Accidentally stumbled upon this ad - it's short but pretty inspiring!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Best side of humanity in time of war
When the ground war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza started, the Associated Press filed an article "Fear sends Israeli hospital underground." The article was about how Israel's 500-bed Barzilai Hospital, 17 kilometres north of the Gaza border, had moved its most essential departments into an underground bomb shelter.
What was most poignant are these few paragraphs in the article:
"In Barzilai's underground children's ward, sick Gazans lay alongside sick Israelis as a clown hopped around trying to coax smiles. (The hospital's deputy director) Ron Lobel said that his facility had close ties with Gaza's Shifa hospital, and accepted many of its patients who need treatment the Gazan hospital cannot provide. He said it wasn't uncommon to have a colleague in Gaza call him for assistance even as rockets rained down on Ashkelon.
"It might seem completely absurd," Lobel said. "But we have the privilege to be doctors. Our medical ethics do not distinguish between patients. We treat whoever needs to be treated."
A Gaza woman, whose two-month-old granddaughter was being treated for an unidentified ailment, wept when asked how she was coping. She said she was fortunate her granddaughter was getting the best medical treatment but was worried about her daughter and other grandchildren in Gaza City. She said some of their neighbors were among the more than 280 people killed in the Israeli airstrikes.
"I am very sad and hurt," she said, in Arabic. "We want peace, not war."
In war, the battle lines are drawn, and one is so easily polarised into taking sides. If someone falls into the enemy camp, then they are ...well, the enemy.
What is so heartening here is to learn that even in war, the Israeli doctors do their utmost to treat the Gazan patients. As Lobel says, "Our medical ethics do not distinguish between patients. We treat whoever needs to be treated." What a better world this would be if humanity was less polarised, less sectarian, less 'them and us', especially where human life is concerned.
What was most poignant are these few paragraphs in the article:
"In Barzilai's underground children's ward, sick Gazans lay alongside sick Israelis as a clown hopped around trying to coax smiles. (The hospital's deputy director) Ron Lobel said that his facility had close ties with Gaza's Shifa hospital, and accepted many of its patients who need treatment the Gazan hospital cannot provide. He said it wasn't uncommon to have a colleague in Gaza call him for assistance even as rockets rained down on Ashkelon.
"It might seem completely absurd," Lobel said. "But we have the privilege to be doctors. Our medical ethics do not distinguish between patients. We treat whoever needs to be treated."
A Gaza woman, whose two-month-old granddaughter was being treated for an unidentified ailment, wept when asked how she was coping. She said she was fortunate her granddaughter was getting the best medical treatment but was worried about her daughter and other grandchildren in Gaza City. She said some of their neighbors were among the more than 280 people killed in the Israeli airstrikes.
"I am very sad and hurt," she said, in Arabic. "We want peace, not war."
In war, the battle lines are drawn, and one is so easily polarised into taking sides. If someone falls into the enemy camp, then they are ...well, the enemy.
What is so heartening here is to learn that even in war, the Israeli doctors do their utmost to treat the Gazan patients. As Lobel says, "Our medical ethics do not distinguish between patients. We treat whoever needs to be treated." What a better world this would be if humanity was less polarised, less sectarian, less 'them and us', especially where human life is concerned.
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