Play Crazy Game Trusted Gaming News Portal
editor’s Note: The following interview contains explicit language. Discretion is advised.
(CNN) — When I speak to Dr. Izeldin Abuelaish on the phone, the jet lag and pain are evident in his voice.
Abuelaish, best known as the first Palestinian doctor to hold a position in an Israeli hospital, recently returned to his second homeland, Toronto.
In recent days he has been in Cairo consoling his brother, who is mourning the deaths of his three children killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
“Even if he could go back,” Abuelaish says of his brother, who left Gaza for Egypt in September for health reasons, “he has nothing to go back to.”
It’s a shame Abuelaish knows pain too well. In 2009, she became famous after describing live on Israeli television’s Channel 10 the horror of finding her three daughters, aged 21, 15 and 13, and her 17-year-old niece dead after being attacked by Israeli tanks. House in Gaza.
Abuelaish had been reporting for several weeks for Israeli television, in his fluent Hebrew, about the intense fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
Then, on January 16, he called his friend and Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar, who put his message on speaker, live on television.
It was a television moment that shocked the hosts – and Israeli viewers – to their core.
“My God, my God, what did we do?” A frustrated Abuelesh lamented over the speakerphone of his mutilated daughters.
Dr. Izeldin Abuelaish, accompanied by his children, visiting the graves of his daughters who were murdered in 2009. Nearly 15 years later, he is once again mourning the death of his extended family in Gaza.
Courtesy Izeldine Abuelaish
With Shlomi’s help, other injured members of Abuelaish’s family were taken to an Israeli hospital. And in her suffering, Abuelaish used the media spotlight to advocate for equality and peace.
He later wrote a memoir about his experience: “I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity.” Human Dignity”). Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, the 68-year-old moved to Canada with his remaining children, and is now a professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
But nearly 15 years after his heartbreaking phone call on live television, Abuelaish is once again facing family tragedy following Israeli bombing in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack.
This time, more than 20 members of Abuelaish’s family were killed after an airstrike on the Jabaliya refugee camp in late October. (Israel Defense Forces say the attack targeted Hamas members.)
In this interview with CNN Opinion, Abuelaish reflects on the reasons he wanted to work with Israeli doctors, the current dire state of hospitals in Gaza and why he sees his daughters in the face of all Palestinian children.
The interview was edited for clarity and length.
CNN: Tell me about what your first years were like in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza.
Dr. Izeldin Abuelaish: There is no such thing as “life”. Humanitarian assistance is required. You go to sleep hungry. You will have to bring water.
But at least there was public water at that time. There is no water today. There is no food there. This is extreme poverty. This is lack. You feel the desperation, the desperation, of the people there.
In 1970 the Israelis demolished our house. What is home? Home is your dignity. Home is your freedom, your privacy, your family, your life. It’s more than just four walls.
It was a very simple house: two rooms. But it protected us from cold and sun.
Once the house is gone, dignity, freedom and privacy also goes with it.
CNN: You are known as the first Palestinian doctor to hold a staff position in an Israeli hospital, what did you learn from working across the border?
Grandmother: For me, doctors are angels of humanity. They radiate humanity, they heal wounds. And when we treat patients, we treat them equally based on diagnosis. Not based on name, ethnicity, religion, origin.
This is what I practice. And this is what I am proud of.
Why do we treat patients the same way inside hospitals and then treat them differently when they come out?
When I went to work there, I wanted Israelis to learn, and understand, and know who the Palestinians are. Because our enemies are our ignorance, ego and greed. How can I evaluate you without knowing you? Without dealing with you?
He wanted Israelis not to see Palestinians as workers working for them, or to see them only as the boy who threw stones during the First Intifada. I want them to see Palestinians as equal, as talented, and as human as they are.
CNN: In 2009, your phone call on Israeli television revealed the horror of the death of your three daughters and your niece after an Israeli shell fell on your home in Gaza. How did this moment surprise Israelis?
Grandmother: At that time (during the intense fighting between Israel and Hamas between December 2008 and January 2009), every day, every night, we were not able to go close to the windows because of the bombings, projectiles all around us.
And now it is much more serious than what we experienced then.
I had six daughters and two sons. So I placed them: three next to one wall, three next to the other wall, and we stayed on the other wall, in case one side attacked and they killed us all.
That day, when I saw the smoke, dust and damage, at first I could not believe it. But then I realized that this was my home.
I went inside to see where Bessan, my eldest daughter, was, who took on a maternal role after her mother’s death… (Abuelaish’s wife had died of leukemia the previous year). Where is Meier? She was 15 years old and was planning to become a doctor. His head was cut off.
Aya, who was 13 years old and planning to become a journalist. And my niece Noor, who was 17 and had come to stay with us that afternoon, and who wanted to be a teacher.
They became parts. There was massacre, scattered everywhere. Brains, blood, on the roof, on the roof, on the floor.
So at that time, what can I do? Israeli television was to interview me live about the situation in Gaza. When I called my journalist friend to tell him what had happened, I left him a voicemail.
Luckily, I was sitting next to the television presenter who was to interview me.
They told him that something had happened to Dr. Abuelaish. He put it on speaker (I had no idea what was going on in the studio) and I asked him, what could be done to stop the shooting of the house, to evacuate the dead and victims.
My daughter Shata, who has one eye broken and two fingers completely torn. I was struggling to breathe. So right then and there I called to see if I could take him to the hospital where I work. And then they opened a closed box and broadcast it live to Israel.
He showed them: These are Palestinians. This is the doctor who treats us, who attends to our births. These are his daughters, peace activists.
So they opened the borders for us. I went to the hospital.
Once it was broadcast live it became a symbol of the war. Two days later, Ehud Olmert, who was the prime minister I know, announced a unilateral ceasefire.
At least this gave me satisfaction. Helped in saving life. But no one had to die for this to happen.
CNN: Having worked in Palestinian hospitals throughout his career, give us an idea of the challenges he now faces.
Grandmother: About 25 hospitals do not function, they have been demolished. And the rest work less and less. (According to World Health Organization assessments as of December 27, there are 13 hospitals in Gaza that are partially functioning, 2 that are minimally functioning, and 21 that are not functioning at all.)
The most important things for running a hospital are human resources, facilities and security.
Also, power is important. It is an integral part of any hospital. What do these devastating wounds from these merciless attacks mean? We need to take X-rays, and X-rays require electricity.
A laboratory is needed. You need a blood transfusion, so you need a blood bank. You need anesthesia and you need to have the operation in an operating room.
You need water, antibiotics, medicines.
And what about patients with chronic diseases? Things like bronchial asthma, heart disease, diabetes, cancer.
Speaking as a gynecologist, with the current situation, what does this mean for pregnant women? How can they give birth to a child without cleanliness? Or imagine a cesarean section without anesthesia.
CNN: You have said that you see your daughters in every Palestinian child. What future now awaits Palestinian children?
Grandmother: They have no future. How can we give them hope of stopping this bloodshed? How can we begin to give them a future, so that they don’t become extremists or radicalized?
The cost of this war is not just what is happening now. The price of war is an invisible ghost. This is the time after the war. Physical, social, spiritual and mental wounds that persist for generations.
It is a transgenerational, persistent and persistent stress disorder.
Dr. Izeldin Abuelaish’s niece Aya is named after his daughter Aya. He is one of more than 20 members of Abuelaish’s extended family who died after an airstrike on the Jabalya refugee camp in late October. “She was my daughter Aya’s age,” Abuelaish said. Credit: Courtesy Izeldine Abuelaish
We have to change the context and environment that led to this. We must treat Palestinians and Israelis as equals, not as “occupiers” and “the occupied,” “oppressors” and “the oppressed.” But as equal people, side by side.
This is a guarantee of help for our Palestinian children. And Israeli children too. We have to move forward and create a future.
CNN: What kind of life do you dream for your family in Gaza? And how can this be achieved?
Grandmother: Since the war, they have lived as nomads. They are scattered everywhere, from one place to another, about 10 times.
So all I want for him is for the world to think about him. Let them think of those hoping to find shelter, to drink fresh water.
The freedom of the Palestinian people must never stop at borders. And I want the world to understand that the Palestinian people deserve this. They are educated and talented people who can take part in the development and progress of the world.
Life is like riding a bicycle: we must keep going to maintain balance. We, as the Palestinian people, are facing the challenge and are ready to start from scratch.
But we need to unite, support and transform that void into freedom, dignity and equality.
