At hospitals throughout Israel, handshakes and hugs between the country’s Arab and Jewish populations are the norm.

A young Arab woman in Jericho was bitten on her foot by a poisonous viper in 2008. When the local clinic was unable to treat her, an Israeli ambulance jeep drove the woman almost two hours through the Jordan Valley to Emek Medical Center, where the anti-venom serum was available. She was already unconscious at that point, but her life was saved  in the nick of time.

This is just one of many such stories that Larry Rich relates to an ever-widening audience, with the goal of demonstrating how Israel’s medical establishment serves as a paradigm for coexisting cultures in conflict.

“For years, I have considered Emek Medical Center and the human reality here as a shining example of sanity in a world going mad - literally a beacon of light and hope for anybody who cares to focus on something sane,” says Rich, the Detroit-born director of development and international public relations at the hospital.

Rich is a grassroots diplomat for Israel, speaking to multiethnic audiences in Europe and North America about everyday inspiring scenes at Israel’s hospitals that never make the news.

Many of these stories are recorded in his 2005 book, Voices from Armageddon, which relates how Arab and Jewish medical staff at Emek routinely treats “the other.”

“Jewish-Arab cooperation may be seen in every hospital from Eilat to Nahariya,” stresses Rich. “What is special about Emek is its unique 50-50 ratio. In the northeast, we are the primary healthcare provider for a population of 500,000, equally divided between Arabs and Jews. In no other place in Israel does this symbolic ratio exist.”

Saving lives in Armageddon

Emek Medical Center is situated in Afula, a Jezreel Valley municipality near Megiddo, the fabled site of the future Armageddon and a geographically strategic area that has seen many famous battles during the last 4,000 years.

The medical center’s professional staff mirrors the national ratio: 20 percent overall is Arab, and 20% of the heads of medical departments are Arab Muslims or Christians, Druse or Circassians.

Throughout the years, the medical staff has actively pursued international opportunities to share its expertise, as do many other Israeli hospitals.

In 2012 alone, the head of Emek’s intensive care unit traveled with two nurses, on behalf of the Foreign Ministry, to the Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, to open a new trauma center  and train the local medical staff. The director of Emek’s Pediatric Gastroenterology Clinic lectured at the European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition’s summer course in Madrid. And Prof. Hava Tabenkin, Emek’s chief of family medicine and chair of the National Council of Women’s Health, spearheaded a Family Medicine Fellowship program with Providence, Rhode Island’s Miriam Hospital and Memorial Hospital.

Arrif and Mohammed
In 1997, Rich was taken to Emek after suffering a heart attack. “When I woke up in the cardiac intensive care at Emek Medical Center, I saw Arab and Jewish physicians working together to save me. I had been in the country 25 years, but I still had stereotypes in my mind about Arabs. I never made the academic/professional connection,” he says.
Within two years, he had left his industrial job and created an office to market the hospital to overseas donors. Over the past 13 years, he has written up and shared the many experiences he and staffers witness at the facility – from a Jewish surgeon operating on a wounded Arab terrorist during the intifada to an Arab nurse assuring a wary mother that the Jewish hospital was indeed a safe place for her child sick with cancer.
“Today in Emek, I was leading a group of visitors from England on a tour of our School for Hospitalized Children,” he wrote in one email to supporters. “I introduced the group to Arrif and his fifteen-year-old-son, Mohammed. They come from Gaza. They have been ‘living’ in Emek for 10 months as young Mohammed is being treated for severe facial cancer. Arrif speaks fluent Hebrew and I conducted a simultaneously translated Q&A session between him and the British visitors …

“Q. How do you feel here, among the Jews of Israel?
“A. Perfectly normal and at ease. Grateful – so very grateful.
“Q. What does your family back in Gaza say about Mohammed’s treatment here?
“A. They are amazed and they send their sincere gratitude. They cannot believe what has and is being done for Mohammed and me.

 Arrif, from Gaza, with his son Mohammed who is being treated at Emek

Time for a positive message

Rich, who has a gift for public speaking with his radio-announcer voice, has long told of these episodes to international visitors to the medical center and on his fundraising trips abroad.
“After people heard the stories of the reality of what takes place here in Emek, they always asked why I am not speaking for Israel and only for the hospital,” he relates. The Foreign Ministry agreed, registering him as an official speaker in 2007.
Last year, Rich was invited to address an audience at Trinity College in Ireland, arranged through the parents of Emek’s director of ophthalmology Dr. Daniel Briscoe, an Irish Jew. The Israeli embassy in Dublin paid for his accommodations and the Dublin Jewish community covered his transportation costs.
“I created a lecture about Israel seen through the prism of a medical institution. I decided to present positive realities of human cooperation that take place daily and hourly here, not only in the hospital but in the immediate region,” says Rich. “I stayed away from terror, war and anything negative in our part of the world. It was time for a positive message.”
More than 50 Christians and Jews turned out, along with Israeli Ambassador Boaz Modai, to hear what Rich had to say. Later, he was interviewed on Irish national radio station RTE.
Intense curiosity among listeners
Based on the positive reactions to his appearances in Dublin, Rich was recruited by Noam Katz, the Minister of Public Diplomacy at Israel's Embassy in Washington to give several lectures while he was in the United States on hospital business in April 2012.
“His office put together an itinerary for me to speak for four days in Washington, which I gladly accepted,” says Rich. “They intentionally arranged some challenging audiences because they were curious to see the impact of my talk.”

Larry Rich, left, with Noam Katz of Israel's Embassy in Washington

Rich was also invited by the Jewish Federation of Detroit to speak before a delegation of Arab leaders representing nearly a million Arabs in this region, which has the highest concentration of Muslims in the United States.
“These people came up to me afterward and said they had never heard such a message coming out of Israel,” Rich reports. “They wanted to hear more about this cooperation at ground level. They want me to speak in their communities.”
The ethnically mixed prep school Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island hosted Rich, as did the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island, several groups in Connecticut, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
In Washington, he spoke to Georgetown University medical students and faculty, and a large organization of hospital owners. He found “intense curiosity” on the part of individuals and Jewish communities to hear his perspective.
Human behavior at its best
“I started each of my lectures by saying, ‘Let’s get something clear from the start: I am not a politician or a general in the army. I am just a guy from the street come to open a small window for you to peek in and visit Israel,’ and then I started telling real-life stories of cooperation, education and life-saving on a professional, patient and family level,” Rich says.
He finishes his presentations by stressing that he cannot dictate what anyone chooses to believe, but hopes to shift their focus.
“Every person has the choice to focus on positive examples or to focus on hate and divisiveness, and that is what you will perpetuate,” Rich says.
His final lecture was before leaders and members of a left-wing Israel advocacy organization.
“At the end of the lecture, someone asked if the stories I had told were the exception. I said, ‘These stories are the norm. They go on in Israel all across the spectrum, every hour of every day, north to south - except that is not what you’re hearing in the news.’
“I explained humbly that all of these stories are not the answer to the problem in the Middle East, but an example of human behavior at its best, of people making conscious decisions to live and work together. This is something people are hungry to hear, not about blame or excuses.”

Gaza Mom Chooses Israeli Hospital to Save Baby After losing 3 babies to rare birth defects at Egyptian hospitals, a Gaza mother followed doctors' advice and took her fourth to Israel.

A Palestinian Authority mother from Gaza is home with a healthy baby thanks to Israeli doctors in Kfar Sava, after a complicated surgery.

After losing three babies to rare birth defects at Egyptian hospitals, Jian Abu Agram, 31, was faced with a difficult decision last year after another child was born last April with the same condition.

After speaking with her doctors, Agram took their advice and traveled through the Erez crossing with her infant daughter to Israel, where doctors at Meir Hospital performed intestinal surgery on the little girl. 

"When the doctors told me of her condition and suggested that we bring her to Israel, I didn't think for a moment of the conflict between the two peoples,” Agram told the Hebrew-language weekly local Sharon region edition of the Yediot Acharanotnewspaper.

“What I considered was only one thing: to save my girl. I couldn't allow myself to lose another child.”

The infant has since recovered from the intricate life-saving treatment that she needed, and two weeks ago returned to her home in Gaza.

While Israel is engaged in life-saving efforts to help the children of Gaza, a leftist website last week accused Jerusalem of creating the latest SARS virus strain identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Saudi Arabia in order to attack "specific Arab communities."  

Israel's Health Ministry has issued an alert to all hospitals and medical personnel in response to news of the new SARS virus strain, known as a Coronavirus.

Israeli's helping Palestinians - Aya on the Beach

The tiny State of Israel can't catch a break. It doesn't matter how much good Israel does for the world, as it has become trendy (especially in liberal circles and Europe) to demonize Israel. The Arab nations call for the destruction of the State and the world ignores it. Jews are being targeted in hate crimes and the world ignores it. Syria are slaughtering each other and the world ignores it. Israel puts up a safety checkpoint and it becomes the primary concern and condemnation by the UN.

This video is just a minute example of what Israel does on a regular basis for its Palestinian neighbors. I would like to see a single Arab country report any sort of humane story about Israel. It just won't happen. The world is Upside-down.

Haniyeh's brother-in-law was treated at Israeli hospital Husband of Hamas PM's sister received urgent heart treatment at Petah Tikva hospital four months ago; couple returned to Gaza after his condition stabilized

The sister of Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyehrecently entered Israel along with her husband, who received urgent treatment at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Ynet has learned.

Four months ago the husband of Suhila Abd el-Salam Ahmed Haniyeh suffered a serious cardiac episode which could not be treated at any hospital in Gaza. After the couple filed an urgent entry request with Israeli authorities, a Palestinian ambulance transported the husband to the Erez Crossing, where he was moved to a Magen David Adom vehicle and taken to the hospital in Petah Tikva along with his wife.

  

The husband was hospitalized in Israel for about a week, during which his condition was stabilized. Following the treatment, the couple returned to Gaza.

Ismail Haniyeh attacks Israel at every opportunity, and the terror group he heads does not recognize Israel's right to exist. On Monday he led a mass prayer session outside the Egyptian Embassy in Gaza in solidarity with the victims of last weekend's terror attack in Sinai. During the gathering, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in accusing Israel of orchestrating the attack.

"The attack's method confirms some sort of Israeli involvement aiming to achieve political and security goals, cause tension on the border with Egypt and destroy joint efforts to end the Gaza blockade," he said.

NYT: Crossing Religious Lines in an Israeli Hospital

JERUSALEM — There are no empty beds this day in the recovery room at the Hadassah-Ein Kerem hospital. Doctors and nurses hover over patients. Manar Igbarya, 25, is giving a woman an injection and inspecting a bandage on her right leg. The Orthodox patient is absorbed in talking to her visiting husband. Everyone is chatting in Hebrew; nothing in this scene seems unusual, except that Ms. Igbarya is a Palestinian Muslim.

Muna al-Ayan, 22, who works as a secretary in the same hospital, wears a hijab; everyone recognizes her as a Muslim. She said it had been hard for her to find a job in the past because of that, but she was accepted at the hospital because “all they cared about was how I do my job.” Every so often, she said, smiling, a patient is surprised to see a Muslim working here.

Ashgan, 35, who asked not to be identified by her family name, works in the operating room as a nurse. “We all speak Hebrew, and all we do here is our job, though we all carry our Palestinian identity inside us,” she said, looking at the other two women. “No one can forget their identity.”

While more traditional Palestinian women marry in their early 20s, the members of this trio are all single. Each of them characterized the world inside the hospital as very different from that outside its walls, where Arab and Jewish Israelis live -- at least in some places -- side by side but barely interact.

“We are a team here, and there is no difference, if one is Jewish or Muslim or Christian: The task is to help the patients,” Ms. Igbarya said. Sometimes, she said, she glimpses questions in the eyes of some Jewish patients if they hear her speaking Arabic to Ms. Ayan or to Ashgan.

There is a tension to Jerusalem even more intense than in other parts of Israel, in part because the city itself is a key source of dispute, important as it is to the religion of both Jews and Muslims.

“People in Jerusalem from both sides are very difficult, and there is a lot of anger,” Ashgan said. “The conflict is influencing all our lives directly here. We are not living in dreamland.”

Ms. Ayan lives with her parents in a mixed neighborhood in Jerusalem. Their next-door neighbor is Jewish, and Ms. Ayan said her father used to be friends with him until the second intifada broke out in 2000. “Then his son started throwing stones at our door, because we were Muslim,” she said, adding that sometimes opinions vary within families on either side.

Arabs and Jews work together in other places in Israel, but Hadassah hospital is one of the few places where they confront the bloody side of conflict, immediately and together. Both sides admit that this is not easy.

In some cases, Muslim nurses treat Israeli soldiers wounded in fights with Palestinians while their Jewish colleagues also attend to Palestinians who attacked Jews. “This is a learning process for all of us,” Ashgan said, “but we treat first the patient, and then maybe later we hear what the story was.”

It is the hospital’s policy to treat patients equally regardless of their religious or ethnic background. Founded by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America , in 1961 in the southwest of Jerusalem, Hadassah-Ein Kerem is one of the largest medical complexes in Israel. Another campus, called Hadassah Mount Scopus, was founded in 1939 in the northeast part of Jerusalem.

The hospital is the scene of interactions hard to experience outside its walls. Avichayil Hindi, 19, for example, calls herself an “Orthodox Jewish girl” who grew up in a settlement with no Arabs. She came to the hospital in September to fulfill her national service requirement, choosing a social role rather than serving in the military as most young Israelis do. “I had never been in touch with Arab people before,” she said. “Before I came here, I thought Arabs are bad people who only want to attack and kill Jews.”

Since she began working at the hospital, she and Ms. Ayan have become friends who go for coffee or lunch in the cafeteria together. “I have learned here that Arabs also have families, and I learned what their perspective of this conflict is,” Ms. Hindi said.

Even with such insights, there appears to be little common view of the possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Asked what they thought, the three Arab women said the only solution would be a two-state solution.

Ms. Hindi, by contrast, said “there is no solution,” and certainly not one that requires Jews to give up land.

The popular revolts of the Arab Spring, the question of how the world would react if those revolts reached Palestinian areas, the uncertainty of the outcome in an ever-more violent Syria, and the future attitude of Egypt under President Mohamed Morsi all weighed on their minds.

Indeed, all four women noted that their contact was possible only because the hospital’s leadership made it so clear that there was to be no discrimination among patients or staff. “As long as we keep politics out of it,” said Ashgan, “all is good.”

Precious Life: A feel-good Arab-Israeli story?

If a reporter is lucky, he or she will have one moment in their career – to ask for more would be greedy – where an interview subject makes a graceful speech that amounts to a perfect metaphor for the story being told.
Shlomi Eldar, Gaza correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 News, found his once-in-a-lifetime quote filming Precious Life, the engrossing story of a Palestinian infant with a rare and deadly disease who can only be saved by a Jewish doctor in the Tel-Hashomer Hospital in Jerusalem.
After performing a complex transplant, the surgeon talks to the nervous, exhausted mother, Raida Abu Mustafa, explaining what must happen for her baby, Mohammed, to survive: “After the transplant, the graft reacts adversely to the patient. And the body, on the other hand, also tries to reject the graft, because it’s perceived as a foreign body. So there’s a struggle between the two elements, which must live side by side. And each has its hopes and ambitions. But if they co-exist, they’ll survive.”
The doctor is talking specifically about little Mohammed’s chances, but he’s also referencing a more complex transplant: the state of Israel, a country grafted onto the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea in a 1948 operation that was perceived as the intrusion of a foreign body by the surrounding Arab world.
Both elements have separate hopes and dreams, live side by side, yet must ultimately co-exist to survive.
Eldar is a bluff, working reporter, not a documentary filmmaker. He seldom waits at the periphery, quietly recording fragments of a puzzle he hopes to solve in an editing room. More often, he charges in, all smiles, badgering his subjects with short, sharp queries – the Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes interviewing approach.
The technique gets the job done, telling the early part of Mohammed’s story: Eldar reveals the child’s dire situation to Israel, explaining the infant needs a $55,000 operation. A Jewish man who lost his son in a battle with Palestinians offers to pay for the surgery. The reporter gets the infant’s family through a war zone to the hospital and helps choreograph the modern miracle cure.
It’s a feel-good story Raida seemingly ruins with the film’s big, second-act surprise. Asked in the middle of a chat about religious holidays how she feels about shahids (suicide bombers), Raida startles us by saying, “For you life is precious, but not for us.… After Mohammed gets well, I will certainly want him to be a shahid. If it’s for Jerusalem, then there’s no problem.”
“Then why are you fighting to save your son’s life, if you say that death is a usual thing for your people?” a crestfallen, angry Eldar demands.
Raida’s going off script may darken Precious Life’s utopian glow, but naked emotion is what makes the film work. The threat of fireworks between Raida and Eldar makes the film more compelling, while reminding us of the perilous nature of Middle East borders.
Eventually, we come to wonder if Raida, a physically beautiful, compassionate woman, believes her own shahid story. In some ways, the mother is shrewder than her TV saviour, a humanitarian who wants to tell a story of Jewish benevolence featuring a grateful Palestinian. All to further the cause of Middle East peace: Look how we can all get along!
It’s a wonderful story. But what would happen to Raida and her child if she returned home a traitor?
Precious Life is short-listed for best documentary film at this year’s Academy Awards. Given Hollywood’s liberal politics, it may well win – and it’s a fascinating, troubling, ultimately hopeful film. Here’s hoping two good people, Raida Abu Mustafa and Shlomi Eldar, survive its success.