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Hadassah deserves Nobel peace prize
Is anti-American sentiment distracting Norwegian electors?
By Gil Troy
MONTREAL - The Nobel Peace Prize risks becoming a farce, a curio of political correctness reflecting fey anti-American European sensibilities and not serious pursuits of peace.
The Nobel’s decade of dishonor began in 1994, when the Norwegian electors chose Yasser Arafat, as if signing the Oslo Accords excused his decades as the grandfather of modern Arab terrorism. Characteristically, when Norwegians in recent years questioned the award, most regretted honoring the Israeli co-winners, Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin, not Arafat, despite his role in destroying the Oslo peace process.
Subsequent decisions, while not quite as outrageous, have verged on the ridiculous. The 2001 award to Kofi Annan and the United Nations may have been the last good news for this embattled organization amid charges ranging from inability in Darfur and bias against Israel, to corruption and sexual assaults. And last year’s winner, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, deemed the AIDS virus a deliberately created biological agent.
This year, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee can get back on track by awarding one of the nominees, the Hadassah Medical Organization . Since 1913, the Hadassah Medical Organization has delivered superb, cutting-edge and compassionate medical care to all its patients, be they Arab or Jew, terror victim or terrorist.
600,000 patients
Its two university hospitals provide equal and excellent medical coverage to an average of 600,000 patients annually. Remarkably, as many as one-third of those patients are Arabs. Many of the doctors, nurses, technicians and orderlies also are Arab, providing daily opportunities for Jews and Palestinians to work together, serving all patients equally.
Reporters worldwide have discovered this phenomenon and broadcast inspiring stories offering a hopeful alternative to the usual headlines.
Last summer, a six-year-old Palestinian boy, Mahdi Abu Snaineh, was mangled by a fellow Palestinian’s remote control bomb. The New York Times reported: “The family asked that the boy be transferred here to Hadassah University Hospital-Ein Kerem, which has a pediatric intensive care unit and neurosurgeons.” Hadassah, of course, obliged.
“You are not in Israel, you are not in Palestine inside the hospital,” a Palestinian journalist undergoing orthopedic care told Bob Simon of CBS's “60 Minutes.”
The BBC, no friend of Israel, was equally effusive in February 2002, describing this “Jerusalem hospital where there is no distinction between Arabs and Jews.”
“Even the visitors here seem to obey the unwritten rules of coexistence,” the BBC correspondent remarked. And Mustapha Hibrawi, “a Palestinian victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber,” declared his faith in the medical staff, be they Israelis or Palestinians.
“Yes, of course, I trust them because they are doctors,” Hibrawi said.
Stand for peace
Honoring Hadassah would actually be a subtle, complex choice, for Hadassah is not a one-issue organization. Serving as this center of coexistence and evenhanded idealism accounts for only some of Hadassah’s daily miracles. Floating on a sea of charitable contributions secured by 300,000 women volunteers, Hadassah has been a worldwide leader in fighting breast cancer and other women’s diseases while seeking cures for myriad ailments, from rare diseases to the common cold itself.
Awarding the Hadassah Medical Organization a Nobel Peace Prize would take a firm stand for peace in the Middle East by honoring a leading, real-life example of daily coexistence and practical peacemaking. It also would pay special homage to the universal gifts to all humanity that first-rate science and effective medicine bring, while spotlighting the serious issues involved in women’s health care.
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee could get back on track - and make a powerful statement about confounding expectations and blurring the usual distinctions - by designating the heroic men and women of Hadassah Medical Organization winners of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University. He is author of "Why I am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today," and "Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s"
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