Perspectives

The last few weeks when I have done my Tuesday Gaza runs I’ve brought out one of the Gazan cardiac pediatricians. He has come along to learn from and talk with the head of the cardiology department at the hospital, where the children we bring out are admitted. It’s under this Israeli doctors leadership that all of the Gaza children we sponsor are treated. On the hour drive from Gaza to the hospital, the Gazan doctor recalled to me his boyhood spent in an Arab village outside where the now heavily fortified military border is, long before it was constructed. As we drove he would point out places where Arab villages once stood, where his father’s village and farm were, now demolished. One of my favorite ruins along the road, a lonely, one room stone building, seemingly plopped haphazardly in a rolling field, the doctor informed me was once a mosque. In the calmest way I've ever heard an Arab discuss the subject he told me how stupid he thought the Jews were for how they are treating the Gazan people. That day, the mother of one of the sick children got to see her sister for the first time in a decade. One sister lives in Gaza, the other I believe from the West Bank. When the sister from the West Bank heard that the other would be able to leave Gaza for a day, she traveled to the hospital in Tel Aviv to see her for the few hours she would be there.

After we made it to hospital and all the patients were treated and ready to go back to Gaza, I told the Israeli doctor that I would need to call a contact I have at the border to see if a protest was still going on. That day was the 3 year anniversary of the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, a Jewish soldier still held hostage by Hamas, and exploited as a powerful gambling chip. When I picked up the families and doctor in the morning, protesters were standing in front of the gates leading into the Gaza border, and as I found out later, were blocking trucks with humanitarian aid (though the only one I saw while at the border, they let through). Walking through the midst of these protesters with a half dozen Gazan’s, children with severe heart problems no less, would not be possible. So as I was seated waiting for a return call to hear if the protesters had dispersed, the Israeli doctor told me that he had been listening to the reports of the protests all day on the radio. He, also remaining about as calm as I’ve heard a Jew talk about Gilad Shalit, expressed his outrage at how unfair and uncompromising the Palestinians Authorities are and how gracious and compromising the Israel government is to them. He told me to imagine being one of Gilad’s parents, or his brother, what it must feel like for them.