Syrians are fleeing toward the hospitals of its “enemy”
sabato 7 luglio 2018 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, July 7, 2018
Tens of thousands pile up along the Golden Heights: Israel opens (with caution) its doors and takes care of the wounded
The strong winds in the Golan Heights blow pain and come from tent cities in which displaced Syrians are clustered together a few meters from the steel and barbed wire fence with Israel. We are close to the villages of Bir Ajam and al Briga, and yet we could literally be anywhere on the Golan border that is carefully patrolled by Israeli soldiers. The 1974 Israeli-Syrian armistice includes a small empty area. Now, tens of thousands of people are coming, around 60,000 Syrians are said to be piling up along the Israeli border and hundreds of thousands are on the move: the battle of Deraa now won by Assad, and a little further north in Harah and Kuneitra, where on Friday the rebels took the initiative, is uprooting the population from the south and forcing them into homelessness. Wounded and hungry they have the misfortune of having Syria as their homeland. The screaming wind reaches Israel’s Golan Heights and calls for help are coming from those who are not only fleeing from Assad, Hezbollah and the Iranians who are sweeping without pity across their land, but also seeking shelter from last week’s Russian airstrikes. The world again says and does nothing; only Israeli piety remains.
And so here the theme that currently besets the world, which is that of refugees knocking at our door, is being played out toward refugees who have been also enemies until yesterday. Desperate people are turning up now amidst the oak trees of the Golan in order to request help from their long-standing enemy. Their side has become their main war zone. On Friday, the clash hit Kuneitra, and if the Iranian forces were to live alongside the Israeli border, Israel could not sit by and watch. However, for now the Israeli military’s humanitarian aid project Operation "Good Neighbor" continues, and has become after seven years of the Syrian war, increasingly larger: it includes tons of food, clothes, toys, field equipment, generators, tents, blankets, and crates of medicines requested via telephone by desperate Syrian doctors. Israeli citizens throughout various Golan Heights communities are all engaged in collecting the most goods they can for Syrian refugees. In the special overnight operations earlier this week, always within the parameters of a cautious military action, Israeli soldiers opened the gates and delivered all these items across the border. And from there, IDF medical forces provided treatment to wounded and sick Syrians. Those seriously injured were loaded onto trucks and helicopters. Those with devastating injuries, and for whom you’d say were beyond help, were quickly transported to Nahariya’s Galilee Medical Center where they were treated by an incredible team of surgeons, including Dr. Eyal Sela who not only took the time to speak with us, but also showed us amazing, horrific images. Here we learn that a man can save another even when the prospect of doing so seems impossible. We saw faces where only the forehead and eyes were left: the skull reconstructed from nothingness with a reinvented nose, mouth, and chin; eyes swept away and recovered, limbs smashed and grafted prostheses. Transplants, extensions, and computer inventions. 5000 people have been taken care in the little hospital.
Eyal Sela, an ENT physician and neck surgeon, determined and with an overtly sunny disposition explains: “I have a dream, that the Syrians who collapsed under bombs and who later woke up here and thought ‘Help, Israelis!’ now tell their families and all Arabs that their fears are unfounded, the hatred is absurd ... that when they spent time with us they met doctors and nurses – both Jews and Arabs - who treated them with love.” At present, there are a total of forty Syrians being treated at the hospital.
We spoke to one who we’ll call Nawras because we can’t provide his real name as he might be suspected to become an israeli spy and his life be put in danger. Nawras, a 22-year-old from Quneitra, was picked up after losing his hands and an eye on June 3. He has a sad but calm expression: he already has two grafted prostheses in place of his hands. "My companions who rescued me told me the following: the only ones who can help you are the Israelis, let's go to the border. Of course I was afraid. The Assad dynasty teaches us since elementary school to hate Jews, when you are a child and don’t want to eat, mothers say: if you don’t eat, a Zionist will come and suck all your blood.” Nawras looks at the stumps of his hands: “Instead, human beings, life, are sacred here, while for us death is normal.”
Dr. Sela says: "If you ask a child “what do you want to do when you grow up: he replies asking you the following: But will I get big? If you tell him not to play with grenades: "Your kids have toys, but what am I supposed to play with?".
Hani, from Ghutta, near Damascus, is 28-years-old and has two children, he has been in the hospital for two years, they have rebuilt his head and an eye: "Someone threw me on a horse’s back and after three hours of travel I arrived at the border. They asked me: do you want Israel to treat you. Yes, I said, though I was still scared. They nursed me back to health. I don'ìt want to stay out of my country and my family. I want to go home and hope that Syria makes peace with Israel. We are afraid of Hezbollah and the Iranians because they are carrying out a religious war against us, they kill us for their purposes. They take women and children in order to force the rebels to surrender".
From al Briqa, a few meters from us, two survivors speak to us on the phone, Musa Abu al Bara'a who by now is on the border, on the run for the past 5 years, and Mohammed Hariri, 29. Everyone has a wife and children: "Israel is our hope: go to the UN and ask them not only to come and get us out of here, but also that a real ceasefire with a free zone will be realized. Israel doesn’t scare us, it’s the only country that respects and helps us - on which we can count on.” The founder of the "Good Neighbor" project, commander Colonel Marco Moreno, explains: "Refugees are not expected to seek shelter from us. We have always managed aid as a military operation, with caution, attention, knowing that our soldiers are saving and helping them while risking our lives.WE enter at night in a country at war against us, we can expect anything, and we know that. But we want top save them as human beings. We passionately help children: when they come with their families here and there along the fence, the population collects toys, clothes, funds, special food, diapers…at the beginning there was a lot of suspicion, but then they understood. Yes, we certainly have an explicit interest. When the iperation started we told them: we will help you beyond the border and take care of you, but don’t allow your terrorists to come and hurt us. Nowaday, what simply started out as a right thing to do has transformed into something beautiful.” Lieutenant-Colonel Tomer Koller, a medical officer in the Bashan division of the Golan, points to the colored tents in the wind from the Hazaka outlook post. Inside them there are packed people in need.
For Israel it is impossible to think of hosting them, the country is small, refugees here are particularly problematic, they vary from newborn babies to ISIS terrorists who hate jews: "Our policy is to help them, we feed them, we take care of them as much as possible...and then they have their reality, at home." Their home is in flames. Here we watch closely, on the frightful wounds we have seen on the bodies of the Syrians cured by Israel in Galilee, the depth of the dilemma which the entire world faces: Israel cares for Syrians with its incredible therapeutic power and good will, but it can’t bring them home. The best of human intentions and common sense sometimes clash, and the right choice is that man remains a friend of his fellow man even in war, at his best. So does Israel.
Translation by Amy Rosenthal