich from this affliction.
First, we must join together to fight our mutual enemy, which is our ignorance of each other. We must smash and destroy the mental and physical barriers within each of us and between us. We must speak as one and move forward as one to achieve our brighter future; we are all living in one boat and any harm to the people in this boat endangers all of us. We must stop blaming each other and adopt the values of ours, us and we.
Talking is good but it is not enough. We must act: people are suffering and dying every day. The smallest action is more resonant and crosses more boundaries than any words. As Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
So what can you do? You can do a lot. You can support justice for all by speaking out loudly to your family, friends, community, politicians and religious leaders. You can support foundations who do good work. You can volunteer for humanitarian organizations. You can vote regressive politicians out of office. You can do many things to move the world towards greater harmony.
We all make mistakes and commit sins from time to time. I know that what I have lost, what was taken from me, will never come back. But as a physician and a Muslim of deep faith, I need to move forward in to light, motivated by the spirits of those I lost. I need to bring them justice.
There’s a story I have been telling in my speeches that sums up the potential of one small act in the face of a situation that seems insurmountable. A man is walking along the sea shore as the tide ebbs, revealing a multitude of stranded starfish. Soon he comes upon a young girl, who is picking up the starfish one by one and returning them to the sea. So he asks the girl, “What are you doing?” And she replies, “They will die if I don’t get them back into the water.”
“But there are so many of them,” the man says. “How can anything you do make a difference?”
The girl picks up another starfish and carries it to the sea. “It makes a difference to this one.”
I lost three wonderful daughters but I am blessed with five other children and I have the future. I believe that Einstein was right when he said life is like riding a bicycle: to keep balanced, we must keep moving. I will keep moving but I need you to join me in this long journey.
Acknowledgements
In my life I am indebted to my mother, Dalal, my late wife, Nadia, my daughters Bessan, Dalal, Shathat, Mayar, Aya and Raffah, and my sons Mohammed and Abdullah. I would love it if my mother, my wife and my three lost daughters could rise from their graves to witness that the spilt blood of my three daughters was not in vain. I assure all of them that they are all remembered through me and my surviving children’s good deeds and that they can rest in peace knowing that there has been much good will towards humanity since their death.
I feel privileged and thank from my heart all those who expressed compassion, sympathy and support for my family and me in our loss: the Palestinian people, Israeli friends, colleagues and the general public, and many members of the international community who have recognized that we must take action to stop the spread of hate. Special thanks go to Shlomi Eldar, who had the courage to expose and disclose the reality facing Palestinian civilians during the crazy war the IDF called Operation Cast Lead.
I am also deeply indebted to Sally Armstrong, a distinguished Canadian journalist, who travelled to my home to meet with me and my family. Her help to me in the writing of this book was invaluable. Without that help, this book would never have seen the light.
For their enormous generosity, I’d like to thank the many friends and colleagues who contributed to the creation of this book by reviewing, editing and commenting on the manuscript, especially Anne E. Sumner, Greta Maddox, Judith Weinroth, Anne Collins and Michael Levine.
I would also like to thank Dr. Marek Glezerman, who contributed the introduction among many other things in my life, and his wife Tzvia; Bruno Buchet; Jean-Marc Delizee; Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris; Dr. Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority; my Belgian friends, especially Veronique de Keyser; Luisa Morgantini, an Italian member of the European Parliament; Hans-Gert Pöttering, the former president of the European Parliament; the Canadian government and people who welcomed us with open arms.
Special thanks go to my niece Ghaida and all my family; to my lovely daughter Shatha for her courage and determination and her ability to still be smiling. And to Dalal, who helped so enormously and has taken on such responsibility.
I would also like to thank the staff of the Kamal Edwan Hospital in Gaza, the personnel who delivered the essential medical and paramedical help we received; the doctors who saved the life of my niece and the eyes and fingers of my daughter; Professor Barret and the staff at the Sheba hospital in Israel. Special thanks to Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef and Professor Zeev Rotstein.
I am also grateful to Professors Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer; Ahmad Mashharawi; Joseph Moisseiev, the director of the Goldschleger Eye Institute; Jacqueline Swartz; Itaf Awad; Maha Daghash; Jamal Daghash; Silvia Margia; Yaacov Glickman; and Anael Harpaz.
I am deeply grateful for the support, encouragement and wisdom of my sincere friend Michael Dan. Special thanks to all I did not mention, but who I know are with me and with my children in their hearts.
Izzeldin Abuelaish, MD, MPH, is a Palestinian physician and infertility expert who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo, Egypt, and then received a diploma from the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of London. He completed a residency in the same discipline at Soroka hospital in Israel, followed by a subspecialty in fetal medicine in Italy and Belgium. He then undertook a masters in public health (health policy and management) at Harvard University. Before his three daughters were killed in January 2009 during the Israeli incursion into Gaza, Dr. Abuelaish worked as a senior researcher at the Gertner Institute at the Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv. He now lives with his family in Toronto, where he is an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at th
e University of Toronto.
Copyright © 2010 Izzeldin Abuelaish
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Photos courtesy of the author.
Foreword © 2010 Sally Armstrong
Introduction © 2010 Marek Glezerman
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Abuelaish, Izzeldin
I shall not hate : a Gaza doctor’s journey / Izzeldin Abuelaish.
eISBN: 978-0-307-35890-5
1. Abuelaish, Izzeldin. 2. Physicians—Palestine—Biography. 3. Obstetricians—Palestine—Biography. 4. Gynecologists—Palestine—Biography. 5. Jabaliya—Biography. 6. Gaza War, 2008–2009—Personal narratives. I. Title.
R644.P3A29 2010 956.9405′4092 C2010-900080-3
v3.0
Izzeldin Abuelaish, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends