Living beings feel shattered and devastated when their loved ones, especially their family members, die, and this becomes visible in the way they reaction to such situations. However, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish’s I Shall Not Hate brings out the possibility of endurance and patience in the situation of horrendous tragedy. The book evinces the story of his gut-wrenching life. The Palestinian physician and peace activist saw his three daughters dying in front of him in the three-week gruesome war in Gaza. But riposte of this headstrong man outgrew the shoes of revenge. His revenge was not in fighting back but in bringing peace; it was the end of these painful opportunities that he wanted and may be this is what makes him a human being, in true sense.
After the creation of Israeli state and the division of Palestine, his family was dispossessed and bereaved, and he had to spend his entire childhood in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. After giving a detailed account of his family life during that period of tumult and gremlins, his struggles in becoming a doctor are delineated in the book. The readers can envisage how difficult it was for the doctor to cross the border between Gaza and Israel to reach his place of work, Soroka Medical Centre in Israel. This perplexity reaches its pinnacle when his ill wife passes away without meeting her husband, for the cultural barriers at the border did not allow the ill-fated doctor to reach her dying wife. It is ironical that the doctor helps the Jewish woman delivering their babies, the babies that would grow up to kill them. But Abuelaish has a perspective beyond this, for him there is a hope of better future in every living thing; he surmised that the babies would grow up to be human beings and scholars or doctors. This is the way he carves his way out to peace and reconciliation.
The fate of this man became worse than death when in 2009 two Israeli tank shells banged into his home in Gaza and killed three of his daughters. What the doctor sees after the incident are the shattered pieces of his daughters and after calling an Israeli TV journalist, the disconsolate and helpless father cried relentlessly. No one knows what was going on in him; probably none could relate to the flood of emotions that the grief-stricken father was drowning in. But his coming out of it and fabricating the path to peace, composure and reconciliation not only justifies the title but initiates a new possibility for humanity.
The apology from Israeli state has not yet arrived his doorsteps but his temperament of fostering peace, love and endearment cannot shaken off . Making his daughters “the last sacrifice”, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish moves to Canada, away from this troublesome arena of dead humanity. The readers still hope that he would come just like Christ did to show the light of hope and congregate people to journey on the road to peace and human dignity.
