By Joe Anuta
Most men in Izzeldin Abuelaish’s position would have called for revenge after Israeli tank shells killed his family in 2009, but the two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee will speak in Forest Hills this month about how he did the opposite.
“People were expecting me to hate,” said Abuelaish, a 56-year old Palestinian doctor who grew up and raised a family in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. “Violence is not going to solve any problem. It’s not going to help in any way.”
Abuelaish will speak Nov. 13 at the Forest Hills Jewish Center, at 106-06 Queens Blvd., about his quest for peace following the day in 2009 when three of his daughters and his niece were killed just before a cease-fire near the end of the 22-day Gaza War, during which Israel shelled the Gaza strip in response to rocket fire..
Abuelaish had been phoning in daily reports to Israel’s Channel 10 News throughout the conflict, since the press was barred from reporting from within the Gaza Strip.
He called into the station just after his house was shelled Jan. 16, according to footage from Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news agency. Camera crews then traveled to his home and filmed the hysterical doctor as one of his surviving children was loaded into an ambulance.
But Abuelaish did not call for retaliation, he said, but instead he resolved to take action toward peace.
“I feel anger. I feel outrage,” he said in an interview. “But without losing control, I take responsibility to do something to change the situation.”
Abuelaish’s hope is that Israel can become a peaceful neighbor with Israel and end decades of conflict.
Abuelaish speaks all over the world — he was recently in South Africa and Indonesia — to preach a philosophy based on his experience as a physician.
“Medicine has one face, one culture,” he said. “We don’t differentiate between people. We want to do good for everyone.”
Earlier this year, his philosophy was published in his book “I Shall Not Hate.”
He has also started a charity in honor of his girls called Daughters for Life, which gives scholarships to women in the Middle East.
Abuelaish had been known as a peace activist even before the 2009 war.
After he had gone through his primary and secondary education in the same refugee camp where he was born, he received a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo.
After graduating, he became the first Palestinian physician to practice at an Israeli hospital in the 1990s.
Abuelaish stressed that violence is not the solution to peace between Palestine and Israel, which have been at odds over territorial disputes since 1948, when the Jewish state was formed. But he did sue Israel for compensation for the death of his family members in December 2010, according to an Al-Jazeera report.
The talk, presented by the Queens Center Y, will take the form of a conversation with Mark Rosenblum, director of the Queens College Center for Jewish Studies. It begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. For more information, visit centralqueensy.org.
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
