A Man With A Heart
The greatest pain any parent can suffer is to have a child die. This happened to Ismael Khatib, a Palestinian from the Jenin refugee camp. His twelve year old son, Ahmed, shot by Israeli soldiers, was one of many child casualties of conflict, but what happened next was extraordinary. In the Israeli hospital where Ahmed was taken, doctors failed to save him, IsmaelKhatib met a nurse who explained they had many children needing organ donors and Ismael agreed to donate his sons organs.
The recipients would be Israeli children, but that didn’t bother him. It bothered a lot of other people though. Attitudes are so entrenched that a humane gesture like this, especially after a violent death is rarely seen as the divides between the peoples and religions can seem insurmountable. The organs were transplanted into the children of Orthodox Jews,Druze, Bedouin and others.
One year later, Khatib toured round Israel in the company of German film maker, Marcus Vetter, and visited five of the children who had received transplants. Asked why, Khatib said, “It’s not about politics, about Jews or Arabs, it’s about human beings. I see my son in these children.” The resulting film, Heart of Jenin, is neither mawkish or sentimental, but uncomfortable viewing, dealing with the divides between peoples and the complexities of individual responses to the conflict.
This is highlighted in an awkward encounter between Khatib and the Levinson family, who are Israeli settlers with uncompromising views. In Israel, the Jerusalem Film Festival refused to show the film, but later agreed. InRamallah it was also refused because there was an Israeli film maker involved, but later they too showed it.
Khatib has since set up the Cuneo Centre for Peace, for children to learn and play in a safe environment and, under the management of Fakhri Hamad, a new project Cinema Jenin. Hamad explained, “It was very important to tell this story as it shows the Palestinians as humans and that peace is possible. There were three reasons behind the decision to donate, Ismael lost his brother when he was young from kidney failure as no donor could be found. Secondly, a nurse in the hospital told him of children who could live if they were given organs. Ismael thought that these kids had the right to live and finally, something he came to understand later, that with this decision, he can ask the world to take out the kids from the conflict, they are not guilty. They shouldn’t have to pay for the conflict and this was also a message to the Israeli army, telling them they have to stop shooting kids.”
With the support of musician, Roger Waters and director, Quentin Tarantino amongst others, the Cinema Jenin project is off to a good start, “I was working in the kids centre where we were teaching the children art and music and we decided to include more kids by expanding into a cinema that has been closed since 1987 and we can use this to educate people of all ages the culture of peace, to show them the stories of other people.”
The next film is the story of an Israeli woman whose husband was killed by a suicide bomber and follows her reactions and her meeting with the bomber’s family.Khatib says “My son lived between two intifadas, he never saw a good day in his life”, to which Hamad adds, “The next intifada must be a peaceful one, of Israelis and Palestinians uniting together. The violence is killing us all.”
