PART III
From Jerusalem To Britain
1982-1984
Chapter 13
Early the next morning, Ellen and I left. The American nurses came to say goodbye, as did Big Ben and Louise, but that was about it. We did not get the lavish farewell party usually thrown by the expatriates for a departing team. Dr Paul Morris was waiting for us outside the Mayfair. He refused to come into the Residence, because he did not want to have anything to do with the expatriate volunteers living there. Then Jill decided she would come with us as far as she could.
The four of us got hold of a taxi and asked the driver to take us to Ba’abda, East Beirut. We found the office of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs next to a large supermarket. With all our personal belongings, we walked up to this office, which was full of uniformed Israeli soldiers. We were the object of much curiosity, having come from a Palestinian refugee camp.
Jill had to leave us. It was sad to part with her. She decided to walk back to the camps from East Beirut, to let the camp people know that we had made it safely. Her main worry had been that something awful might happen to us between West Beirut and the Israeli office, as that stretch of road was a bit of no man’s land. Someone could throw a bomb at us, and kill us all, wiping out witnesses from the camps. Then they could even blame the Palestinians for it. Fortunately this did not happen. Perhaps we were not important enough. From now on anything that happened to us would clearly be the responsibility of the Israelis.
This Israeli ministry was a large, bright building which reminded me of a large Singapore school hall. It was sparsely furnished downstairs, but with more sophisticated facilities upstairs. The colour-scheme was uninteresting and unattractive. Desks were metal, and painted blue grey. All over the ground floor hall were large stacks of cyclostyled leaflets.
There was a blackboard with chalk markings still on it. Obviously there had been a recent lecture. A quick glance at the writing on the blackboard and the printed notes suggested the lecture was on the ‘cost-effectiveness’ of the Israeli invasion. There were figures on US war aid, which ran into billions of US dollars between 1948 and 1982, and the efficiency with which the money was spent. How disgusting to think of the suffering inflicted on the Palestinian and Lebanese people in terms of ‘cost-effectiveness’!
Isaac Leor introduced us to Avi and Egal, the two officers of the Israeli Defence Force who were to escort us safely to Israel. He warned us to speak the truth, but I said that was why I was going to Jerusalem. We were then shown to a blue Volkswagen van, specially rented for the occasion so that we would not be travelling in the usual military jeep. There were already three Israeli soldiers in it. Our security was provided by two Israeli armoured cars, with soldiers, who drove in front of and behind us.
We headed south, on the road we had used a few days earlier on our trip to Saida. This time, however, we were not stopped at the numerous checkpoints. The Kata’ebs waved us on, the Haddads waved us on, and the Israelis, apart from pauses at one or two checkpoints for some social chitchat with their fellow soldiers, also waved us on.
The road felt rougher and more bumpy than it had before. There were large potholes caused by shells and bombs, and the road surface was totally worn down by heavy military vehicles. The dust was thick and irritated my eyes, and the sun beat down relentlessly. I found a coat and covered up my face so that the sun and the dust could not get me. It also stopped any Palestinian seeing me travelling with the Israelis’
Egal and Avi were both around forty, and spoke good English. Avi was wearing civilian clothes, but had a fancy kind of gun hanging from his belt. Paul, who knew a lot more about guns, told me that what Avi was carrying was not a pistol but a miniaturised machine gun. How neat! I thought I would like to have something like that one day. Egal was in military uniform, and had stars pinned to his shoulders, so he must have been an officer. He was a jolly sort, and one could see how he could be very pleasant and friendly.
Avi, on the other hand, was incredibly quiet. He was also abnormally tall – at least six foot four, I reckoned. Paul told me that Avi was a member of the Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service. Even when I told him that he reminded me of Christopher Reeves in Superman, Avi did not respond to the remark. That lent weight to Paul’s surmise, in my view.
The other three Israeli soldiers, by contrast, were all very young, probably in their late teens or early twenties. One of them kept looking at my news magazine Monday Morning but never said anything. In the end, I asked him if he wanted to have a look at it – he was delighted with the offer, and spent the rest of the journey studying the magazine. The other two were dragged into an argument by Paul, who launched into an attack on Israel’s foreign policy in Lebanon. The argument went on and on, and became very irritating, because neither side was conceding anything. I tried to tell Paul to shut up and not to waste his time, but he persisted.
Nobody in the world could shut Paul up. A few days before he had been crossing an Israeli and Haddad checkpoint in south Lebanon. An Israeli soldier stopped him and wanted to see his papers. Paul said to the soldier, ‘Who are you to ask to see my papers? You are a foreigner in this country, just as I am. You have no right to ask for my papers.’
Everyone went very quiet. Paul was giving a piece of his mind to a soldier armed with a machine gun, with more soldiers looking on from on top of two large tanks. He should have chosen somewhere safer to sound off. But the incredible thing was that he got away with it – he passed the checkpoint without showing his papers. Crazy people had crazy luck.
From my seat in the van, I could see the Mediterranean coastline. I had grown to love the Mediterranean sea dearly over these months. Her waters were calm, still, and blue, washing the coastlines of Lebanon and neighbouring Palestine. Throughout history, how much sorrow and bloodshed had she witnessed? Was she silent because she was unfeeling, or because in the depth of her wisdom she regarded human conflict as puny? The anguish of mortal humanity appeared lost in the deep blue calm.
I must have dozed off, for I woke up with a start. The van had pulled up at the side of the road. Above us was a large sign saying, ‘Welcome to Israel’.
Egal got down and, in a loud, jovial voice, told the three of us, ‘From now on, the roads will be nice and smooth and you can all relax.’ Obviously he had not been enjoying the bumpy ride on the Lebanese trunk road either.
Indeed the road was nice and smooth, with no potholes and the surface well-tarred. Groups of pretty little school kids with bunches of flowers were all over the place, obviously on a picnic by the border. It had been such a long time since I had seen kids so happy. The sight reminded me of English kids on a day out. My mind immediately returned to the camps.
The Palestinian kids were around the same age: they were all stuck in the camps, squatting among the ruins and rubble, many of them orphans. This would be a terrible winter for the homeless ones. At least the dead need suffer no more. What about the little ones in my orthopaedic ward, wounded by shrapnel and bombs? Many of them would never walk again. Yet the Israeli children were so innocent and happy – and I wished to God they would never, never find out that there were other children across the border who were miserable and suffering. Children all over the world had a right to be happy and secure, no matter what wicked things their elders had done. I could not help quietly praying for these Israeli kids, that they would not be punished for the misery and sufferings wrought by their parents and elders to other children. I prayed that they would not have to pay for the sins of others.
Our party stopped at a kibbutz hotel in northern Israel. We got down and, for the first time in months, I saw green grass. Ellen had become extremely upset. I followed her to the cloakroom, where she broke into tears.
‘You know, Swee,’ she said, ‘this is terrible. Every house is built on top of someone else’s house. The whole society here is built upon injustice.’ This was too much for me to take in, considering that I had met my first Palestinian less than three months before.
Someone had presented Ellen with a bouquet of red roses in the morning before we set out. Now I followed her out to the fields and helped her plant them on top of the soil of what was once Palestine. It was dark by the time we completed this little mission, and we went back into the hotel.
Back in the lounge of the kibbutz hotel, we were introduced to Egal’s superior officer, an important-looking official of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). By this time, I was determined to work a few things out for myself. Right now I wanted to know what part if any the IDF had played in the invasion of Lebanon. I decided to ask Egal’s chief. Sir, I asked, ‘what is the name of the Israeli army now occupying Lebanon?’ In my ignorance, I figured that if the Israeli Defence Force were set up to defend Israel, there must be another section of the army which had invaded Lebanon.
Egal’s chief was not amused at all: he stiffened up and answered, ‘The Israeli Defence Force, of course. We in Israel have only one common army, not like the lot in the place you come from. Unlike Lebanon, with her seventeen armies, we are united and one.’
For the first time, I realised that ‘defence’ was a euphemism, and that the Israeli Defence Force was also the Israeli Attack Force.
After some refreshments in the kibbutz, we resumed our journey towards Tel Aviv. It was dark, but along the road I saw large luminous signposts pointing to ACCO (Akka), Haifa and Jaffa. I thought of my Palestinian friends who had asked me to say hello to these places – presumably their places of origin.
We got into Tel Aviv really late. The Commission had booked us into the Moriah Hotel, a large five-star affair. I had never stayed in such a luxurious hotel before. The rooms were large, with two beds in each single room. ‘It is ridiculous.’ I said to myself. ‘How could one person sleep in two beds? Perhaps they expect me to set the alarm at 3 AM, and switch beds.’
The bathroom was spacious, with hot and cold showers, a long bath, huge towels and lovely patterned green tiles all over the walls and floor. There were large glass windows with thick curtains. Ellen, Paul, Avi, Egal and I had a room each.
Mine felt large, empty and pretentious, without the warmth and hospitality of the camp homes. Neither did it have the homeliness of the Mayfair Residence, where Mary’s ‘oily, soggy chips’ greeted me each time I returned from the camps.
The dining room was equally sumptuous, with an amazing choice of dishes on the menu. But I had lost all desire for food – and had to hand over my mushroom omelette to Paul and persuade him to eat it for me. I had not learnt to waste food yet, not even Israeli food.
After dinner, Egal and Avi took us to the hotel bar and bought us beers. The two of them tried very hard to be good to us, and to be friendly. A folk hand was playing, and Egal tried to entertain us with his own singing as well. Unfortunately, I was highly unsettled, and not very good company. I felt very, very depressed, and had to swallow a five-milligram valium tablet to get to sleep. None of us knew what to expect from the hearings the next day.
It was 1 November – Avi and Egal drove us to the university where the Commission of Inquiry was being held. It was an open hearing, and the press were out in full force. We were the only non-Israeli witnesses to offer evidence so far. Besides journalists, there were also large numbers of security and military personnel. As usual, I got the wrong end of the stick. ‘So the Israelis think that we lot from Gaza Hospital have come here to blow up the lecture room and the tribunal?’ I asked Ellen angrily, feeling quite insulted by the tight security. She explained that this was not the case, but there were lots of extremists in Israel who did not even want to see a Commission of Inquiry into a massacre in Lebanon. That was why the army and security were out to maintain order.
Bewildered by the large crowds and the incessant camera flashes, I could not help wondering if the publicity was being overdone. By now I had learnt that the Sabra and Shatila massacre was just one of many massacres against Palestinians since the 1948 Deir Yassin tragedy. How come this sudden publicity?
There was no time to wonder, for we were very quickly ushered into the lecture room where the judicial proceedings were being held. Ellen was the first witness, and she took with her a large plastic bag full of Hebrew newspapers and magazines which we collected from the United Nations building where we were detained on the morning of 18 September. The newspapers were dated 15, 16, 17 and 18 September, the days over which the massacre took place. As she rose to go into the ‘court’ room, she said to me. ‘Israel brought all these things, now they can have them back.’
Paul and I sat outside waiting to be called. Then my turn came. As a doctor, I had been to court many times to give medical evidence for or against various parties. But I did not realise that the judges did the questioning in a Commission of Inquiry, and that there were no cross-examining lawyers. After taking the usual oath, the judges asked me to relate the events of the three days of the massacre, from the 15th until the morning of 18 September. By this time, I had lost interest in the audience within the room, the press, even the judges. I felt weary, because I knew only a handful among them at most cared anything for the camp people.
The press wanted its story, the Israeli lobby wanted to prove to the world their democracy was so excellent that they even gave the Palestinians a chance to have their say. The whole exercise should have been called the ‘Inquiry into the Palestinian Refugee Camps Massacre’, but the Commission instead called it the ‘Lebanese Enquiry’, refusing to mention the Palestinians.
So, even when murdered, the existence of the Palestinians was denied. I could hear my own hollow voice echoing, ‘Palestinian, Palestinian’, throughout, but even as I spoke, I knew this platform was a far cry from the justice I was seeking for the people I loved so much. Soon I went from being weary to angry, and told the Commission exactly what happened. The Israelis had said that they did not know, but we radioed them, pleading with them to stop the massacres. They stopped the foreigners from being killed, but did they order the killing of the Palestinians? We knew that those soldiers who pulled the trigger were totally answerable to the Israeli officials.
Afterwards I was told that my evidence contradicted that of the IDF officials who had given evidence earlier on. ‘In that case, they must have lied.’ I told reporters waiting outside. ‘I do not know what they have told the Commission, but what I said under oath was an exact transcript from my diary.’
The press persisted, taking on the role of the legal cross- examiner. I knew I did not have to answer any of their questions, but my love for the camp people compelled me to speak to anyone who would listen, including journalists who wanted nothing but their ‘scoop’, judges who probably saw me as nothing more than a ‘PLO sympathiser’ and members of a public who saw Palestinians as an inferior subhuman breed. I was already homesick for the Beirut camps, for the people I loved, for the sixth floor of Gaza Hospital.
I became increasingly enraged as I repeated myself to the journalists: ‘Here were the twenty-two of us, who worked nonstop for seventy-two hours without food, water or sleep, to save a handful of lives while out there in the camps people were dying by the thousands. If only I knew, I would have run into the streets and done something to try to stop it.’
That quote went into all the papers the next day, but no one printed the more important message I tried to get across – that while there was nothing we could do to bring back to life those who were dead and gone, there was plenty we could do for those still alive today, facing terrible hardships. They were still living in ruins and rubble, they had no means of livelihood and were living in utter misery as winter approached. No one wanted to hear this in the Jerusalem of 1982. Perhaps the Kahan Commission was a triumph of Israeli democracy, but it did nothing to lessen the pain suffered by the Palestinian people.
On our way out, we were met by the British High Commissioner. He was very concerned about us, and took the trouble to come all the way to the university to make sure we were all right. But he was a bit confused as to whether I was Singaporean, Malaysian or British. I was not sure either, but after some thought I told him: ‘I suppose the best way to put it is that if I died here, my body would have to go back to London, and that would probably be the concern of your department.’
Paul thought that was a very cheeky thing to say to the High Commissioner, but it was just a practical way of describing myself, and the only thing I could come up with at the time. The fact is that I had spent some time worrying about where I might be buried.
After giving evidence to the Commission, we were taken by Egal and Avi to visit some places of interest in Israel. For someone from South East Asia, the significance of a place like the Wailing Wall was not too obvious. The birthplace of Christ in Bethlehem had been transformed into a bustling tourist church. It was most unlike my idea of the manger where Jesus was born.
The Hadassah Hospital, a large Israeli hospital, was well organised and had modern equipment, like any large teaching hospital in Britain. No bomb holes, no crumbled walls, no shattered glass windows, no rubble like Gaza Hospital. With the exception of a handful of wounded Israeli soldiers, there was nothing to remind one of an ongoing war. The rest of the patients were exactly what one would expect in any hospital – cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, surgery cases and so on. No children with the Reagan-Begin’ syndrome, no cluster bomb injuries, no burns from phosphorus. And there was water, electricity, potted plants, curtains, polished floors. I remembered Dr Habib’s room in Gaza Hospital, which was supposed to be mine after he left. A large shell came through the wall one day, reducing the room and its contents to rubble, fortunately injuring no one.
We were then taken to visit Yad Vashem. Under normal circumstances I would not have wanted to visit this place, having spent many hours in the past weeping and having nightmares over the European persecution of the Jews, first by the Russian Czars, and then by the Nazis. But I did not want to offend my Israeli hosts, and so I went along.
It was Just as well I did. A woman Israeli professor of history, herself a survivor of the awful Auschwitz camp during the second world war, had taken the day off to show us around. She was a kindly woman and got very upset when reminded of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. She turned round and took hold of my arm and said, ‘Doctor, now you have seen the sufferings the Jews have been through. Please believe me, we were very distressed by what happened in Lebanon, to the people in the refugee camps. The news of this broke just before Rosh ha-Shanah and our whole village cancelled all celebrations. We were too upset to celebrate, many of us went into mourning instead.’
Her obvious sincerity, and the pain on her face as she said these words showed me that not all Israelis wanted to see the Palestinians persecuted and slaughtered. It must be cruel for Jews who had suffered so much under the Nazis to see their own people inflict suffering on others.
Here were two sets of people – the Jews and the Palestinians with a great deal in common. At Yad Vashem I watched a film about how the Nazis indoctrinated their members with anti-Jewish sentiments, the first being to regard Jews as an inferior and subhuman breed. Some Israeli soldiers now regarded Arabs as inferior and subhuman. Why had they not learnt? Was it necessary for the creation of a home for the victims of Nazi persecution and European racism to be transformed into suffering for another people, the
Palestinians?
Perhaps there is an evil being trying to play musical chairs or pass the parcel, making the Jews and the Palestinians suffer in turns. What if the Jews and the Palestinians both decided they were not playing this game, and threw the parcel back? There was absolutely no need for one set of people to have a home to the exclusion of the other. It must be possible for both to live together. Many said that Israel was too small to be home to both Jews and Palestinians. I think the idea of room or space is a relative one. Having been brought up in Singapore, one of the most crowded countries in the world, Israel or Palestine felt spacious to me, and it must be possible for a few million Jews and Arabs to live there as fellow citizens.
The population of Singapore was nearly that of Israel, and we managed to make homes for all our people in an area of only 226 square mile. Israel is many, many times the area of Singapore, so no one could use the ‘over-crowding’ argument to a Singaporean. Then there was Shatila camp, two hundred yards square, home for tens of thousands of Palestinians. There is an old saying: if you want the room, you’ll make it. So it is not a question of room, but one of an ideology of intolerance.
As I bade the Israeli professor farewell, I looked at the boulevard of trees planted for the friends of the Jewish people, for those who helped to protect Jews from the Nazis, those who risked their own lives to save others, and I wept. Perhaps, if I had been born a generation earlier, in Europe instead of South East Asia, perhaps I, too, would be one of the many so overwhelmed by the injustice done to the victims of the Nazi holocaust, that I would become blind to the sufferings and dispossession of the Palestinians.
No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’! I had come from the living hell of the Palestinian Refugee Camps. While people here talked of ‘morality’ and ‘conscience’, ‘righteousness’ and ‘godliness’, there were broken bodies under the rubble and buried in the mass graves who had paid with their lives for this ‘morality’. The living, homeless and destitute, had lost their birthright to pay for the foundation of the ‘godly’ state. The Palestinians held and tortured in prisons and detention camps paid with their freedom for the ‘democracy’ of the Israeli state. The stolen childhood and womanhood of the Palestinians paid for the ‘progressive feminism’ of the Israeli state which so appealed to the Western world.
Back at the Moriah Hotel, we got ready to leave. Ellen and I were leaving the Middle East, but Paul Morris was going back to Lebanon. Paul was totally unconcerned about the possible repercussions of our trip to Jerusalem. He wandered off to the Arab part of Jerusalem, and bought many toys for the children of the camp, including a drum for Essau, the boy injured by a cluster bomb. He had planned to tell
Essau that the drum was a special present from Swee, for Essau loved me very much. This made the prospect of not seeing little Essau again a little less upsetting.
At this point we had a message that an Israeli lawyer called Felicia Langer was coming to see us. Avi, the IDF chap who we thought was probably Mossad as well, clearly did not like her. He told me how awful this Felicia was, how old and ugly and unkind she was. So I sat in the hotel lounge, and went up to every old and ugly woman to find out if she was Felicia Langer. Many of the women I asked were not at all amused. When one of the women asked me why I thought she was Felicia Langer, I almost let slip that it was because she was old and ugly.
Finally a woman arrived who was the exact opposite of Avi’s description. Felicia was young, attractive and feminine. I turned round and gave Avi a hard, long stare. He was very embarrassed – blushing to his ears – and he quickly excused himself. I liked Felicia very much, and eagerly listened as she and Ellen talked. It was only very much later that I learnt that Felicia Langer was a true heroine, very committed to fighting for justice for the Palestinian people. I was ever so grateful for the chance to meet her and listen to her, and I gave her a copy of my statement on the massacre.
Although her visit was very brief, it had an impact on me, and brought me a strange inexplicable sense of joy.
Avi drove Ellen and me to the airport. By then, the poor chap had developed a nasty headache, probably through having to look after us three. He left the two of us at the airport, and drove on towards Lebanon with Paul Morris.
I knew what I had been told in Beirut was right: my days in Lebanon were over. But I was glad I had made the trip to Jerusalem. It was strange. Jerusalem was the Holy City, the meeting point of the three monotheistic religions. As a Christian I had long wanted to make my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and now the Palestinians had brought me to her. Apart from having spoken up on behalf of the people of Sabra and Shatila camps, I also had the opportunity to meet Jewish citizens of Israel, those who were committed to struggling for peace and justice, who had taken a stand. Many of them paid dearly for that too. Members of the Israeli Defence Force who refused to serve in Lebanon were put in prison. Felicia herself would never know whether she would be assassinated the next day. Yet many like her continued with their work against the injustice within Israel. I saw the courage of both Jews and Palestinians.
We boarded the airliner, and as the plane door closed on us I had a vivid sense of déja vu. Tel Aviv airport reminded me of the airport in Singapore. As the plane took off, I felt exiled again – not from Singapore, but from the Middle East. Through the window I could see the sunset. Beautiful and golden, the setting sun cast its warmth and radiance over Lebanon, over occupied Palestine, over Beirut and Jerusalem, over victors and vanquished, faithfully and without bias, as it had done since the beginning of time. Now that I would be exiled from Jerusalem, I understood how the Palestinians must have felt.
Ellen seemed to have read my thoughts, for she started to talk to me about exiles and the right of return. Ten years before, she and a Palestinian woman, Dr Ghada Karmi, stood outside the Israeli Embassy, each carrying a placard. On the placard of the Palestinian woman the following words were written: ‘I am a Palestinian Arab. I was born in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my home. But I cannot return there.’ The words on Ellen’s placard read: I am an American and a Jew. I was born in the USA. Israel is not my home. But I can return there.’
‘Think of the injustice of that, Swee,’ said Ellen. ‘Why should I have two homes, one in the USA, one in Israel, when the Palestinians have none? How can I exercise my right of return to Israel till the Palestinians are given the same right too?’
I looked out of the window: the sun had set. Beirut and Jerusalem were miles away. There was darkness outside, and I felt lonely and lost.
Chapter 14
I arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport, and was greeted by my dear husband who had lost fifteen kilograms in weight while I was away. Only at that moment did I find out he actually thought I was killed during the massacre. The mistake arose because after the massacre a list of survivors was given to the major newspapers in Britain, and my name was omitted. I think I can easily explain that: I was a coloured woman and a refugee. The British correspondents probably did not include me in the list of British survivors and the charity which sent me probably did not see it as their responsibility to check whether I was alive. Francis telephoned the US State Department in Washington, who proceeded to contact the American Embassy in Beirut, who then tried to locate me, and even made inquiries at the office of my Beirut sponsors, although the message was obviously not passed on. I could blame no one, since refugees like myself were not seen as being the responsibility of anyone in particular. Mistakes like that get made. But that was not good enough for Francis. After 15 September he had heard nothing whatsoever about me, except that I was in Sabra and Shatila, where thousands were slaughtered. The first he heard of me being alive and well was when he got my telex statement asking him to circulate it as widely as possible, on 22 September 1982.
My old friends were all delighted to see me back in London, although I was down to five stone in weight and fairly weak.
There was no time to lose. Many people had, like myself, learnt about the Palestinian people only because of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The plight of the surviving Palestinians in Lebanon was very precarious indeed, and there might be very little time left. Another massacre or an attack on the camps could happen at any time, once the multinational peacekeeping force left. Every effort had to be made to publicise the plight of the destitute orphans and widows still living in the ruins. Their voice must be heard.
The massacres had brought home one painful lesson to me – the uselessness of my surgical skills. I might feel pleased about saving a handful of lives, but thousands of lives could have been saved if the rest of the world had known what was happening – if I had realised what was happening, stopped operating and publicised the fact that a massacre was taking place there and then. Now I knew, and there was no turning back. I owed it to those people whose lives I failed to save. In moments of despair, I was tempted to believe that people would have turned away even if they knew about and could help stop the massacres. If they did not know, it was my fault for not speaking up. But if I spoke up, and they knew, and still allowed it to continue, then it was they who would have to live with their own consciences.
I was not going to fall prey to cynicism. If there was to be another massacre, I was going to make sure no one would be able to say they did not know – they would have to admit they did not care. I was very tired and physically exhausted, but I was determined to talk to anyone who was prepared to listen, as long and as often as necessary. I had to make up for the limitations of being a doctor, a surgeon, by being a human being first.
That was the only time in my life I wished I had blue eyes and fair hair, and perhaps a name like Mary instead of Swee Chai. Unfortunately my South East Asian features, foreign name and foreign accent, which had hindered me in getting a British surgical job in my early refugee days, now hindered me in doing publicity work for the Palestinians. With the exception of a few newspapers, no one wanted to interview me. In fact lots of reporters asked me if there were any British team members who would talk about the camps, as they would print interviews with British members of the team anytime. I understood the position of the press. Who in Britain would want to hear about some refugees three thousand miles away from a strange, ethnic Chinese, woman doctor? There was only one British doctor who was willing to talk to the press: and that was Paul Morris, and he was unfortunately back in Lebanon, and therefore uncontactable.
At times I felt very resentful towards the other British doctors and nurses who had volunteered and worked in Lebanon, as they could so easily have helped the Palestinians by speaking up for them, but refused to do so.
So I had to go on a person-to-person campaign, and trudged all over Britain addressing small groups – in schools, universities, churches and mosques – and unofficial gatherings like women’s tea-parties, or groups of my own friends. It was not only tiring, but expensive. Francis had to pay most of my fares, since I was out of a job.
Within a couple of months I had done more than two hundred such meetings. Sometimes I would find myself talking to school children in London in the morning, university students at lunch time in the Midlands, and an evening meeting in some church in Scotland on the same day. I showed people slides of the camps which I had taken with my pocket camera, and told them the camp people’s story.
This inefficient way of campaigning helped me to meet a lot of very committed people, who really wanted to help the Palestinians, and it was worth all the trouble in the end. Francis had bought me a mini-slide projector, and I would arrange my slides to be shown on it, and the two of us laughed at this set-up, which he called my ‘road show’.
An important thing emerged. People in Britain did care. Even though the country was in economic recession, people did respond to the plight of the Palestinians. Everywhere I went to give my road show, members of the audience would ask me how they could help. Many of them had never met a Palestinian in their life, but they would respond to the injustice done to the Palestinians and wanted to help.
People who offered to help came from all walks of life and had differing political backgrounds. Most of them were ordinary working people like myself, and wanted to help in what they saw as a human tragedy. The British people had a long tradition of generosity towards those in need, and their response to the Palestinians was not a one-off thing. They had given to Kampuchea, to Bangladesh, to places in Africa, and now in the same way they wanted to give to the Palestinians. Many did not know the politics behind the situation, and did not care who was right and who was wrong: they simply responded as good Samaritans. The unemployed, old-age pensioners, students, poorly-paid working people and ethnic minorities – all wanted to do something to help.
Eventually a group of us – Francis and myself, returned volunteers from Lebanon and Palestinians in Britain – got together to discuss how we could be of use to the camp folks. None of us were politicians, but many of us were medical and relief workers. We agreed to set up a medical charity to help people in Lebanon. We decided that this charity had to be non-sectarian, and help everyone in need; and be non-political and entirely humanitarian; and that it would be a channel through which the generosity of people in Britain could reach those who were suffering. The name Medical Aid for Palestinians was chosen, so that we could avoid the political issue of Palestine, and could function wherever the Palestinians were, whether they were living under occupation or in exile.
Chapter 15
Ellen Siegel returned to Washington DC. A year passed, but she was unable to forget the people in Lebanon’s refugee camps either. With the support of organisations in the United States, she organised a commemoration service on the first anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and invited Ben Alofs, Louise Norman and myself to travel over to Washington in September 1983. This gave us the chance to remember the victims of Sabra and Shatila. It was my first trip to the United States, that powerful country across the Atlantic if one looks at the map from Britain, or the Pacific if one looks from Singapore.
The three of us were invited to Ellen’s synagogue to attend the Yom Kippur service. It was a long service, and conducted in Hebrew. The whole service was entirely unintelligible to me. My American Jewish hosts told me it was about atonement for sins. For the Jews, sins of Omission were as grievous as sins of commission. It was good in a way not to understand the contents of the service, as I detected a very sad and heavy mood throughout, and it would probably have been upsetting, if I had understood what the rabbi was saying.
When I attended a service a few days later in Shiloh, a black Baptist church, it was too overwhelming. After I had thanked the pastor and his congregation for remembering the camp victims, I broke down and wept in the middle of the song ‘Amazing Grace’. This was the first time since Lebanon that I had broken down in public. The kind black lady’ next to me kept passing me pieces of tissue paper throughout the service. I had done all sorts of things in the hope of helping the people in the camps, but this was the first time I had remembered them before God, and prayed for them.
We gave the usual radio and television interviews. One memorable event was a press conference called on our behalf by the United Nations representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in New York. Jill Drew and I spoke at the press conference. The press room was packed with reporters, who had all come because they had misunderstood the press release sent out by the PLO representative. They thought they had come to hear the PLO comment on the events in Lebanon. The battle of Tripoli, in Northern Lebanon, was in the American headlines at that time. According to the press, the PLO in Lebanon had split into factions for and against the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, and the factions were fighting each other. This event had thrown everyone into confusion, and the press wanted to know what it was all about.
Instead, the PLO representative produced Jill Drew and myself – a nurse and a doctor, who spoke about the SabraShatila massacres of a year before, and spoke about the hardships faced by the Palestinians. A few unsympathetic journalists were very annoyed, and attacked Jill and me for wasting their time with stories of no ‘news value’! But, overall, it was a good press conference, and most of the African and Asian papers carried stories on the anniversary of the massacres, reminding readers of the difficulties the Palestinians were facing.
We had lunch with the UN Deputy Representative of the PLO in the UN dining room. It overlooked the sea, and was extremely pleasant. I remember nothing of the food we ate, but will always remember the bill our host received. He signed his name, followed by ‘PLO’ in large letters. At least in this lunch room, I thought, in the middle of New York City, the PLO man was accepted and treated like all other diplomats, and not abused and called names as in many other places I had been. It was good to see the PLO treated with some respect.
All over the United States, people talked about Martin Luther King and his dream. The Palestinians, like the American Blacks, have their dream. It is a dream of peace with justice, freedom with security. It is a dream of things which all human beings cherish. ‘Together, we will work and struggle to make that dream come true,’ I told my American friends.
Chapter 16
Our charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), came into being in 1984 – it took almost two years for us to get our act together. But once launched, MAP made steady progress, thanks to all sections of the British public who gave much of their time, money and substance. We kept in close touch with the Palestinians in the refugee camps. Because MAP was small, and had none of the funds larger organisations had, we always thought of ourselves as friends of the Palestinian people, rather than as some ‘charity’. For those of us close to the camp folks, we knew they would find the idea of handouts offensive, but we were merely a channel whereby the goodwill in Britain could be directed to them. Our supporters did not give Out of pity: like all supporters of a just cause, they gave out of solidarity, on a basis of mutual respect. We did not want to see a kind of paternalistic attitude emerge in us.
The first MAP team leaving for Beirut, June
1985. From left to right: Immad, Swee, Ben
Alofs, Alison Haworth, John Thorndike, John Croft.
One thing made me especially grateful: the Palestinian experience had given me a chance to know the British people. It made me see beyond having a chip on my shoulder just because I was a small, coloured woman. Giving talks and raising funds for the Palestinians had brought me into contact with the real British people, and I would always want to remember their generosity, warmth and kindness to other suffering people, a side of Britain I was grateful to discover.
Charity is not pity. The English word ‘charity’ originally meant ‘love’, and I discovered that many people in Britain were capable of loving, even a people they had never met.
MAP continued to raise small sums of money, and our limited resources were used to support health projects of the Palestinians. We would send small shipments of medicines and equipment from time to time or use the donations to help towards the education of health workers living in the Israelioccupied territories. There were even a few occasions when we brought wounded people to Britain for treatment.
Milad Faroukh was the Lebanese boy wounded by Israeli bombs in 1982. He was the boy Paul Morris practically handfed back to life, as the little one refused to eat or drink after seeing his younger brother blown up in front of him. After Ellen Siegel and I left in 1982, Paul continued to work in Lebanon. He ran a clinic among the poor Muslims in Beirut, trying to continue his medical work. Unfortunately he was threatened, and had his clinic shot up, by a group of hostile militiamen. Paul left, but then revisited Beirut in 1984. He found Milad in the refugee camp. Milad was then eleven years old, and weighed only twenty-five kilograms – ten to twenty kilograms below the average for boys of that age. His heel wound was severely septic, and he still could not walk. Paul had asked MAP to sponsor Milad’s treatment in Britain, and we agreed. We had no money to pay for his treatment and had to raise the funds. Professor Jack Stevens, the head of the Orthopaedic Department in Newcastle-uponTyne, where I was working at the time, agreed to treat Milad free, so that we only needed to raise his air fare and accommodation expenses. Meanwhile Milad waited in Cyprus for his British visa, and the okay from London. While waiting, the stability of Cyprus helped him put on fifteen kilograms in a matter of three months. He not only grew quickly, but his foot also improved!
By the time he arrived in Britain, major treatment was unnecessary. Being away from wartorn Lebanon and having enough food to eat during the months of waiting had made Milad much better. Examination with .the radioisotope scanner revealed that the bones and blood vessels of Milad’s foot were recovering rapidly. For once he looked fit and healthy.
It was a happy time for those of us who knew what Milad had been like back in 1982, and it was one of those rare stories with a happy ending. If only Lebanon had food instead of bullets, we would not have to bring kids like Milad thousands of miles to Britain.
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