Hamas killed 6 of them on Oct. 7. Why these Israelis still drive Palestinians to hospitals

It is still dark at 5 a.m. on a December morning, when Israeli volunteer Joanna Chen drives into the parking lot at the Tarkumiya military checkpoint south of Jerusalem that separates Israel from the Palestinian Authority.

“It’s eerily empty these days,” says Chen, noting that, other than another volunteer pulling up in a car and a few soldiers, there is no one in sight. “Before October 7, this place was always thick with people, a crowded scene of Palestinians from the West Bank on their way to work inside Israel.”

Chen is a volunteer driver in a joint Israeli-Palestinian program that enables Palestinian patients to receive medical care at Israeli hospitals. The Road for Recovery program, formed in 2010, with origins in a donation from Leonard Cohen, has continued uninterruptedly for patients from the West Bank since October 7, 2023, despite the Gaza war.

The ranks of the volunteers were thinned, due to the Hamas onslaught. Six volunteers — Vivian Silver, Eli Orgad, Adi Dagan, Tami Suchman, Hayim Katsman, and Chaim Peri — were murdered in the Hamas invasion, which saw some 1,200 people in southern Israel slaughtered and 251 kidnapped to the Gaza Strip. Two others, Oded and Yochved Lifshitz were among the kidnapped. Several months later Yocheved was released; 84-year-old Oded remains in captivity.

On that December morning, a woman clutching a child car seat and a small suitcase with one hand, while holding onto a young girl with the other, soon passes through the Tarkumiyah gate.

Chen helps Dua Abu Shekha fasten the child seat to her car before beginning the hour-long trip to the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv. The sun rises slowly as Abu Shekha explains that she has been taking 5-year-old Rokia from her hometown of Dura in the West Bank for treatments on a regular basis for four years.

“When my daughter had scans that showed she had a tumor on her brain stem, the doctors at the Hebron Governmental Hospital told us she needs to get therapy in Israel,” says Abu Shekha.

“She was only one year old. It was very difficult at first, when she received chemotherapy. We spent a lot of time in the hospital, one time we stayed for two months. But now it is easier and her case is stable.”

Abu Shekha is an English teacher, but looking after 5-year-old Rokia as well as a young son has made it impossible for her to work. Their financial situation has worsened as her husband, who worked in Israel’s construction industry, has been unemployed since the stoppage of entry permits for Palestinian workers after the October 7 onslaught and the start of the Gaza war.

The Palestinian Authority pays for the hospital expenses, but it does not cover the transportation costs.

“It costs me 100 shekels [$27] for a taxi from my home to Tarkumiya and then 400 shekels [$109] to Sheba. That’s 1,000 shekels [$273] for the whole trip, which sometimes we need to make several times a month,” she explains.

According to the US Department of State, the average daily salary in the West Bank is NIS 137 ($37.50), while unemployment reached 29 percent in the last quarter of 2023, following the October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

When Abu Shekha is asked what it is like for her and her daughter to stay overnight at the hospital, she points out that she has met many Israeli mothers over the years, who like herself come back to the Sheba hospital repeatedly for treatments.

“We stay in the same room together and we have relationships,” she says.

When Chen expresses concern about all of her difficulties, Abu Shekha pauses and then responds thoughtfully.

“Sometimes, we see other patients and we realize that our case is better,” she says, pointing out that Rokia attends a regular kindergarten and that she and her husband are raising her as normally as they can, almost as if Rokia did not have her medical condition.

“It’s a journey, a journey of life that we have to live with and look at from all sides,” she adds.

Abu Shekha’s last comment makes Chen, a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poems, smile with admiration.

“That’s a really nice way of putting it,” she says.

Canceled by culture

By the time the two women reach the hospital, Chen has shared some of the medical challenges her own family has faced and there is a warm, familiar atmosphere in the car.

British-born Chen was a teenager when she immigrated from Yorkshire to Israel with her family. A former journalist with Newsweek magazine, she now works as a literary translator, having translated the works of such writers as poet Agi Mishol and novelist Tahila Hakimi.

She also contributes poetry and essays to literary magazines. Several months after the Gaza war began, she wrote a personal piece for Guernica magazine that unexpectedly caused an international furor. In “From the Edges of a Broken World,” she sensitively describes how the outbreak of the war left her in a state of shock. For several weeks, she felt unable to do any translating or volunteer work.

Writing about her relationships with both Israelis and Palestinians, she stated: “My own heart was in turmoil. It is not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides.”

Even though Guernica’s editor approved her article, when the rest of the staff saw it they resigned in protest. She was accused of being “a white colonialist woman raising murderous children.” The publisher retracted the article and apologized for printing it.

But the irony of a small magazine that takes its name from Picasso’s famous anti-war painting rejecting an article lamenting war was not lost on larger publications.

The Los Angeles Times commented: “After a writer expressed sympathy for Israelis in an essay, all hell broke loose at a literary journal.” The Nation railed against “cringe-worthy hypocrisy” and observed that “a piece by an Israeli peace activist reveals a part of the left that cannot countenance historical nuance.”

After the Washington Monthly published the rejected essay, Chen was overwhelmed with responses from all over the world.

“I started getting an average of a few hundred emails a day,” says Chen. “But I realized quite quickly that it wasn’t about me or about the quality of my writing, it was about something much bigger.”

The much bigger thing that Chen cites is the hostility towards Israel shown by many in the literary world since the outbreak of the Gaza war.

This includes Irish author Sally Rooney, leading more than 1,000 writers and publishing professionals to pledge to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, as well as dozens of Canadian authors who withdrew their books for consideration for the national Giller literary award because of the sponsor’s ties to Israeli businesses.

Chen remains undaunted. Several weeks after the war began, she returned to her weekly volunteer driving and continued to write personal essays. In a recent article for Lilith magazine called “I’m Not Going to Shut Up,” she denounces the rising spread of antisemitism.

On the road to peace?

Chen is one of about 1,300 Israeli volunteers who have worked with Road for Recovery in recent years.

“Prior to the Gaza war, we were transporting as many as 1,000 patients a week,” says Yael Noy, the program director. “But 35% of those patients were from Gaza, and since October 7, we have been unable to continue with the Gaza program.”

Noy points out that even on October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas invasion, volunteers continued to transport Palestinians from the West Bank to Israeli hospitals.

“But because the Israeli hospitals were so overloaded with treating so many people wounded in the attack, we had to reduce the number of patients taken to the hospitals,” recalls Noy.

Road to Recovery was founded by Yuval Roth, whose brother Udi was murdered by Hamas terrorists in 1993.

“Yuval was a member of an organization of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians and when one of the friends he made there asked him for assistance in driving a Palestinian patient to Rambam Hospital [in Haifa], Yuval realized that there was an unmet need,” says Noy, explaining the high cost of transportation that the Palestinians must bear.

Noy points out that Roth organized volunteer drivers informally on his own for several years.

“Then when Leonard Cohen read an article about what Yuval was doing, he decided to make a donation,” says Noy. The funds provided by the late legendary Canadian poet and singer enabled Roth to found an NGO and expand activities.

Noy remains optimistic about the future of the volunteering program.

“In the past year, despite all our difficulties, more than 100 new volunteers have joined up with us and remain committed.”

Many veteran volunteers also remain committed.

“There is so much in the world today that I’m not sure of, but this is one thing that I am sure is the right thing to do,” says Chen. “ I think that anybody who has had a sick child will get this.”