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Coalition for Peace with Justice
Letter to Scott Simon [to CPWJ Letters page] [ to CPWJ home page] Oct 9, 2002 Israeli-Palestinian organ transplants Have you missed the incomparable symbolism in the vital-organ exchanges between Palestinians and Israelis even during Intifada? I name the Palestinian principals first because it was Mazen Djulani's father who-- with Muslim clerical sanction--urged the use of his son's heart, kidneys, liver, and lungs to save the lives of four Jewish and one Palestinian transplant recipient in early June, 2001. Though convinced that Mazen's death came at the hand of Jewish settlers in a drive-by murder after a suicide bombing in Israel, Lutfi Djulani endorsed the donation, "if it saved the life of Christian, Jew, or Muslim." At the time, the father of Yigal Cohen, who received the 'Arab'heart, spoke of the nobility of the deed and hoped it would point a better way. In a sense the precedent has now been taken up by the case you so rightly highlighted, Scott, on Sept. 28. But just as it would have been a sign then of evenhandedness in the U.S. media, if the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR's "Morning Edition" had seen fit to publish that gift of life to young Cohen, as papers from Le Monde to Pravda did, your drawing a parallel now between last year's act of reconciliation and last month's would be deeply reassuring to the Gush Shalom folks in this country. Surely you don't hold with those who regard any "pro-Palestinian perspective" as automatically anti-Semitic. Sincerely, Edwin L. Brown |
