I SHALL NOT HATE
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish
Walker & Company, 2011
On January 16, 2009, Israeli shells hit Dr. Abuelaish’s home in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s invasion, killing three of his daughters and his niece. A Palestinian physician who grew up in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and went on to study in Cairo and then at Harvard, Dr. Abuelaish writes that the personal catastrophe (accompanied, of course, by the deaths of some 1,400 Palestinians during the Israeli assault), deepened his belief that “violence is futile. It is a waste of time, life and resources, and has been proven only to beget more violence.”
Dr. Izseldin Abuelaish 54, a Hebrew-speaking Gaza-born Israeli doctor at Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv and peace activist, was getting ready to join his new posting at the University of Toronto – but his dream of living a safe place with his eight children was smashed by the Israel Occupation Force (IOF) shelling of his house in Jabaliya during the final days of Israel’s 23-day attack on Gazzah, world’s most crowded place with 1.5 million Muslim and Christian Palestinian natives living on a small piece of land surrounded by Israel and its Arab collaborators. As result of Israeli shelling, Dr. Abuelaish’s three daughters, Bisan 20, Mayar 15, and Aya 13 along with their cousin, Nour 14, were martyred while seriously injured one sister Shatha 16. Dr. Abuelaish’s wife, Nadia, had died of leukemia before the Israeli attack.
Abuelaish family’s tragedy at the hands of trigger-free IOF soldiers who are taught to kill Arabs as a divine duty – was brought to Israeli living-rooms by an Israeli TV journalist Shalomi Eldar through Channel 10. The Israeli invasion of Gazzah in Dec-January 2009 killed close to 1400 Gazzans mostly children and civilians and 13 Israelis including three soldiers.
After many hurdles, the Israeli officials allowed Dr. Auelaish and his remaining five children to immigrate to Canada to join his posting at the University of Toronto. Some stories of Ziofascism made their way to UN report prepared by South African Jewish Justice Goldstone, which was voted-down by US Congress and criticized by Zionist government labeling Justic Goldstone as a “self-hating Jew”. However, the great majority of Palestinian tragedies were covered under the sand.
Abuelaish family finally arrived in Toronto (Canada) on July 22, 2009. Dr. Abuelaish has taken his 5-year contract at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. The University contract includes free accommodation, an office, a research assistant and a car – in addition to salary. Two his surviving daughters, Dalal 20 and Shatha 17, are both engineering students at U of T.
Even after the great family tragedy, Dr. Abuelaish has not changed his views of Arab and Jews (mostly foreign settlers) living together in peace in Palestine. He is critical of both the Jewish extremism and Palestinians’ armed resistance. He is , in fact, is very much against the on-going illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – which, Obama, in the begining demanded to be halted but, later under pressure from the Jewish Lobby, backed-down.
Dr. Abuelaish has been invited to address Jewish, Christian and Muslim gatherings where he tells his personal experience of living under the Jewish occupation and the death of his three daughters.
Today, Dr. Abuelaish is schedule to address a gathering at Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto. However, I bet he will never be allowed at Rabbi Daniel Guney’s Jacob House Congregation, whose website begins with: “People of Israel, we stand with you as you fight for freedom from Hamas (destruction in Hebrew). Israel army do your job, and rid yourself of your enemies.” Rabbi Daniel Guney is wanted in Turkey for being the ‘mastermind’ of the plot to overthrow Erdogan led government.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/in-memory-of-my-three-daughters/