Don't play politics with medicine
March 27, 2005
The first suggestion that Hadassah Medical Organization deserved the Nobel Peace Prize came from reporters.
The current conflict brought hundreds of international journalists into Hadassah's two Jerusalem hospitals. They came to write about terror victims, but they found another compelling story. Many witnessed for the first time what we Israelis take for granted in our hospitals: In the ER, in waiting rooms and hospital wards, they saw Jews and Arabs mixing freely and receiving equal care. Even more remarkable to them was the staff of Jews and Arabs, and yes � Palestinians who crossed checkpoints � working shoulder to shoulder.
Top-tier investigative journalists spent weeks in the hospital with unlimited access. They did broadcasts from recovery rooms shared by terror victims and terrorists guarded by soldiers. Their cameras rolled as two women doctors, one a Palestinian and the other a settler, worked late into the night to save the life of a terror victim. Frequently, they interviewed Hadassah's chief trauma surgeon, Avi Rivkind, on why he'd personally operated on arch-terrorist Hassan Salameh.
They overheard physicians and nurses talking on cell phones to colleagues in Hebron, Jenin and Ramallah. They listened in awe as an obstetrician whose son had been brutally murdered by terrorists told how she saw his face in every baby she delivered, Jewish and Arab; and how with each birth she prayed that these mothers wouldn't know her agony.
The men and women whom the journalists met at the Hadassah hospitals weren't saints or activists promulgating doctrines in ivory towers. They treated more victims of terror than any other medical center in the world, developing new methods for repairing bodies and brains riddled with screws and ball bearings, and for saving children suffering from the lethal combination of blast injury and burns.
The hospitals are considered prime targets, and to enter them you pass through expensive metal detectors in security tents. But both staff and patients left their anger and political opinions outside, creating an island of peace. All of this is archived in print, on tape and film from Japan to Holland, to England and the US.
These journalists were also covering the Palestinian side of the conflict, so they'd heard the usual demonizing of Israel, particularly on medical, hence ethical issues. They filmed Palestinian ambulances arriving at the hospital, and when the brother of a child patient from Ramallah was desperately needed to supply bone marrow to save his life, they saw the Jewish doctor, a skullcap flapping on his head, racing across the square to embrace the small donor and his dad. One TV team ran into an injured Gaza journalist colleague, who volunteered to record the extraordinary experience he was having as a patient.
Journalists were not inclined to writing puff pieces about Israelis during this bloody conflict. Over and over, they admitted how cheered they were by what they discovered at Hadassah. That's the way it should be, even in war, but the experienced reporters and camera crews knew how remarkable the reality was.
Amazingly, there were also stories of budding initiatives for peace. Throughout the current conflict, many meetings took place between Jewish and Palestinian midwives, emergency care workers, those who deal with domestic violence, and many others. Hadassah invested in projects of the Peres Center for Peace which brought funds from European donors who wanted to make sure their euros really went for humanitarian causes. A recently broadcast movie in Italy highlighted the success of pediatric heart surgery sponsored by the Tuscany Regional Council. Europeans, particularly those disheartened about abuse of funds sent in good faith, would do well to follow the Tuscan example. Winning the Nobel Prize would be a wonderful way to galvanize support and help fund these win-win-win projects.
Journalists cannot nominate peace prize candidates, but their documentation influenced those who could: elected government members, professors or former peace prize winners.
How disappointing that Daoud Kuttab would use Hadassah's nomination as an excuse for an ugly assault on the hospital that saves so many lives. He accuses Hadassah of everything but poisoning the wells: refusal to care for indigent Palestinians, stealing the land in 1939 and 1961 when Mount Scopus and Ein Kerem opened, not contributing to the funding of cooperation projections (more than half the cost is invested by Hadassah).
Hadassah's finances have always been transparent. I advise his friends who are "livid" at Hadassah's nomination to find more fitting targets for their anger and frustration.
In 1909, Sophie Szold wept over the Jewish and Arab children so accustomed to flies in their eyes that they didn't bother to brush them away. Her daughter, Henrietta, established Hadassah to help all the peoples of the Middle East, making the Hebrew name of Queen Esther a synonym for "health care."
Mr. Kuttab � it's time to move away from defamation. Let's not close the window of opportunity with hate. We need to learn from these outstanding role models and make the entire region an island of peace.
The writer served as liaison to the foreign press at Hadassah Hospital during the current conflict.
