Izzeldin Abuelaish

Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Canadian-Palestinian medical doctor and author. He was born in Gaza, and was a Palestinian doctor who worked in an Israeli hospital and has been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. During the Gaza War in January 2009, his three daughters and niece were killed by Israeli tank fire directed at his home. He had been calling in reports about the effect of the war by phone to a TV station. In his regularly scheduled report, in tears, he described their killing on-air, in a video that was widely circulated in Israel and around the world.

He moved to Canada, where he was recruited by the University of Toronto and wrote a 2011 memoir entitled I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity. He now resides in Toronto, Canada, with his remaining children.

Life and career Abuelaish was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received his elementary, preparatory and secondary education in the refugee camp schools. Abuelaish received a scholarship to study medicine in Egypt. After completing medical studies at Cairo University in 1983, he earned a diploma in Obstetrics and Gynaecology from the University of London.

From 1997 to 2002, he completed a residency in OB/Gyn at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel, followed by a subspecialty in fetal medicine in Italy and Belgium, then a master's degree in Public Health (Health Policy and Management) from Harvard University. and already an important figure in Israeli-Palestinian relations. His daughters had attended a peace camp with Israeli children in the United States.

During the three-week war, Abuelaish gave reports and interviews to the Israeli media on the situation in Gaza. On January 16, 2009, a few days before the end of the war, an Israeli tank fired two shells at his home, killing three of his daughters and a niece. An Israeli military investigation of the incident claimed that fire had been directed at his house after ″figures″ spotted on the roof of the building had been suspected of being observers directing sniper fire against Israeli troops. There was no reason to bombard the house and kill three innocent daughters and niece. The incident occurred as he had been corresponding live with Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar, and his reaction to learning of the deaths of his daughters was broadcast live to Israeli audiences.

The killing of his daughters strengthened his resolve to promote truth, justice and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

He founded the Daughters for Life Foundation in memory of his three daughters who were killed. The organization provides scholarship awards to encourage young women from the Middle east and North Africa including Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria to pursue their studies at universities in Canada, the United States and Belgium. The foundation aims to invest in the potential for young women's leadership and to foster their success.

In 2011 he was associate professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto.

Abuelaish wrote a 2011 memoir entitled I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity. The book has been translated into 23 languages and been national and international bestseller.

In February 2013, he attended the Karachi Literature Festival in Pakistan where he narrated the events surrounding the death of his daughters killed in the Israeli airstrike. According to The Express Tribune, "there was hardly anyone in the audience who did not choke or wipe away a silent tear while listening to Palestinian doctor and author Izzeldin Abuelaish..." Abuelaish described the event of his daughters' deaths as follows:

We are standing in the scene of the tragedy, in the place where four lovely girls were sitting, building their dreams and their hopes, and in seconds, these dreams were killed. These flowers were dead. Three of my daughters and one niece were killed in one second on the 16th of January at a quarter to five p.m. Just a few seconds, I left them, and they stayed in the room two daughters here, one daughter here, one daughter here, and my niece with them.The first shell came from the tank space, which is there, came to shell two daughters who were sitting here on their chairs. And when I heard this shell, I came inside the room to find, to look. I can’t recognize my daughters. Their heads were cut off their bodies. They were separated from their bodies, and I can’t recognize whose body is this. They were drowning in a pool of blood. This is the pool of blood. Even look here. This is their brain. These are parts of their brain. Aya was lying on the ground. Shatha was injured, and her eye is coming out. Her fingers were torn, just attached by a tag of skin. I felt disloved, out of space, screaming, "What can I do?" They were not satisfied by the first shell and to leave my eldest daughter. But the second shell soon came to kill Aya, to injure my niece, who came down from the third floor, and to kill my eldest daughter Bessan, who was in the kitchen and came at that moment, screaming and jumping, "Dad! Dad! Aya is injured!" In 2024, French director Tal Barda adapted Abuelaish's 2011 book into the documentary film I Shall Not Hate.

Honours and awards

2009: Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought finalist 2009: Middle East Institute Award of the Middle East Institute 2009, 2010, 2011, 2016: Nobel Peace Prize nominee 2009 & 2010: Named one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims Since 2009 until now by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre 2010: Uncommon Courage Award; Queens College Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding 2010: Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award of Canada, Mahatma Gandhi Centre of Canada 2011: Lombardy Region Peace Prize 2012: Calgary Peace Prize, Calgary Centre for Global Community and Consortium for Peace Studies at the University of Calgary 2012: Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award 2013: Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award winner 2014: Winner in the internationally reputed category of the Public Peace Prize 2015: Medicine and Health as a Catalyst to Peace 2018: Max Mark Cranbrook Global Peacemaker, Wayne State University, Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. Eric Montgomery, Fred Pearson

Honorary degrees and citizenships

2011: Honorary Doctor of Laws, Queen's University 2024: Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of British Columbia

Works