Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2009, pages 30-31
Gaza on the Ground
The Palestinian Doctor, Israeli Journalist, and A Nobel Peace Prize Nomination
By Mohammed Omer
 |
|
|
|
GAZA-BASED gynecologist Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, 54, a widower and father of five, represents hope and a brighter future to many in Israel. Fluent in Hebrew, Abuelaish is a quasi-celebrity on Israeli television, due to his guest appearances to discuss health issues. However, it was on Jan. 16, 2009 that his personal tragedy—captured in a phone call broadcast live by a quick-thinking Israeli journalist—brought both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, closer together.
On that day an Israeli tank missile struck Dr. Abuelaish’s home in the Jabalya Refugee Camp, as he was preparing to go on live Israeli television with a phone-in medical segment about women’s health. Killed in the attack were his daughters Aya, 14, Mayar, 15, and Bissan, 21, and his niece, Noor, 17.
In a telephone interview, he recalled the day so many of his family members were killed.
“We [the Jabalya Refugee Camp] were under attack,” he explained, “and there was no electricity in the house. I asked my daughters to save the cell phone batteries for my television segment on women’s health.”
The four young women were sitting in a room of his apartment as the doctor got ready for his segment. Noor was visiting, her uncle recalled: “She had been hiding inside a crowded classroom at the U.N. school, but she preferred not to hide there with another 40 or 50 men and women in a room. Holding a white flag, she made her way under gunfire and safely arrived at our house.”
Just as it was time for the live news segment, an Israeli tank missile struck the room where his daughters and niece were sitting. Dr. Abuelaish picked up his cell phone and called his friend Shlomi Eldar, a prominent Israeli reporter for Israeli Channel 10, one of Israel’s commercial TV stations. Abuelaish regularly appears as an expert on a variety of women’s health issues, in addition to his work at Tel Hashomer, Israel’s largest hospital.
When Dr. Abuelaish’s call came through, Eldar was in the broadcasting studio conducting a call-in segment about the war on Gaza. He cancelled the call he was on and picked up Abuelaish’s, later explaining, “I thought it would be something urgent.”
The Screams Heard Around the World
As soon as Eldar picked up the phone he heard Dr. Abuelaish’s frenzied screamsfor help ricocheting through the receiver. On the other end Eldar listened in pure anguish as his distraught friend appealed to the Israeli public. Before the doctor’s eyes lay the blood-drenched bodies of his three daughters and niece, who just seconds ago had been alive. Another daughter, Shada, 17, sat in shock, her right eye and hand torn and bleeding from the shrapnel.
Fighting back tears as he listened to his friend’s tormented screams, Eldar put the call on speaker and broadcast it live on Israeli television. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and, later, via YouTube and rebroadcasts, millions of people heard Dr. Abuelaish during the worst moments of his life.
“I had to put Dr. Abuelaish on speaker,” Eldar explained in a phone interview. “He was in shock and screaming, ”˜Why, why, why have my daughters been killed?’” As the live feed continued, Eldar appealed to anyone from the military watching to help the doctor rescue his family.
Unfortunately Eldar’s appeals didn’t reach the right people soon enough. As Dr. Abuelaish attempted to evacuate his 17-year-old daughter, another Israeli missile struck his home, injuring his 12-year-old son and two of the boy’s uncles.
Using makeshift stretchers, the uninjured family members began carrying the dead and wounded toward a nearby hospital, dodging bullets and explosions. On Israeli television the live broadcast continued. Eldar’s appeals finally reached members of the Israeli military, which ceased shelling the area, thus allowing Palestinian ambulances to enter and carry the family and other wounded to the hospital.
He did not realize his words were being broadcast, Dr. Abuelaish recalled, his voice choking with emotion as he tried to describe how he felt at the time. “I was in a panic,” he said. “I didn’t know how to handle this tragedy!”
Until now, Eldar had not spoken to the press about that tragic day. Asked in his first interview since the incident how the television station’s staff reacted, he said, “Everyone was in shock, and Dr. Abuelaish made all of us cry.”
A Positive Outcome to a Horrendous Situation
One of the characteristics of human beings is the ability to empathize. The broadcast of Dr. Abuelaish’s tragedy profoundly influenced Israelis and people around the world, a number of lay and professional observers note. Asked why people responded this time, Eldar theorized, “On television we always show the usual photos of targeting Hamas, but there is no mention about targeting Gaza civilians.” He concluded by adding, “Every time people see me on the streets, I am asked how Dr. Abuelaish is doing.”
Dr. Abuelaish, who continues to work at the Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv, wants no other human being to share his experience of losing a family member. “Despite my loss, I want to continue my future and help human beings,” he explained, adding emphatically, “I will continue to help regardless of nationality or religion.”
The doctor is proud that, despite the recent war and trauma, his five surviving children—Abdullah, 6, Rafah, 9, Mohammed, 13, Dalal, 20, and Shada, 17—have received their best scores in this year’s exams compared to previous years. “I just got a phone call, and Mohammed got a 95 in his final exams!” he enthused.
Israel’s official explanation for targeting the family’s apartment complex is that “suspicious figures were on the top floor of the doctor’s building.” The army insists it called to warn the father and his eight children. Dr. Abuelaish disagrees. “No one told me to leave the house,” he stated, and there was no reason to bomb his building. There were no militants present, he said, just himself and his family—and an Israeli tank a few hundred meters in front of the house.
Asked if the killing of his daughters has changed his attitude toward Israel, he replied, “Humanity is much bigger and more precious than Palestine and Israel.”
For his work and efforts in bringing peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Dr. Abuelaish has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Jean-Marc Delizee, Belgium’s state secretary for the fight against poverty.
“We have known Dr. Abuelaish for several years,” Delizee explained, “and were touched by what he told us, as he is a man of peace—something which is difficult to obtain in that region of the world.”
For his “courageous voice during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” the Gaza physician has also been awarded the 2009 Niarchos Prize for Survivorship by the Survivor Corps, a global network to help survivors overcome war and its aftershocks so they can go on to rebuild their communities and lives. “During the war in Gaza,” the citation noted, “his media appearances provided the Israeli public with a rare glimpse of the human cost suffered by residents of Gaza during the attacks.”
Dr. Abuelaish has recently created a Web site called “Daughters for Life” (<http://daughtersforlife.com>) as a tribute to his three slain daughters. In three languages—Hebrew, Arabic and English—he makes a desperate plea for reconciliation, adamant in his belief that “to be militant doesn’t work,” because “people only lose from it.” To achieve anything, Dr. Abuelaish argues, we humans “have to open our minds.”
He also is writing a book, to be titled The Gazan Doctor, and plans to use any profits to establish a foundation for women and girls. “The blood of my daughters will be the seeds to build such a foundation to help women and girls take the lead in raising healthy and educated children and husbands,” he said.
The Abuelaish family will be leaving Gaza for a few years, however. The doctor has accepted a teaching position at the University of Toronto, and he and his children will be moving to Canada this summer. He will also be spending part of the year teaching at Haifa University in Israel, and plans to return to Gaza in five years.
Dr. Abuelaish has received many letters of sympathy, some deeply poetic, from Israeli citizens over the loss of his daughters. He urges that time not be wasted on arguing with the Israeli army about his daughters’ deaths: “Hate and revenge is a disease,”he has concluded, “and I am a doctor who treats to heal, not spread disease in the form of hatred and revenge.” As a doctor who has sworn to do no harm, he is determined to replace hatred and anger with, as he put it, “love and wisdom.”
Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports on the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at < This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >.
