International Rescuers Award Ceremony, 2021

On Thursday, March 4, 2021, as every year, the annual event of awarding a certificate of appreciation to contemporary rescuers was held at the Garden of Rescuers, near Beth Doumia–Bayt as-Sakinah (the House of Silence).

This year, the award was given to two organizations engaged in medical work, with consideration for the international struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance we see in this struggle, both at the internal level of each country and state, and at the level of cooperation between peoples and states. The two organizations were:

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR);
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF / Doctors Without Borders)

The event was set to take place in the newly renovated Garden of Rescuers, which has been redesigned with the generous funding of Gariwo (acronym for the Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide organization). Unfortunately, inclement weather obliged us to hold the ceremony under the roof of the adjacent courtyard of the Pluralistic Spiritual Centre building.

Representatives from both organizations were in attendance at the ceremony. Attending on behalf of PHR was PHR president Prof. Rafi Walden. Attending from MSF were Head of Mission M. Ely Sok and Gaza coordinator Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughiaseeb.

The ceremony was extremely moving. Before presenting the awards, Prof. Yair Oron talked about the Garden of Rescuers initiative; its motivation, history and its importance, especially in these days.

Prof. Rafi Walden informed us about PHR’s struggle to obtain vaccinations for everyone who have been left behind in Israel’s vaccination drive, including Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Gaza, prisoners and asylum seekers. He spoke of the continuing presence of the organization’s mobile clinics in the Occupied Territories. He mentioned PHR’s delegations of doctors to Gaza and of its activities in hospitals, military checkpoints, prisons, factories and public gardens, on behalf of various vulnerable communities, where it treats undocumented people, Palestinians, immigrants, refugees and ordinary citizens. Thanks to PHR, all receive treatment and response whenever possible. This is PHR’s sacred mission.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughiaseeb, spoke about MSF’s activities in more than 70 countries around the world, providing medical assistance regardless of race, religion, gender or political affiliation. He discussed MSF’s activities in the Occupied Territories, with a multidisciplinary team consisting of Palestinian and international psychologists, social workers, medical professionals and psychiatrists, to care for the mental and physical health of people suffering the effects of violence or lacking essential medical services. MSF’s activity in the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron includes individual and group sessions as well as psychotherapy sessions to treat the symptoms of severe distress. Activities in Gaza include post-surgery support, mental health support, support for burns and trauma patients and support for the burns unit at Al-Shifa Hospital, with a surgical team to perform burns surgery. All this in a region that is under a tight closure at all its borders, and suffering, in addition to the occupation regime, from the lack of freedom of movement or basic human rights.

A musical interlude was provided by fifth-grade students of Wahat al-Salam–Neve Shalom primary school, orchestrated by their dedicated teacher Haim. They sang two songs, in Arabic and Hebrew.

Video of the ceremony (partly in Hebrew, Arabic, English)

Photos of the Event