On Sunday morning August 14 we hosted a very unusual event at BookHampton's East Hampton store. We were very pleased to welcome Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. A Palestinian, born in Gaza, Dr. Abuelaish is a medical doctor now on the faculty of the University of Toronto and the author of an autobiographical book entitled I Shall Not Hate (Walker & Company).
As the book makes clear, our guest is a man of remarkable abilities who was able to raise himself from an impoverished background to earn advanced degrees in medicine and public health; more amazing still is his willingness to engage with the Israelis on a one-to-one basis — he actually practiced his profession in an Israeli hospital for many years — in the hope that they would engage with him in the same fashion. In the beginning of 2009, however, his home in Gaza was hit in an Israeli bombing raid and three of his daughters and a niece were killed (his wife had died of a medical condition a few months before). Incredibly, this nightmare did not make him abandon his quest to make peace with Israel; to the contrary it accelerated and stimulated that quest, as it made him aware of the folly and horror of each outrage (on both sides) leading to the next with no end in sight.
As he told the overflow crowd, Dr. Abuelaish insists that all people are alike, that they want the same things by way of security for themselves and their families, material sustenance and deserve to be treated on an individual basis, on their own merits and not simply as a Palestinian or an Israeli. People should, he said, be held responsible for their own actions and should be able to take responsibility for their own lives.
This was a highly inspirational talk, much different from the normal bookstore event and spoken by someone who is clearly much closer to the front line of world events — from which he experienced an almost unimaginable suffering — than most of those in the audience, but who has attempted to turn his experience into something positive. To that end he has created a Foundation called Daughters for Life that is specifically interested in promoting educational opportunities for women and girls in Palestine and throughout the Middle East, by providing scholarships and by providing circumstances in which young women and girls from a number of countries (including Israel) can be brought together to interact with each other as individuals and not just as representatives of the countries they come from. He feels strongly that empowering and educating women will create the most positive and hopeful conditions for the future, given the woman's predominant role in the maintenance and stability of family life. He said that each step is a small one but that only the succession of small steps will eventually be able to lead to significant change.
Responding to a question from the audience, Dr. Abuelaish said he saw the pattern of uprisings in so many Middle-Eastern and African countries this year as a very positive development, because so many of them were really created by young people who wanted to take responsibility for themselves and their countries and to find some dignity and self-respect; he was particularly impressed that this new spirit had recently even crossed over into Israel, where there have been street rallies and protests by young people of the working classes complaining of diminished economic opportunities in their society--here again is proof how alike all people are.
Answering another question, Dr. Abuelaish explained that he decided to move to Canada after the loss of his daughters, because he couldn't face being separated from them as much as he had been when he was commuting to Israel, all the more in view of his wife's death (it appears that there are no serious medical facilities in Gaza itself).
I was very proud to have participated in this event, which certainly transcends a normal reading or discussion based on a book or a literary topic, and believe that all of us learned a great deal from Dr. Abuelaish's quite inspirational example.
— Jeremy Nussbaum
Photographs © Jeremy Nussbaum
