[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 91 (Thursday, July 14, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             WARDS OF HOPE

                                 ______


                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 14, 1994

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, as many of our colleagues are 
well aware, Hadassah is an organization of Jewish women in America and 
around the world which has achieved a tremendous amount in terms of its 
humanitarian service to mankind. Through Hadassah Hospital in 
Jerusalem, as well as its medical outreach programs in Africa, Hadassah 
has been at the forefront of medicine, and has thus advanced the well-
being of Israelis, Arabs, Africans, and others.
  The wonderful, dynamic president of Hadassah, Mrs. Deborah Kaplan, 
recently visited the Hadassah Hospital in Israel, and wrote this 
inspiring article concerning Hadassah's role and the current situation 
in the Middle East. I commend this fine article from the April issue of 
Hadassah magazine to my colleagues.

                             Wards of Hope

                         (By Deborah B. Kaplan)

       Hope is easier to find on a child's face than on an 
     adult's, and on the index of optimism nothing beats a smiling 
     child in a hospital. That's why I arranged to be at Hadassah 
     Hospital on Purim. More than other holiday, Purim comes to 
     our medical center like a liberating force, bringing joy, 
     even if it is temporary, to all who are touched by it.
       In the midst of the holiday atmosphere, staff and 
     volunteers--including members of Hadassah-Israel and their 
     families--distributed mishloah manot to the children. At any 
     given time about one-third of the patients at our Ein Karem 
     hospital are Palestinians, and the goody bags filled with 
     fruit, candy and toys were given to every child, not just the 
     Jewish ones.
       Normally I wouldn't even think to comment on the equal 
     treatment given to Arabs and Jews at our hospitals, but Purim 
     this year turned out to be anything but normal. Eleven of the 
     wounded from the Hebron massacre had been brought to our door 
     that morning. Four of them required surgery and all eleven 
     survived. In the emergency room I stood between one of the 
     injured worshipers and an Israeli soldier who had been 
     wounded in the rioting that followed the Hebron attack.
       As soon as we received word of the massacre, Dr. Avi 
     Israeli, Hadassah's deputy director of medical affairs, 
     called the directors of Palestinian hospitals in the Hebron 
     vicinity, offering any help necessary--either receiving 
     patients or sending equipment or supplies. The offer was 
     refused. No one is quite certain how some of the victims were 
     sent to Hadassah, given the Palestinians' deliberate 
     avoidance of Jewish help. I suspect they were sent before 
     consideration was given to political concerns. Sending 
     patients to Hadassah Hospital is an instinctive act for Arab 
     and Jew, and in an emergency instinct usually comes before 
     politics.
       When Baruch Goldstein fired into the crowd at the Tomb of 
     the Patriarchs he not only murdered innocent men at prayer, 
     he also assaulted our ethical foundation. As I visited his 
     victims I was torn between many emotions--concern for the men 
     before me, grief for the families of the dead, sadness that 
     the murder had been committed by a Jew and irritation that 
     Jews are made to feel responsible, by ourselves and by 
     others, for the act of one madman in our midst.
       I also feared that the killer may have accomplished what he 
     set out to do--put the peace process into a tailspin from 
     which it cannot recover. He tried to murder hope.
       But outraged as I am by the action of a Jewish terrorist, 
     something else gnaws at me. The finely tuned Jewish sense of 
     justice tells us when to condemn our own, where to draw the 
     line between self-defense and murder. Goldstein stepped way 
     over the line, and never have I heard a more forceful 
     condemnation of a crime than Prime Minister Rabin's 
     denunciation of what happened at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
       Perhaps my deepest concern is not that the peace talks will 
     fail, but that we will never be able to communicate fully 
     with neighbors who do not have a similar sense of justice.
       I have just finished a letter of condolence to Fay 
     Eisenstadt, a Hadassah member from America who has lived in 
     Israel for many years. Shortly after the Hebron attack her 
     husband, Morris, was at a bus stop near their home in Kfar 
     Saba when Palestinian terrorists bent on revenge hacked him 
     to death.
       A few days later I was with a delegation from the 
     Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish 
     Organizations that met with Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem 
     and I asked an Arab spokesman if he or his representatives 
     ever expressed outrage or condolences to the family when a 
     Palestinian killed a Jew.
       I am still waiting for an answer. But in my heart I know 
     that if the Arab world went through the same kind of 
     introspection that Jews practiced after one of their own 
     committed a racist murder, it is terrorism, not the peace 
     negotiations, that would come to a halt.
       We have just commemorated our liberation from Egyptian 
     slavery, and everything I saw last month in Israel--from the 
     country's resilient daily existence to its ability to deal 
     with its problems like a mature nation--reminded me of the 
     benefits of freedom. Sovereign, democratic nations are not 
     free of crime or hate, but they offer their citizens the 
     capacity to use the best that is in them to combat the worst. 
     Our own history mixes well with our freedom. Israel has made 
     it clear that it doesn't want to rule over others any more 
     than it wants to be enslaved.
       But as I look at what the Palestinians regard as their own 
     struggle for liberation, I strain to see resemblances to 
     ours. In one breath the Palestinian leadership demands 
     release from Israeli occupation and in the next they delay 
     Israel's already promised withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho. 
     Logic would dictate that the murder of their people would 
     make Palestinians more anxious than ever to make the 
     negotiations work, but for the moment it seems that logic, 
     too, was a victim in Hebron.
       Meanwhile, Israel continues to build for the future. A few 
     yards from where I visited Purim celebrants and terrorist 
     victims a new Children's Pavilion is rising at Hadassah, to 
     be dedicated at our Jerusalem convention in July 1995. It 
     will be a child-friendly center and another home for hope.
       I can't be certain of the political future, but I know that 
     when the pavilion is completed good care and goody bags will 
     still be given to all.

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