According to Israel HaYom, “Mohammed Eckert received a life-saving kidney donation from Shmuel Ben-Yair, whose father gets a kidney from Mohammed's wife. ‘We bonded both physically and mentally,’ says Jewish patient who got a new lease on life.”
Dr. Rawi Ramadan, the director of the Medical Transplantation Unit in the Department of Nephrology at Rambam hospital, brought the two families together and accompanied them throughout the process, reporter Daniel Siryoti wrote.
All of the personalities are Haifa-area residents.
Due to copyright restrictions, you’ll have to go to
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=9657
to read the entire story.
FOR THE MOST PART, Haifa has been a tolerant community. (I am not forgetting the Check Point dating from the Mandatory period.)
Municipal notices are published in, at least, Arabic and Hebrew; in my time in the city you could see them posted on poles and walls.
Buses run on Shabat in Haifa (yet its many synagogues never miss a minyan).
Jews and Muslims peacefully shared a beach, even as missiles fell on the city; no one harassed anyone.
So while the cross-family transplants were “unusual,” peaceful Arab-Jewish coexistence in the city is not.
I have a sister-in-law who, then living in Haifa, slipped and broke her leg. Lying on the sidewalk with a compound fracture, the first person to stop and help was an Arab.
The bottom line is that, at least within Israel, Arabs and Jews can, and many do, peacefully coexist when politicians and extremists are prevented from interfering; when Yusuf and Yosef pass each other on the street neither provokes the another.
As for Israel and its Muslim-dominated neighbors, it takes two really great individuals to make peace – Begin and Sadat managed it. The late King Hussein of Jordon managed it. It looks like Egypt’s new government will maintain the agreement and Hussein’s son may manage to sustain the agreement.
AN ASIDE: While the Jewish world is justifiably concerned that control of Egypt will fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, so far the Brotherhood has stood solidly with the peace agreement. I am reminded of Lester “Ax Handle” Maddox. Mr. Maddox was an outspoken segregationist in Atlanta, GA. Maddox managed to get elected as Georgia’s 75th governor. Despite his history, his “administration was characterized by economic development and the appointment of African Americans to state executive positions” according to Republican Benjamin B. Blackburn. (Maddox was a Democrat.) See http://tinyurl.com/k55dvly. While I would not suggest that Israel reduce its military readiness along any border, I think there is reason to hope Egypt will keep the peace.
