The power of truth well told
My wife Marilyn and I were driving a long distance and, as we often do, we listened to an audio book. This time it was “I Shall Not Hate” by Izzeldin Abuelaish.
Izzeldin (it’s easier to use and pronounce his first name) is a medical doctor, a specialist gynaecologist. He has degrees from the University of London and Harvard in the USA. He completed an internship in Beer Sheba and was also appointed researcher at the Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv. He is currently Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto.
Nothing unusual about that perhaps, except that he is a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip.
But all Palestinians are troublemakers, aren’t they? I know this because I saw 60 seconds worth of what the right wing news reporters thought would make for good, visual television. Or that all Israelis and all Palestinians hate each other…because I saw another 60 seconds on the news and it too made for good visuals.
But what if the news machines and political agenda drivers were only showing me symbolic representations of what they wanted me to think?
Hidden behind stereotypes
As we listened, we were captivated; drawn into the story of a man and his family. Izzeldin’s story became a window on a world we knew only stereotypically.
And it seemed that I had discovered a parallel universe, one in which ordinary people try to do the best for their families and their neighbours set in parallel with a world in which political leaders on both sides take the people captive to their agenda of hate.
His book shows the power of truth well told. It is a story that can open a window on a world hidden behind news clips, grey-suited speeches and photogenic furrowed brows. It was the story of one man and his family opened that window and showed them to be people like me, with aspirations for their children, love for their neighbours, sharing food and fun and long conversations. People who defied the mental image intentionally created when a race or geographical description is made into a generic category for political intent.
“Palestinian”. “Israeli”. Well, we all know what they are like don’t we; the categories have been defined for us over and over again.
Pain knows no ethnicity
Obviously the story belongs to Izzeldin. So most of the experiences are his. We see through his eyes. And they are taxing in the extreme. The unimaginable drama of his wife dying in an Israeli hospital while he was shunted around for a 30 or 40 hour period trying obtain permission to cross the border to be with her. As she slipped away, officious junior border guards played with him like a cat with a mouse; and yet he was a specialist surgeon in an Israeli hospital, but with a passport that said “Palestinian”.
We were riveted by his panic as an Israeli tank targeted his apartment in Gaza, exploding his three daughters into eternity, seemingly to punish him for talking by cell phone to journalists during the Israeli military operation.
Closing the doors to hate
Is he writing about how terrible Israel is? No. Izzeldin’s book title, “I Shall Not Hate”, is his message to a broken world in which the ‘little people’ on both sides of the conflict are really just pawns for political leaders with a point to make. He does not hide his anger and frustration, nor the anger and frustration of his Jewish friends and colleagues also categorised by those who control the flow of information. But he lives out the knowledge that hate will not effect change.
We felt like we had sat with him as he sipped coffee with his Jewish friends and colleagues, and as he celebrated life with his Palestinian family. I was deeply moved by his deep and abiding gratitude towards the Israeli family that took him in as a teenager and gave him work, showing him love as if he was one of their own sons.
The point of all this is that his story reshaped my story. Indeed his story became part of my story, because my life has been enriched by his.
Such is the power of truth well told. Of stories that are frank and courageous.
“Blessed are the peacemakers”…beyond all political driven labels.
I Shall Not Hate, Izzeldin Abuelaish, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Paperback, 02 Feb 2012
