SevenDays speaker will share his story of losing his daughters but finding a peaceful purpose
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish has faced hardships that many of us could never imagine. He was born and raised in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. He wanted to be a doctor from a young age and overcame poverty and violence to become the first Palestinian doctor to receive a staff position at an Israeli hospital.
In 2009, he went through an unspeakable tragedy. Four months after losing his wife to cancer, Israeli shells struck his home in Gaza and killed three of his daughters, Bessan, 21, Mayar, 15, and Aya, 13, and his niece, Noor, 17. Instead of giving in to anger and hate, he called for tolerance and understanding and decided to dedicate his work to building peace and conflict resolution between Palestinians and Israelis.
“I don’t want others to suffer or face what I’ve faced,” he said. “I want them to learn from what I’ve experienced in life, to prevent it (from happening again).”
Abuelaish wrote a book about his experience, “I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity,” and became internationally known as an educator and public speaker on peace and development in the Middle East, and an advocate for justice, health, and human rights worldwide. He’s been likened to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi and has earned the nickname “Martin Luther King of the Middle East.”
Abuelaish credits his strong faith for giving him the strength to overcome adversity.
“Life is what we make it,” he said. “It stems from my faith that, in every bad thing, there’s something good.”
Now a five-time Nobel Peace prize nominee, Abuelaish will be speaking as part of the SevenDays Make a Ripple, Change the World events taking place April 13 to 25.
He’ll share his story during a virtual event at 6:30 pm on April 22. The event will also include a panel discussion on promoting peace featuring Abuelaish, Rabbi Arthur Nemitoff from The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah and Pastor Adam Hamilton of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.
SevenDays is part of The Faith Always Wins Foundation, which was created following the murders of 14-year-old Reat Underwood, his grandfather Dr. William Corporon and Terri LaManno outside of Jewish facilities on April 13, 2014.
“While our families will always remember, we are also healing and moving onward with passion,” said Mindy Corporon, Reat’s mother, Corporon’s daughter, and SevenDays Co-founder, in a press release. “Our passion is to help others through their own personal tragedy, to explore another faith and to find commonalities with their neighbor or co-worker through acts of kindness.”
Abuelaish and Corporon met in 2019 and bonded over their similar experiences and how they responded, turning tragedy into action to help others.
“She is following the same path (as I am),” he said.
Later in 2019, Abuelaish presented Corporon with a Courage and Inspiration Luminary Award at a gala for his Daughters of Life Foundation, which he established in memory of his daughters.
“We want to expose (her) message,” he said. “The positive message, the inspiring, hopeful message is highly needed in our world.”
Corporon shared those sentiments in her acceptance speech.
“Kindness, opportunity, and hope are much needed today,” she said. “You wonder how Dr. Abuelaish gets up every single day, and how did he start this foundation? I can tell you, he did it the same way I started our foundation. You do it to keep the spirit alive.”
The Daughters For Life Foundation provides young Middle Eastern women of all faiths and backgrounds with higher-education scholarships so they can become strong agents of change and advocates of peace. For Abuelaish, it is the empowerment of these young women that will help bring lasting peace in the Middle East.
“In this way, I keep my daughters alive,” he said.
Abuelaish views hatred as not just an emotion, but rather a chronic, contagious and destructive disease. His research focuses on promoting awareness about the impact of hatred on health and wellbeing, and how to prevent spread of this “disease” through resilience, tolerance, compassion and reconciliation. He says the racism, discrimination, fear, incitement, violence, and poverty that society faces today are forms of social pandemics.
“These pandemics, we created them and we practice them. These challenges we face, they’re man made,” he said.
The fact that these challenges are man made gives him hope because we can learn how to unmake them. People need to practice what he calls “positive tolerance,” which is tolerance that builds a bridge between two people, not just tolerating those who are different from you from a distance.
“We can’t live in isolation from others, we are interconnected and interdependent on each other,” he said.
“We need to look around, ask, learn, connect, and then you have to take action, because words are good but actions resonate more.”
To pre-register for Abuelaish’s presentation and purchase a signed copy of his book, visit GiveSevenDays.org/others.
