Copyright 2024 Joseph Shulam
April 26, Friday Morning!
Israel, the land and the people who live in it, is one of the most unusual places in the world. It is not only history and archaeology but also the fact that it is supposedly the birthplace of the world's three monotheistic religions. What is most unusual is the human mosaics that make up the population of this land. In a way, historically and biblical speaking, all our enemies are also ethnographically our relatives. They are the seed of Ishmael, Abraham's son from Hagar, and the sons of Esau, the twin brother of Jacob, and our first cousins!
If you look at a DNA map of the Middle East, you can quickly see that the DNA of our Arab neighbors is sometimes identical to some groups of Jews that didn't assimilate over the centuries of life in Europe.
April 26 was an interesting day. Last night, Marcia, my dear wife, had a tough time with her stomach and with the blood pressure, and we didn't sleep all night. I called our emergency services very early in the morning, and they sent an ambulance to take us to the Hadassah Hospital Emergency room! The ambulance arrived in a few minutes. The driver was a local Arab (Palestinian). Four nice young girls came with the ambulance. They were volunteers and in training to be medics. One was born in Siberia, Russia, and immigrated with her family a few years ago. One was a new immigrant from France who came here alone without her family to learn Hebrew and join the Israeli army. She was a real Petite French Jew who looked like the young Edith Piaf. The third girl was an Arab girl from a nearby village where I had some very good old friends. (I say Arab, but today, they prefer to be identified as Palestinians.)
The fourth was a young Jewish lady born and raised in Jerusalem, where she is learning first aid and emergency medicine. She will be drafted into the Israeli army in July 2024, and she wants to do this in her two years of military service in the IDF.
All the five-person crew members of the ambulance were a crosscut of Israeli society, and they all worked together, each one of them was as anxious to help carry Marcia's bag and help Marcia sit down on the special seat that became a bed in the ambulance. During the wild ride with the Arab driver, he drove with the Chakalaka (the red lights flashing on top of the ambulance and the sirens blazing). The Arab driver drove through every red light and bullied the cars in front of him and on both sides. I asked him if he said he was driving this way because it was fun and you liked it or because it was a real emergency. He smiled and said, "It is a real emergency! Your wife's very high blood pressure is a very dangerous thing, and the sooner we arrive at the hospital, the better it is." I told him jokingly that if I stopped doing what I had been doing for the last 60+ years and became a gangster, I would hire him as my get-away car driver! Everyone in the car laughed.
We arrived at the hospital, and they wheeled Marcia into the emergency room. Immediately, a young, good-looking Arab nurse with a hijab on her head covering her hair comes to Marcia and gives her a private space and a bed. A few minutes later, she comes with an ECG machine and offers Marcia the Electrocardiogram. An Orthodox Jew with long, long side curls (Peot – in Hebrew) comes and, together with the Arab nurse, questions Marcia about her reason for coming to the hospital's emergency services. Two Arab doctors doing their internship and specialization in Hadassah Medical School came and introduced themselves to Marcia and me and said that they would accompany us through the different tests and procedures.
The entire massive and intensive emergency room space was buzzing like a beehive. We spent six hours in the emergency room, X-ray room, and CT room, where they took blood tests, kept asking if Marcia needed anything, and brought food for lunch.
And I thought to myself, what a wonderful place this Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem is. Jews and Arabs (Palestinians) working shoulder to shoulder. Helping each other help the sick and the suffering that came to the hospital for help—Hebrew and Arabic spoken with kindness and consideration.
I encountered an old Arab man (much older than I am) who came with his wife and two tall and handsome sons, speaking Arabic with their mother and father, Hebrew with us, and English with some of the patients. I said to myself, why can't this kind of cooperation, kindness, compassion, and sweet and helpful attitude between Jews and Arabs exist outside the walls of this hospital? Just 50 miles from the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem in the battlegrounds of Gaza and north on the border of Israel with Lebanon, where the Hezbullah just today fired over 100 rockets on Israeli towns and villages.
The head nurse of the Hadassah Emergency room, an Arab (Palestinian) woman with a very kind attitude, said: "Here, We must focus on what we share!' Outside, Jews are scared of Arabs, Arabs are scared of Jews, but here we manage as one family."
I lowered my head and said to the Arab and Jewish doctors and nurses who came to release Marcia to go home, "I feel very sad that this kind of cooperation and brotherhood and work of kindness without borders and bad intentions, doing work of love without discrimination and prejudice can't be our daily bread. We are fellow humans, all from one biological family and all from the same ethnic family, the Semites.
In reaction to what I said, they all lowered their heads and returned to work. Probably thinking, what is this strange old Jew wanting from us?
The results of all the blood tests, X-rays, and CT scans showed nothing serious with Marcia, and the conclusion was that our blood pressure reader was faulty and needed to be replaced.
Here is the sad thing about the sources of human iniquity. Jews have a proverb that the fish always smells bad first from the head!
My conclusion and experience of many years of a good relationship with Arabs, in fact since first grade, is that bad leadership with selfish motives and no clear and good moral values are responsible for so much of the evil, hate, prejudice, and meanness of one people against their neighbors. Racism, antisemitism, discrimination, selfishness, and greed, in my opinion, are not innate built-in qualities in our moral DNA. These bad traits that have been the most prevalent and most damaging to human society since the very dawn of human existence are not naturally built in by the Master Designer who made us. They are learned and motivated by the worst characteristics that humans can possess. Bought and even sampled for free in that same garden and marketplace where Eve, "the mother of all living humans," went shopping and was served by the best salesman on this planet, Satan, the primeval snake!
Hadassah Hospital emergency room is a positive example of how people, concentrating on helping the helpless, the sick, the poor, and the suffering, can overcome the inclination to hate. Cease competition and hurt and killing each other for a handful of dollars and one ounce of temporary allusion to being powerful, rich, and beautiful. The Israeli soldiers, even some from our congregational leadership, found iron safes full of millions of dollars, Shekel, and European money hidden in the homes of the Hamas leadership.
Most people, most of the time and in most of the world, experience the milk of human iniquity. Let us, the disciples of Yeshua the Messiah, see that we provide light and shine with the milk of human kindness! All above and beyond our selfishness, we are motivated by a lack of faith, extra doses of fear, insecurity, and desire to become "leaders" to fulfill our selfish ambitions. If you are a leader, elder, preacher, deacon, or secretary in a church, read Ezekiel chapter 34, the whole chapter! Take notes if you would like, and recommend to yourself and your wives that you read this chapter at least once monthly. Spend a season of prayer after reading this chapter.
I Wrote at the end of a long and not-easy day in the emergency room of the Hadassah Ein Karem hospital. But the lesson learned is most valuable—
Jews and Arabs can work together, be friends and colleagues, share kindness and cooperation, and do good on the earth.
Some pictures of the Hadassah Ein Karem Emergency Room!
Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Emergency Medicine Department with her Jewish and Arab staff. (Photo credit: Rossella Tercatin)
As War Raged, Sparks of Light as Israeli Jews and Arabs Said No to Hate
As Theodor Herzl said, "If you want, it will not be a myth!
This can be a reality if we want it and if we have leadership that will lead and inspire us, both Jews and Arabs, to say "NO" to hate!
Please help Netivyah fight for unity, love, cooperation, and prosperity for all: Jews, Arabs, Christians, Arab Muslims, Druze, and the New immigrants who arrive here to find a Holy Land and find something very different! There are islands of sanity, cooperation, unity, and respect for each other between Jews and Arabs, and if you wish, we can be the best of neighbors and have the best of joy together.
Only if We wish it together!