InsIDe: - Palestine Solidarity Campaign

14 palestine news reportsspring2011“I shall not hate...”It was an unforgettable cry of anguish amidst the desperatehorror of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza — Dr Izzeldin Abuelaishweeping on the phone live on Israeli TV and repeating over andover: “My God, my God, what have we done?”Two Israeli shells fired into his home killed three of his sixdaughters: Bessan, 20, Mayar, 15, and Aya, 14, and his niece,Noor, 17, and seriously injured his daughter, Shatha, 17. Thedoctor, an infertility specialist who worked in Israeli hospitals,phoned one of his many Israeli friends, Channel 10 reporter,Shlomi Eldar.The doctor’s voice was raw and desperate, Eldar’s facestricken. “I wanted to try to save them,” cried Abuelaish. “Butthey died, Shlomi.”Two years on Dr Abuelaish, who had lost his wife, Nadia, toleukaemia just three months before his daughters were killed,was in London to promote his book, I Shall Not Hate. It is hisresponse to the tragedy that has engulfed his family like that ofso many Palestinians. Garry Ettle reports.To introduce himself, Dr Abuelaishbegan with a poem written by anIsraeli acquaintance and dedicatedto his lost, eldest daughter, Bessan.It gently expressed awe at the family’sdetermination after their unbelievable lossand how women were central to this tragedyand to so many others world-wide.The conversation that followed wasthreaded through with medical allusions andmetaphors, reflecting the long and almostunique career of a doctor who has workedacross the deep divisions of the MiddleEast in Egypt, Gaza and Israel. He has alsoworked in Europe and is now a professor inCanada.Medicine, he told us, demands absoluteequality in the relationship between doctorand patient and Dr Abuelaish found thisamongst his colleagues in Israel. As for“hate,” this was a “symptom of a sick body,not healing well.”He led us through the moments betweenwhen he stepped out of his daughters’bedroom, filled with young life and hope, onthe afternoon of 16 January 2009 at theirhome in Jebalya refugee camp in Gaza, andthe screaming, dust-choked scrabble backto a laughter-slaughtered space of bloodand body parts and his instinctive firstaidingof the intact and breathing.We were asked to pause on thethought of how easily such individual, realnightmares become lost in a repeated“number of dead,” as another news item.We also tried to reflect on how we asindividuals would survive and react to suchan event destroying our own lives.Moving into “questions and answers,”Dr Abuelaish was asked the obvious, firstquestion: “How have you resisted hate?”He replied that the list of his persecutorswas endless and he refused to be theirvictim or partner in hate. He also felt thatone day he would have to account to hisdaughters as to how he had brought themtrue justice, rather than revenge.He spoke of the example set him by hisinjured daughter, Shatha, who persistentlypleaded as she recovered to return toher studies in Gaza and who succeededin passing her grades, with merit. Herchallenge had been to herself as well as tothose who attacked her family: to defy, notto hate.Again, “How did Dr Abuelaish feel theIsraeli de-humanisation of Palestinians couldbe curtailed?” His reply was, by challengingthe selected “facts.” Constantly to drivehome that Israel’s freedom is inextricablylinked to that of Palestine.He talked of his faith and how itexplained that his wife’s dying before herchildren saved her that ultimate horror ofmothers. Hope should also sustain peoplebecause, while there was life in the body,there was hope, but that we had to worktirelessly to discover and remove the truecause of the sickness.Finally, being asked “what could wedo?” Dr Abuelaish related the tale of achild running up and down a beach wherehundreds of starfish were being washedashore, gasping for their lives. The childstopped again and again to toss onestarfish after another back into the sea.Then a man approached shouting: “You aremaking no difference!” The child looked upinto the man’s eyes and answered firmly:“I am making a difference to each one Isave.”With his book, Dr Abuelaish brings away forward for Israelis and Palestiniansto reflect on how hate imprisons themalongside fear. As Dr Abuelaish might say,without treatment this patient’s future isfull of more pain and horror, but challengedwith trust and real human sensitivity, there isanother future.• In memory of his beloved girls, DrAbuelaish has established the Daughtersfor Life Foundation to provide educationalscholarships for young women throughoutthe Middle East, including Israel. Seewww.daughtersforlife.com• I ShallNot Hate byDr IzzeldinAbuelaish ispublished byBloomsbury.The bookcovershows DrAbuelaish’sdaughterswho wrote theirnames in the sand at the beach twoweeks before they died.