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One very remarkable man!

This "story" speaks for himself.    What is truly amazing in all of this is that the man can still want to "do" something so very positive notwithstanding the truly awful effect on his life arising from Israel's action in bombing Gaza some years ago.    MPS has met the doctor.    He is quite a remarkable man.

"Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish is a man on a mission. He wants to bring 100 wounded children from Gaza to Canada for medical treatment. The idea came to him while watching images on television of the Israeli bombings in Gaza this past summer, which he said broke his heart.

The scenes brought back gut-wrenching memories of his three daughters and a niece who were killed in a previous war in Gaza. "I see in these children, my daughters," Abuelaish told Al Jazeera, his eyes moist with tears. "We need to help them, to heal them, not to be disabled. I want the voices of these children to be heard."

His own story is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Born and raised in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, he worked hard to get through medical school and spent years working in the occupied territories, Israel, and abroad as an obstetrician/gynaecologist, specialising in infertility treatment. 

Abuelaish first came to the world's attention during the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza. In the afternoon of January 16, an Israeli air strike hit his home, crashing into his children's bedroom. Three of his daughters Bessan, Mayar, and Aya - aged 21, 15 and 14 - and his 17-year-old niece Noor were killed instantly. He described the tragedy in his moving memoir, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey.
 
"There was a monstrous explosion… I realised the explosion had come from my daughters' bedroom…The sight in front of me was something I hope no other person ever has to witness … the body parts of my daughters and niece."

Driven by rage and grief, he called his friend Shlomi Eldar, an Israeli journalist who works for Israel's Channel 10, who happened to be in studio taking the news to air. Eldar decided to take the call live. The audio of a clearly distraught, weeping Abuelaish, pleading for help, went out over the airwaves and suddenly, gave Israeli viewers a Palestinian voice on the deadly cost of war.

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