Ismail Khatib

Ismail Khatib (also Ismael Khatib ; born December 27, 1965 in Jenin ) is a Palestinian educator . The former resistance fighter for a free Palestine gained international fame in 2008 after he released the organs of his late eleven-year-old son Ahmed to various children of different religions for organ donation .

Life

Ismail Khatib was born as the son of Palestinian refugees from Haifa in a refugee camp in Jenin . After training as a car mechanic, he joined the resistance against the Israeli occupation. Khatib took part in the 1st Intifada , but withdrew from the general violence after allegations by the father.

background

Ismail Khatib lived with his wife Abla and their five children in 2005 in a refugee camp in Jenin . At that time, Ismail Khatib was earning his living through various jobs, initially as a clothing seller, later variously as a car mechanic. All these efforts failed, however, which Khatib attributed to the state of occupation of his hometown Jenin by Israel .

In 2005, his son Ahmed Khatib was critically injured by an Israeli soldier during an Israeli military operation when a firearm was used. He was mistakenly mistaken for a Palestinian assailant because he was carrying a toy gun. Although the boy was immediately taken to a hospital in Haifa , the doctors could no longer save his life. When a local nurse asked whether the Khatib family would be willing to donate their child's organs, they decided to give their son's lungs, kidneys, liver and later also the heart of their son for transplantation . The donor organs could then be passed on to six children and transplanted. The recipients of the organs were all children of Israeli nationality. Khatib's guiding principle was that children do not have a religious or national identity, but that such things do not matter to children because they are innocent.

This human gesture attracted a lot of international attention, whereupon the German documentary filmmaker Marcus Vetter and the Israeli filmmaker Leon Geller decided in 2007 to make a documentary about what happened at the time. The resulting film Das Herz von Jenin was published in 2008 and also attracted a large and broad media response internationally and was then awarded several prizes (including the German Film Prize 2010 - Best Documentary).

On September 22, 2010, Ismail Khatib and his wife Abla received the Hessian Peace Prize, endowed with 25,000 euros, in Wiesbaden for his son's organ donation to Israeli children and the associated gesture for peace in the Middle East conflict across the borders of the various religions. The Khatib family received the award from the hands of the Hessian Prime Minister Volker Bouffier and the Hessian State Parliament President Norbert Kartmann . The laudation in honor of the Khatib family was given by the former Israeli ambassador to Germany Avi Primor . The awarding of the prize to the Khatib family was a novelty, as in the past it was only awarded to people who were already publicly known (including the Nobel Peace Prize winners Martti Ahtisaari , John Hume , His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama ).

Ismail Khatib now heads the “Cuneo Center for Peace” in Jenin and is co-operator of Cinema Jenin, which reopened in 2010 .

Honors

• 2010: Hessian Peace Prize from the Albert Osswald Foundation

Web links

• Daniel Sander: Do-gooder against his will. Documentary “The Heart of Jenin”. In: Spiegel Online . May 7, 2009, accessed January 21, 2011 . 
• Award of the Hessian Peace Prize 2010 to Ismail Khatib (PRIF)
• A Unique Gesture of Reconciliation (PRIF)