Israeli Hospital Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

The Hadassah Medical Organisation in Israel has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize. It has been cited for its promotion of Jewish-Arab cooperation, providing equal treatment to Palestinians and Israelis. Three areas are cited: the ability to maintain the value of equal treatment for all people despite treating more terror victims than any other medical center; the model of cooperation and coexistence set by the mixed staff of people of all faiths; and the medical organization's ongoing initiatives in creating bridges for peace even throughout the intifada.

Several reasons were given by the nominators for their choice: The two medical centers are run according to humanitarian Jewish values that require giving high level of health care to people of all ages, religions and ethnic origins. It has worked flawlessly, they said, to implement these values throughout the raging terrorist violence of the last four and a half years, while treating more intifada victims than any other medical centers in the country. It is also an example of Jewish-Arab cooperation, as it has trained Palestinian pediatric oncology specialists from Augusta Victoria Hospital in east Jerusalem on behalf of the Peres Institute for Peace. "I can't think of a nicer way to celebrate our founding," commented Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America president June Walker.

This development flies in the face of the recent loathsome anti-Israel accusations found in the British Medical Journal. (You can read all about the episode with the BMJ here).

Bennie Penzik includes this interesting account from freelance journalist Mike Levine in his weekly vignettes.

Levine writes of a conversation he had during a recent hospitalization in Jerusalem, where he met a fellow patient, a medical doctor from Gaza. Here are extracts;

“I was curious how someone from Gaza, a hotbed of anti-Israeli terrorism, could manage to get himself admitted into a hospital in Jerusalem. He told me that there never was hostility between most of the doctors in Gaza and their colleagues in Israel, that in fact, there was constant communication, and that Israeli medical people had often shipped medical supplies and medicines when Gaza had shortages, which was often. He told of numerous children sent to Israel for treatment and surgery impossible to do in Gaza, and that there never was a charge for anything! He told me that most of the educated people in Gaza were more than ready to live in peace with us, but that they were afraid to speak out, fearing a ‘collaborators’ execution.

Comments

[Cynic]

Those people should also look at Afula's Ha'Emek Hospital which has done similar outstanding work over the decades and its chief of Cardiology is an Arab, not to mention all the other Arabs working in tandem with their Jewish co-workers.

[Jodi]

That is why the BMJ episode was so outrageous. Imagine their embarresment for printing such an article and then the target of their rage ends up winning the nobel prize for peace!

But, I'm sure they will rather find someone less controversial to give the prize to.