Tel Aviv — “The blood of my daughters was a price that saved others’ lives,” said Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. One year later, the Gaza physician is trying to make sense of the deaths of his children, killed by Israeli missiles during Israel’s military campaign.
The circumstances that brought on those missiles remain in dispute. But now, Abuelaish, whose unstinting outreach to Israelis before and during that campaign brought the suffering of Palestinian civilians home to many, is returning to visit the Palestinian territory where he used to live.
On January 16, 2009, the world learned of Abuelaish’s tragedy in dramatic fashion. Long involved in medical work in both Gaza and Israel, Abuelaish called a journalist-acquaintance who was broadcasting live on Israeli television to tell him that the army had just attacked his home.
In real time, viewers heard what Abuelaish had to say about three of his daughters, 20-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayar and 13-year-old Aya.
“They died on the spot — on the spot, Shlomi… Oh Lord, God, God, God!”
A fourth daughter, 17-year-old Shadah, was badly injured. On hearing the man’s cries of pain, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he wept.
One year has passed since Operation Cast Lead, the controversial military campaign Israel launched into Gaza to stop rocket attacks by militants into Israel’s south.
On January 12, Abuelaish took a taxi ride from Tel Aviv to the Israel-Gaza border, the final leg of an emotional journey back home, back to his old life after fleeing Gaza for Canada.
Even as he approached the border, the final hurdle between him and an anniversary visit to the graves of his daughters, the impeccably dressed doctor was calm and philosophical. “I fully believe that what is from God is good, everything from God always is for good, it has a reason,” he said.
“You may dislike, that’s what I learned from my [Muslim] faith, you may dislike something, but at the end you realize it was for good and you may like something and you see it wasn’t good.”
Abuelaish now lives in Toronto and has a professorship in global health at the University of Toronto. The journey back to Gaza was his first since he left in July, and this is the only face-to-face newspaper interview he gave during his short stay in Israel on the way.
Abuelaish voiced concern about what sights were in store for him in Gaza, including homelessness and poverty resulting from the military campaign. Day-to-day life is crippled by the comprehensive blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt, and the continued governance of Hamas, which many consider a terrorist organization.
As for his personal story, Abuelaish’s initial anger has given way to belief. He now speaks of his daughters not as “victims” but as people who were “selected.”
The selection, he believes, was divine, and he considers the reason obvious. “Why was I saved and why they were selected for that?” he asks, immediately providing his answer — that it was to persuade Israelis and humanity in general to “think of saving lives, not putting an end to someone’s life.”
Abuelaish reasons that before the attack on his family, the Israeli public focused on Hamas rockets in southern Israel, and on the worries and successes of the military campaign. But his tragedy, as that of a doctor renowned for advocating peace, working part-time in Israel and living his heartbreak on television, spurred Israelis to confront Palestinian suffering. “It opened the eyes and the minds and the hearts of the Israeli public,” he said. “It showed, it symbolized, the craziness of this war.”
Abuelaish thinks that the attack placed Palestinian suffering on the Israeli and international agenda, and had an immediate effect: The next day then-Prime Minister Olmert announced a unilateral ceasefire. Israel has never publicized a connection to his tragedy, but Abuelaish is sure that it was cause and effect. “Olmert announced the unilateral ceasefire after he saw what happened, so it saved lives,” Abuelaish said.
The Israeli army considers the Abuelaish girls to have been casualties of Hamas’s tactic of fighting from among civilians. The army claims that soldiers saw suspicious figures on the third floor of the building, which is where the girls were, and believed the figures were fighters observing Israeli forces in order to direct sniper fire from another building — a method that they say Hamas used during the operation. It also stresses that the family was urged to leave its house, which was in the combat zone, days before the incident.
But the doctor said at the time that he had nowhere else to go and insisted that no snipers were in the area. He has held ever since the attack that the army should admit it made a mistake. He believes that the Ministry of Defense has a moral obligation to give him an apology. He also thinks it has an obligation to compensate him financially for his loss, and his lawyer is starting to put together a case that may end up in Israel’s Supreme Court.
If he is successful, Abuelaish says, any money he is awarded will go to an international foundation that he has established called Daughters for Life, which is raising funds to enable women across the Middle East to attend university. He hopes that the foundation will award its first grants in a year, and has an ambitious five-year plan to open the equivalent of an American liberal arts college plus a high school for academically gifted young women from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.
He hopes that political factors will permit the campus to be located in Gaza so that Palestinians who have been denied so much will have access to education and ultimately the means to give back to society. His dream is for the school to educate a new generation of “enlightened” women, graduates who can one day negotiate a lasting peace for the region.
Meanwhile, life in Toronto is busy for Abuelaish. In addition to his academic responsibilities and his work for Daughters for Life, he takes care of his five surviving children. At the time they lost their sisters, they were still reeling from the death of their mother, Nadia — his wife — who had died from leukemia just four months earlier.
But all are coping well, he says, including Shadah, the seriously injured 17-year-old. Beaming with pride, he said that she returned to school after three months in recovery, and just three months later sat for her high school exit exams. Shadah scored 95.5%, he notes proudly, and is now studying engineering at the University of Toronto.
Abuelaish is also raising funds for an Israeli institution. At the end of January he will travel to Germany to seek money to build a conference facility at Sheba Medical Center, near Tel Aviv. He envisions a project that will be named in memory of his daughters. For several years Abuelaish worked at Sheba part-time on fertility research and treatment projects.
Asked whether it was difficult to start raising money for an Israeli institution after his experience, Abuelaish replied that humanitarian cooperation across national divides is the essence of his message. “This hospital is the place where everything melts,” he said. “There is diversity, and everyone is equal — Palestinians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze. All are equal, and that is a message we can learn from medicine — the message of equality and justice.
“In the end [the conference facility] will help human beings there, it will help sick patients, and this hospital serves Palestinians and Israelis and we must promote more collaboration, more partnership,” he explained.
Contact Nathan Jeffay at jeffay@forward.com
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From the beginning, the IDF maintained that they were responding to sniper fire from the doctor’s home. Israel Television reported that shrapnel removed from the daughter and the niece shows that they may have pieces of metal that are from a Grad-type Katyusha rocket – and not from any ammunition used by the IDF – in their heads. Israel doesn’t shoot Katyusha rockets. Hamas does.
The saddest part of this is that Dr. Abuelaish is apparently the rare Palestinian who strives for peace. Apparently, even he could not keep the terrorists from using his home.
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061969.html
Gaza aftermath: IDF bides its time, Hamas leaders hide out, everyone awaits truce By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
In the case of Dr. Abu al-Aish, the IDF now admits there was no sniper fire from his home and has dissociated itself from leaks to the press stating that the girls were hit by a Hamas Katyusha.
In the heat and turmoil of war, especially fighting against an enemy who hides behind civilians, civilians will suffer. The real crime has been the murderous, intentional attacks by bomb, gun and knife against Israeli civilians, including children, who were murdered while going about their every day activities. They are more worthy of sympathy than any Gazan arab who have installed and support the Hamas agenda.
I concur with George. Lets put this matter into real perspective. This operation was in response to thousands of rockets fired by Hamas and other terrorists deliberately targeting innocent Jewish men, women and especially children in Sderot and other communities. Hamas was tageting schools and playgrounds without regard to life. The IDF took special measures not to harm civilians, but this is war and mistakes do happen. It has not been proven if the IDF was at fault with the doctor's home. How about doing a story on some of the tragedies that happened to innocent Israeli families, instead of being a mouthpiece for a terrorist entity like Hamas?
George and Lou, as a South African Jew I am appalled by your statements. Are you saying that only Israeli Jewish suffering counts?
Tony, with all due respect, you need a lesson in Reading Comprehension. Those who fully understand the English language will have no problem understanding exactly my former comment.
Amira Haas, the Haaretz reporter, said the IDF has the GPS coordinates of every house in Gaza, and knows every family. They knew that this was Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish's house. There was no sniper fire. This was not a mistake of war. It was deliberate. It was murder. The Israeli government has chosen not to prosecute. They're telling IDF soldiers that if they do the same thing again, they won't be prosecuted.
Lou is saying, "What about all the other injustices in the world?" We'll get to them. We're looking at Israel now. There's no justification.
How can we condemn the anti-Semites, the Nazis, the Cossacks, for what they did to us, when we're doing the same thing to the Palestinians?
How do we know that the muslim doctor is a good muslim? He supported Hamas, and was part of the enemy who elected Hamas, and supported their murder of Jews.
Just like Abraham couldn't find ten good people, to allow Sodom and Gomorrah to be saved....so it is that ALL of Gaza must be wiped out.
ALL of these AMalekites must be wiped out.
If there are any good muslims in Gaza, lett them leave now.
War is total insanity! All this carnage on both sides only exacerbates the already tragic situation. Each side blames the other for its' own actions. The difference still remains that Hamas will stop nothing short of picking up where Hitler left off. Israel has no choice but to retaliate killing innocent civilians in the process. Many years ago when Golda Meir was asked as to whether or not she thought peace in the Middle East was possible, she responded "only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us." Until then the same sickness and perversion will continue along with comparable letters, comments and condemnations.
How can we condemn the anti-Semites, the Nazis, the Cossacks, for what they did to us, when we're doing the same thing to the Palestinians?'
What relation do the cossacks or nazis have with a terror gang which deliberately chooses to fight using civilians as shields? Answer-absolutely nothing. Mr. Norman's illogical and silly attempts of comparison are so typical of the entire delusional anti-Israel cult.
Here is the relationship between Hymie Zoltsveis and the Nazis:
>This is OUR LAND---Jewish land---part of Israel. The people of Gaza elected Hamas. Just as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah ALL were incinerated, so must the beasts and b*stards of Gaza should have all died.
Hymie Zoltsveis is calling for the extermination of a whole people.
We Jews are in the position of Germans when the Nazis started to exterminate people. We have to start acting like the heroic Germans we admire, like von Moltke and the Scholls, and do everything we can to stop it. At the very least, we should all speak up against people like Hymie Zoltsveis and tell him that talk like that is unacceptable.
Norman, have you ever considered for just a moment what would have happened to the Jews in 1948 had the arabs won the war? The question presumes you are familiar with the numerous arab massacres of Jews in the Mandate between 1920 leading up to the war of Independence. Assuming you are familiar with the fanatical Islamic fueled intolerant hatred of non-muslims exercising sovereignity in any part of what moslems consider the Land of Islam, namely the entire Middle East, what do you think would happen if Israel were ever defeated and overrun by a moslem army? You are far too detached from the Reality of what is and what could be and instead obsessively consumed by 'talking points.' The fact is arabs in Israel have more democratic rights than in any arab country which is even more remarkable considering the doubtful loyalties of much of their population. You would have to be even more delusional than I know you are to think for a second that, if arabs ever succeeded in destroying Israel, there would be a similar opportunity for Jews, assuming enough survived, to continue in the area with similiar rights.
Nadav, your are right on target! It seems to me that Israel's detractors continually question the Torah's reference for a homeland for the Jewish people yet look the other way when the Koran seemingly grants an inflated sense of entitlement for Muslims to every parcel of land from Mecca & Medina westward along North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean and then back eastward, halfway around the world to Indonesia. This in essence is the history of Islam, conquering, murdering, forced conversions, enslavement and subjugation of women not withstanding. And those who dare resist better be prepared to suffer the consequences, a direct reference to what might have happened to the Jews in 1948 if the Arabs prevailed. When one considers China's barbaric humans rights abuses since 1989, the genocides in Rwanda, Sudan, Bosnia and Kosovo, Israel's abuses on the West Bank and Gaza are tame, if totally nonexistant. Isn't it also strange, if not outright disgusting that a million Muslims gathered in Mecca a few years back to protest a Danish cartoon poking fun at Islam yet seem to look the other way when Muslim suicide bombers routinely blow up, maim and kill their own kind in the very middle of mainstream existance. Where is the protest from the rest of the civilized world? It's nowhere to be found. But when Israel retaliates against Hamas and Hezbollah, may they be damned by the "world community."
Nadav,
This story says that the IDF killed the daughters of Ezzeldeen Al-Ayesh, a Palestinian doctor who worked with Israelis, opposed violence against Israel, and defied threats from Hamas to do so.
You're saying that Israel attacked the Arabs in 1948 because they were expecting a war in which the Arabs would have massacred them, and arabs massacred Jews from 1920 to independence.
What does one thing have to do with another? How does that excuse the killing of Al-Ayesh's daughters?
Here is a muslim who didn't hate Jews, who defended Jews, and worked for peace with Jews. This is the most cooperative arab or muslim you could ask for. Look what the IDF did to him.
The IDF themselves admitted that there were no snipers or Katyusha fire, according to Haaretz. The IDF had the GPS coordinates of every house in Gaza, and knew every family living in Gaza, according to Amira Haas of Haaretz. There was no fog of war or heat of battle. It was a deliberate indiscriminate killing of a civilian medical family that the tank crew knew or should have known was not a threat. Israel has refused to investigate the killings. They've even stopped trying to defend it.
The problem with Dr. Ayesh is that he disproves your argument that all Muslims or all Arabs hate Jews. There have been many Palestinians like Dr. Ayesh. The Israelis arrested them, beat them, and often killed them, for many years.
It's as if Israel eliminated every Arab who liked Jews, so they could say, "The Arabs hate Jews."
Psalm 27:13 Unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. 13....The land of the living----Alas! what a land of the living is this! In which there are more dead than living, more under ground than above it; where the earth is fuller of graves than houses; where life lies trembling under the hand of death. Where death hath power to tyrannise over life. What land is this...mans or G-D'S? In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me, so that an enemy would not dare to approach me.
C'mon everyone...look at this doctors humanity. Unbelievable. To lose 2 children under any circumstances is horrendous. The most natural thing would be to blame us. That is what Hamas wants. instaed he is using his pain as a way to allow us to see eachother. Don't get me wrong, we all know who instigated this horror-those that lobbed miisles at our civilians deliberately. And any of us who have worn Zahal uniforms know what great efforts we make to avoid loss of non-comabatant life. That is not the point. This doctor makes me want to believe that there are enough people on their side who really see us as humans and not kaffirs-infidels that need to be driven to the sea. Let's applaud his efforts. If we made mistakes we should learn from them. I don't want our soldiers to take life carelessly. Let's keep the moral highground.