Izzeldin Abuelaish
Author of I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
About the Author
Image credit: Jacob Stevens
Works by Izzeldin Abuelaish
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Abuelaish, Izzeldin
- Legal name
- Abuelaish, Izzeldin
- Birthdate
- 1955-02-03
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Palestine (birth)
- Birthplace
- Jabalia Camp, Gaza Strip, Palestine
- Places of residence
- Gaza
Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Education
- University of London (diploma in Obstetrics and Gynecology)
Harvard University (M.A.) - Occupations
- Medical Doctor
Professor - Organizations
- University of Toronto
- Awards and honors
- Calgary Peace Prize (2012)
Lombardy Region Peace Prize (2011)
Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award of Canada (2010)
Order of Ontario - Short biography
- Izzeldin Abuelaish, MD, MPH, is a Palestinian medical doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp. He is a proponent of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
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Reviews
Lists
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 3
- Members
- 578
- Popularity
- #43,351
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 59
- ISBNs
- 23
- Languages
- 5
Izzeldin Abuelaish, who would go on to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, writes with eloquence about the modern day hell that is life in Gaza. Whatever your politics, it's hard to think of many other places in the world where such a large body people are hemmed into such a relatively small space with so little freedom of movement, their land borders, sea and airspace blockaded by Israel with the Palestinians having next to no control over the transportation of basic necessities such as food and medicine into their land. Complex geopolitical wrangling has existed for a very long time in this part of the world and there is fault on both sides, but Abuelaish tries to put his own politics aside and to instead put a human face to the real victims of this ongoing struggle.
The futility of guns and rockets in achieving any type of peaceful resolution to the conflict is core to Abuelaish's message in this book. As an eminent fertility specialist, he spent a considerable amount of his career working in a hospital in Israel, endeavouring to help couples regardless of their faith or nationality and building firm friendships with many Israelis. This, he believes, is a rare privilege in this part of the world, where Palestinians and Israelis have little opportunity to engage with each other, where they only know the 'other side' as faceless enemies, which makes peace all the more difficult. As such, he endeavoured to ensure his own children made the most of opportunities to attend peace camps with Israeli young people, and instilled a strong sense of love and humanity in his children's upbringing. Incredibly sadly, three of his daughters and a niece were killed when an Israeli tank opened fire from the street on the bedroom they were in, and Abuelaish works hard, not just in this novel but in the numerous talks he has given over the years, to prevent them from being faceless statistics - he wants us to see their faces, to know something of their individual personalities, the career dreams they had. He also wants us to know, however hard it is to read, the reality of this type of warfare, his daughters limbs scattered around the wreckage of their bedroom, one daughter decapitated. It's utterly harrowing, but I think it's important not to look the other way to the reality of other people's sufferings.
Coming as I do from Northern Ireland, I appreciate how what Abuelaish says about dialogue being the only route to peace is so true, and also how peace will never be established whilst two peoples are kept largely separated from each other. Peace requires getting to know each other, to stop demonising the other side as something less than human, to look for what we have in common rather than what divides us.
Peace seems further away than ever for Palestinians and Israelis at this point, but we must live in hope. At one point in his career, Abuelaish works with some Israeli doctors on the impact of conflict trauma on Palestinian children living in Gaza and Israeli children living near the border with Gaza. Fifteen years ago PTSD was already becoming endemic amongst these children - it's so difficult to think about what the future holds for the children of today in these areas.
4 stars - a true lesson in compassion but so very hard to read given current events.… (more)