Flesh for peace...
Palestinian boy's organs go to IsraelisDonations seen as an act of peace
By Joel Greenberg
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
November 7, 2005
JENIN, West Bank – Ismail Khatib watched his slain 12-year-old son lowered into a grave in this West Bank city yesterday, knowing that organs transplanted from his body would save lives in Israel.
The boy, Ahmed Ismail Khatib, was shot by Israeli soldiers Thursday as he played in a street with a toy rifle at the entrance to the Jenin refugee camp.
The army said soldiers on a raid to arrest militants had come under fire and shot back from their vehicle when they spotted the boy from more than 100 yards away, mistaking him for a gunman.
Ahmed was critically wounded in the head and taken to a hospital in the Israeli city of Haifa. When doctors told his parents there was no hope for his survival, they agreed to donate his organs. Yesterday, the organs were transplanted into six Israelis.
It was a rare moment of humanity in the blood-soaked Palestinian-Israeli conflict, highlighted on Israeli news broadcasts as an act of peace.
Ismail Khatib said he had lost a brother who died of kidney failure and understood the desperate need for organ donations.
"When the doctor told me that there was no hope that my son would live, my brother came to mind, and I thought that I could help," he said. "The recipients were unknown, and it didn't matter to me whether they were Jewish, Muslim or Christian. It was a humanitarian matter, so that someone else could live."
Yesterday, Ahmed's heart was beating in the chest of Samah Gadban, a 12-year-old girl from Pekiin, a village of the Druze sect in northern Israel. She had waited five years for a transplant.
Her mother, Yusra Gadban, wept tears of gratitude as her daughter lay in intensive care in a hospital near Tel Aviv. She said she wanted to call Ahmed's mother. "I will ask her to receive us for a visit at her house, so I can hug her and kiss her and thank her for saving the life of my daughter," she said.
The boy's lungs were transplanted to a 14-year-old girl suffering from cystic fibrosis, his kidneys to a 4-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy, and sections of his liver to a 7-month-old girl and 58-year-old woman.
"Part of our son is still alive," said Abla Khatib, Ahmed's mother, weak with grief after her son's body was brought home to her before burial. "We gave life to someone else. We proved that we want peace."
Near his son's fresh grave, Ismail Khatib said he believed the organ donation had sent an important message to Israelis.
"Israel sees the Jenin refugee camp as a factory for terrorists," he said. "This proves to Israel that there are people here who understand the meaning of humanity. . . . The occupation is barbaric. Maybe a child who received an organ from my son will grow up to be a leader and put an end to this aggression."
source
This story leaves me speachless.
posted by chimurenga @ 7:23:00 PM
3 Comments:
This story leaves me speechless.
As am I in reading it. It is only in confronting humanity that this conflict will ever be resolved.
Wow. It takes a lot of heart to do something like that.
Bear with me for a Christmastime Petition plug, which may or may not be pleasing to you and your readers. Please delete if not.
Every now and then a fellow human inspires me to pick up a picket sign and march. These days the equivalent for me stuck off in rural California is located at
www.petitiononline.com/khatib/petition.html
THE CORE OF THE PETITION STATES:
“We, the undersigned, would like to place in nomination the family of Ahmed Ismail Khatib, for both “Family of the Year” and the Nobel Peace Prize. At least some of us will make holiday cards honoring them as exemplars of the highest order for the season, with their story on the back. Let the universe know humans by this family’s actions, and not by actions of the warring “statesmen” of all factions everywhere who dominate the news media with their lies and horrific stupidities.”
The rest is the AP story, not the best, but it serves to inform newcomers to the topic.
I wrote these long-winded instructions, because too many people were having problems.
LONG WINDED INSTRUCTIONS:
If this addy above does not click through from the blog where I’ve posted it, you may have to copy and paste the addy. In Windows Explorer this involves holding down the left mouse button and “painting your way across the text until you’ve highlighted the whole thing. Release the mouse button.
Then you hold down the CTRL key and tap the “c” key.
Next you need to find the addy bar and move the mouse to it. It should highlight when the mouse hits it. Now you need to tap the delete key. The addy space should be blank.
You should now be able to hold down the CTRL key and tap the “v” key and it should copy the addy in the addy space. Then you either tap the enter key or left click to reach the site.
There appear to be some problems at the site if you are using Firefox. I can’t do anything about those.
Yes, I am a retired computer science teacher, and I am used to being detailed, sorry if this is old news.
NEW NEWS
Once you are at the site you should see the title of the petition, and then, on the second line to the right, you need to click on “sign the petition.”
After you filled in the name and other stuff, it will do a preview when you click on “preview signature.” You have to do this to get to the “approve the preview screen.”
You then have to click on “approve the preview” to actually sign the petition. It’s a bit weird, and time consuming, but it works. You might be able to use this for your own needs, and it is free, and the petitions can be amazingly trivial.
Post a Comment
<< Home