“I shall not hate”

Life stories give us an insight into a person’s experiences. We get to know a world that is perhaps foreign to us in many ways, or we find parallels to our own experiences. They enable us to identify with this person, create an emotional bond – we become closer to each other. I also experienced this when reading Izzeldin Abuelaish’s autobiography I Shall Not Hate, first published in 2011.* Growing up in the Gaza Strip, he later became a sought-after gynaecologist and the first Palestinian doctor to be allowed to work in a hospital in Israel. He had many friends in Israel, including journalists and politicians. Today, the multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee lives in Canada and teaches as a professor at the University of Toronto.

Oh my God, what have we done

It is 16 January 2009 when an Israeli missile strikes the bedroom of the daughters in Izzeldin Abuelaish’s house in Jabalia. Three of them are killed, as is their visiting cousin. Just a few weeks earlier, his wife had been suffering from acute leukaemia and died within two weeks. He was left with eight children without a mother. The youngest was only six years old. A world collapsed. Minutes after the attack, the world public learnt: “Our house was bombed, my daughters are dead. Oh God, what have we done?” The Israeli television station Channel 10 had been conducting daily interviews with Abuelaish after the Israeli military banned journalists from entering the Gaza Strip.
  This was also the case that afternoon, and the terrible events became public. Until then, many Israelis were mainly angry about the rocket attacks from Gaza; now, for the first time, they learnt something about the reasons for them and what was actually happening there, journalist Shlomi Eldar later explained.

Temporarily relocating to Gaza

But before this memorable day, a lot had already happened in Izzeldin Abuelaish’s life, which he shares with us in his autobiography.
  He was born on 3 February 1955 in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, the eldest of six brothers and three sisters. “Like most Palestinian children, I didn’t have a real childhood,” he writes. “Until I was ten, my family, which now had eleven members, lived in a room measuring three by three metres. There was no electricity, no running water and no toilets in the house. We ate our meals from one big plate.” (p. 69)
  But that had not always been the case. Izzeldin Abuelaish came from a respected family that had lived in the village of Houg in the southern part of Israel. Following the tensions caused by the founding of Israel, his grandfather decided to leave the village and his farm in 1948 and temporarily relocate to Gaza. There were rumours of massacres and the grandfather wanted his family to be safe.
  Now they lived a few hours’ walk from their former home, always hoping to return. “My childhood passed in the shadow of a promise: We’ll be back soon. Maybe in a fortnight, maybe two weeks later.” (p. 61) Until then, Gaza had not been a refugee camp, but a place reserved for the Palestinian people after the establishment of the Israeli state. “My father never gave up the title deed of the farm. [...] I don’t keep them as evidence to get the land back on the basis of some international treaty, but so as not to forget what was once ours.” (p. 63)

My most valuable possession

Poverty was a defining element of Izzeldin’s childhood. “I really don’t know how my father endured the conditions we lived in – considering that he had lived the first part of his life on his family’s homestead, where there was plenty to eat and great family pride.” (p. 71) Out of this stressful situation, Izzeldin developed into an outstanding student: “Even as a child, I knew that education was a privilege, something sacred and a key to many opportunities. I remember clutching my books tightly and protecting my most precious possession with my life, amidst the destruction that was taking place around me.” (p. 38) One of his teachers, “who behaved as if he had discovered a real student in me, played an important role. He paid so much attention to me that by the end of the year he had completely convinced me, a first-year student, that I could learn everything I wanted to learn and become everything I wanted to become. He was an extraordinary man.” (p. 73) Astonishingly, the school was completely overcrowded, with sixty children in the class and three children per desk.

Doing your part

But Izzeldin also had to contribute to the family’s livelihood. He got up at three in the morning and sold milk before school started in order to contribute money to the family. After school, he picked oranges and hauled bricks. He did his homework in the evening surrounded by his noisy siblings. As the eldest son, he had a special responsibility and his mother was very strict. But time and again he met people who had a positive influence on his view of the world and his fellow human beings. “It was the teachers who opened doors for me and let me know that there was a future beyond the oppressive poverty in which we lived.” (p. 77)
  When he was fifteen years old, he took the opportunity to work on a farm in Israel during the summer. He earned a good wage there and wondered why this family had taken him, a Palestinian boy, in the first place. Apparently not all Israelis were his enemies, he realised. He also had this experience later when he was a doctor. Many Israeli colleagues helped him so that he could do his specialist training with them in an Israeli clinic.

My dream of becoming a doctor

But the heavy strain took its toll, and Izzeldin Abuelaish was taken to the Al-Shiva Health Center in Gaza City due to an inflammation of the joints of his legs. “It was at this point where I started dreaming of becoming a doctor. I saw that, as a doctor, I had the opportunity to improve the situation of my family and serve the Palestinian peoples at the same time.” (p. 88)
  In the following years, he made his dream come true thanks to a scholarship and hard work. He frequented the medical faculty in Cairo and got a degree in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of London. Later on, from June 1997, he became a specialist for obstetrics and a gynaecologist at the Soraka Medical Centre in Israel and thus was the first Palestinian doctor among the staff of an Israeli hospital.
  He continued studying medicine and genetics at the Vittore-Buzzi Children’s Hospital in Milan as well as the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels, where he became a specialist for infertility treatment. Medicine, and his work as a doctor, served as a bridge connecting him to the people he served: “Throughout my whole life as an adult I had one foot in Palestine and the other in Israel, an uncommon circumstance in that region. No matter if I delivered babies, consulted infertile couples or made scientific research, I always felt like medicine can build bridges between people and that doctors can be ambassadors of peace.” (p. 39)

Bonds that heal both our wounds

Whoever delves into Izzeldin Abuelaish’s book gets to know a lot about the history of Palestine and its inhabitants. You can feel the difficult daily life in Gaza, the hours of waiting at the border, the chicanery at the checkpoints which shaped daily life in an occupied country. Nevertheless, Izzeldin Abuelaish stayed open for human encounters which made him stronger: “When I crossed the border every week in the nineties, the soldiers were gruff and arrogant, but with time and a lot of patience on my end, they learned to accept me and even asked me for medical advice.” (p. 56) He built up friendships with his Israeli colleagues, who he invited to the Gaza Strip on the weekends. He sent his daughters to camps in the USA, together with Israeli girls. “I wanted my daughters to meet Israeli girls and spend time with them in a neutral environment so that they could discover the bonds that could heal and bind both our wounds.” (p. 48)

Not hatred and revenge

And then came 16 January of 2009. Shortly before this, he had received an invitation from the University of Toronto. He wanted to move forward after the painful loss of his wife and make a more positive future possible for his children. The army later admitted that the missile attack on his house was an accident. There was no apology. But he did not want revenge and hatred, which would have been understandable in view of the events, to determine his life: “Since I was a little boy, I have sought to recognise the good in everything, and that has remained my attitude – even in the face of considerable obstacles that became challenges for me. So, I managed to get from one frontier to the next, as if I had gathered strength from one to prepare myself for the next.” (p. 49)

Education as a lifebelt

In Toronto, he continued to embody his role as a peace mediator. Knowing what education is worth for a human being, and to commemorate his daughters, he founded the “Daughters for Life Foundation”, which realises health and education programs for girls in the Middle East: “In this ocean of inequality, violence and hate, education is a lifebelt. Education means freedom and independence.” (p. 15)

My belief in the right, the dignity
and the value of each human being

Izzeldin Abuelaish’s life story is presented in a differentiated and impressive way. We therefore hope that his book has many readers. He is currently in high demand for interviews. Despite some strange questions that try to force him to take a politically correct stance, he remains adamant: “My belief in the rights, dignity and value of every human being is unshakeable, and I will defend this belief no matter what anyone says about me. I continue this journey in the firm belief that I, that our people, that we have a right to freedom.” (p. 11)
  Izzeldin Abuelaish has been honoured time and again for his work, and in 2010 and 2011 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He would have received it from me! •

* All page numbers and quotes refer to the German book; translated by Current Concerns

Abuelaish, Izzeldin. I shall not hate. A Gaza doctor’s journey. Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN-978-0-3073-5888-2