Israeli Doctors Heart Iraqi Kids

While it is expected for doctors of any nation to tend to their own citizens with the utmost compassion, these doctors are raising the bar by tending towards Iraqi children suffering from heart disease.

(Israel National News) Israeli doctors screened 40 Iraqi children suffering from heart disease this week - a rare instance of direct cooperation between the Jewish state and Iraq. [...]

Dr. Tzion Houri, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, said he thought "ties and friendship" were being built through his work in Jordan with the Iraqi children. "Our only previous exchanges with the Iraqis were the Scud missiles," he said, referring to the missiles Iraq, under former dictator Saddam Hussein, fired on Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.

Israeli doctors seem to be making a pattern of helping Iraqi's lately, even when things must be done in secret.

Hopefully these doctors actions will go a long way towards creating ties between the two lands, as it would be great for Israel to have an Arabian friend in the middle east.

Bush To Iraq: Israel Is The Standard

It looks as if the President of the United States has finally declared a future goal for the Iraqi people. Although it is doubtful that the violence in the region would end (as that would be like asking for taxes to disappear) Bush seems to have settled upon what a future Iraq should look like.

And Israel is its name-o.

(IndyStar.com) President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq on Thursday, saying the U.S. goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.

With his Iraq policies under increasing fire from the American public and lawmakers from both parties, Bush went to the U.S. Naval War College here to declare progress. As the president pleaded for patience, his top national security aide went to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican critics.

Despite the fact that Israel has its own problems regarding terrorism, this has not stopped the nation from thriving in a hostile region. Israel has given much to the world, especially in the realms of health and technology, not to mention attracting internet giants like Google, Microsoft and AOL.

The tiny state of Israel leads the entire middle east region as far as innovation is concerned, and hopefully Iraq (and other aspiring democracies) would be able to attain a similar status as the Kosher state.

Israeli Doctors Helping Iraqi Children

Iman with his mother, Image Credit: Ofer Amram, via Ynet News

Thanks to the Save a Child's Heart foundation, three Iraqi Kurds will be given the chance to live a normal life in a region that is known to be a "little adventurous."

(Ynet News) Ahmad, 13, Iman, 6, and one-year-old Lizan will be operated on by cardiologists in Israel as part of the humanitarian project 'Save a Child's Heart.' Since the association was founded 12 years ago, more than 1,600 children from 26 different countries, including the Palestinian Authority, have undergone surgery in Israel. [...]

"Tomorrow they will undergo echography testing, after which heart surgeon Dr. Leon Sasson will recommend the best line of treatment. The operations will be sometime in the next week-and-a-half," Gilad said.

According to Dr. Akiva Tamir, a children's cardiologist at Wolfson, two of the children suffer from a hole between two heart chambers, which will be mended by surgery. The smallest child, Lizan, has a very severe defect, which often leads to sudden infant death, Tamir said.

This isn't the first time that Israel has helped out Iraqi children, and it is doubtful if this will be the last. Israel has done a lot of charity work for nations around the world, caring for others who are unable to receive assistance from their own governments.

Regardless whether they are friend or foe, Israel has demonstrated a unique ability to turn the other cheek towards their enemies and help them out in time of need. If only the world could repay the favor.

Of Israeli Doctors And Iraqi Fathers

Now this is something you do not hear about everyday. A father from Iraq has to choose between regional hatreds and saving his daughters life.

Fortunately for her, he decided to defy the status quo and opted to save her life.

(Israel Today) Faced with the choice of saving his daughter's life while potentially jeopardizing his family in northern Iraq, Abu Sakar chose life.

It wasn't a hard decision for the father of three, but it was one laden with great risk as he left his home town in northern Iraq to head to Israel.

"Yes there was a danger in coming here, but they gave me a dream," Abu Sakar said as he watched his now healthy 10-year-old daughter, Sakar, bounding through the Old City in Jerusalem and shyly smiling for the camera.

Sakar was diagnosed with a fatal heart disease and would have died without a specific surgery that she could not get in Iraq. In a most unlikely scenario, a Christian organization, Shevet Achim, brought this Iraqi family to Israeli doctors for a new chance at life.

Abu Sakar's visit to the holy land changed his entire world view about Israel, revealing a land filled with "wonderful and kind" people as apposed to the "evil Zionists" often seen on Arabian TV.

Now if Abu could discover that Jews are not all that bad, then their may be some hope for the media. :-)

Iraqis Learn From Holocaust Museums In Secret

After Iraqi's were able to remove a brutal dictator of their own (with coalition support) they now want to set up a museum reminding the world of the atrocities of the worlds ugliest dictator Saddam Hussein.

(Ynet News) Members of an Iraqi organization planning to perpetuate the memory of thousands of Saddam Hussein's victims secretly visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem last year, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily revealed Tuesday.

The report noted that a special team of Iraqi exiles has for the past year been recording testimonies of survivors who managed to escape Saddam's atrocities. [...]

It also became known that the 30 members of the Iraqi memorial team met with Jewish film director Steven Spielberg, who is also documenting Holocaust survivors' testimonies.

Why they had to do this in secret I'll leave for you to guess.

I think this is a good thing for Iraqis and it may help bring the Jewish state and the Arabian/Kurdish state just a little bit closer together. I am not sure how many people Saddam killed, but some estimate it is as high as 8 million souls.

It will be interesting to see how much this Iraqi museum parallels the Israeli and American Holocaust ones, although I wonder if they will credit either of them for helping out via consulting.

Related Kosher News:

• Anne Frank's father's letters found
• Study trips to Poland offer best Holocaust education
• Other IsraGood Holocaust articles

Update: Forgot to mention this article as well.