Sun 23 Jun 2002
ROSS DUNN IN JERUSALEM
ISRAEL has deported the head of a charitable fund that organised heart
surgery and other operations for Palestinian children by Israeli doctors.
Jonathan Miles, a US citizen, who founded the Israeli non-profit organisation
Light to the Nations, was told he was no longer welcome in the country.
The move has disturbed Christian groups, as well as Israelis and
Palestinians, who had praised Miles for his humanitarian efforts in the midst
of a deep conflict. He had been working with Save a Child’s Heart, the
largest programme in the world providing free, urgent heart surgery for
children in poor and developing nations.
He originally came to the region in 1990 as a journalist, before moving into
a new role, in which he would travel back and forth between Israel and the
Gaza Strip.
For two years, he lived with his family in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip but
moved to Jerusalem last year, following Israel’s repeated military incursions
into the territory.
He facilitated the transfer of Palestinian babies from Gaza to Israeli
hospitals and also brought otherwise unavailable medicine back to the
territory.
He raised money abroad for the cause and set up a system of referrals for
newborn Palestinian babies in the West Bank who needed heart surgery in
Israel.
Miles was supported by Israeli doctors, and hospitals, which carried out the
surgery for Palestinian children at a fraction of the normal cost.
"One of Jonathan’s contributions was the good vibes he created with the
Palestinian families whose children we treated," said Israeli cardiologist,
Dr Akiva Tamir, one of the volunteers in the programme.
"It takes a lot for parents from Gaza in an atmosphere so full of hate to
bring us their children to treat. Jonathan really persuaded them that they
can trust us."
But the Israeli authorities clearly did not trust Miles. When he arrived last
week from a fund-raising trip, he was barred entry, kept in a holding cell
and then deported.
The first sign of trouble came in April when he was asked to leave the
country by the interior ministry, along with his wife Michelle, and five of
the couple’s six children.
It appears that the ministry was angered by his decision to apply for
residency status. The ministry is known for its strong opposition to granting
such status to non-Jews.
A spokeswoman for the interior ministry, said that Miles and his family had
been asked to leave because they had been living in Israel illegally. "They
wanted a permanent status," she said. "But there is no reason to grant them
this."
Miles’s attorney, Ezriel Levi, said that the government’s decision was
reprehensible. "Perhaps the present interior minister believes that helping
sick Palestinian children is not a worthy aim. As a citizen of this country I
can only be sorry about that."
Many Israeli doctors share his view that medicine must be kept above
politics. Among them are Dr Shmuel Yurfest, one of the surgeons who operated
to save the life of Palestinian teenager, Zayden Zayden, an 18-year-old,
severely injured when his suicide bomb went off before he reached his target
- a hospital near the central Israeli town of Afula.
Had he succeeded, Yurfest knows he would have been treating his victims
instead.
"During the operation, you act professionally and only afterwards you think
of the consequences," he said.
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