In my early visits to the Middle East, I met people, who remembered the days when Jews and Arabs were friends.
An old Palestinian once told me that when he was a boy, a Jewish family lived next door. They were devout and couldn’t work on the Sabbath, so his father would visit the neighbour every week and light the Sabbath lamps. In return, the head of the Jewish family would light his family’s lamps on the Muslim Holy Day. He said he missed those times. But unfortunately wars mess up peoples’ lives. These days Jews and Palestinians seldom come into personal contact. So it’s heart-warming to find a story that provides a glimmer of hope that perhaps peace could come when a new generation grows up.
Orel is an Israeli Jewish boy who is in the ALYN hospital in Jerusalem. Marya is a Muslim girl in the same hospital. They are the same age; they met during their treatment. They have lived next door to each other for a year now and have become friends. The Jewish boy was wounded by a rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza.
The Muslim girl was paralysed by an Israeli missile, which killed her mother and injured her father and brother. Neither child has any idea why they were almost killed. Neither understands the long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians over lost lands, homes and identities. But they are both in the ALYN hospital, which was founded by an American in 1932, before the Jewish state was created.
Its first building was an old Christian Church, donated as a polio treatment centre, open to all children of all faiths. It still operates on that principle.
The actual details of this story are unimportant.
Mr. Aman wants residency in Israel or a ticket to somewhere his children will be safe and where Marya will get the care she needs.
Some hospital volunteers ask Mr. Aman how he could ever live among the people whose army destroyed his family. He answers, “I have never felt there was a difference among people — Jews, Muslims, Christians — we are all human beings.”
One Israeli Jew from Beit Shemesh who has been coming to the hospital for six months for his own daughter’s treatment was a recent visitor. Someone asked him why he was friends with the Arab, Hamdi. “I was raised as a complete Zionist rightist,” he said. “But you know – here in this hospital, all my friends are Arabs.”
Orel’s mother, said that in places like Alyn Hospital, political tensions do not exist. Then she asked, “Do we all need to suffer in order to learn that there is no difference between Jews and Arabs?”
I guess my question is – do we all need to examine our conscience?
