Iraqi mothers refuse free heart surgery from Israel

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3998990.ece

Hate Consumes Its Own: Iraqi mothers deny their sick children Israeli heart operations

In a more perfect world, people like George Galloway would be compelled to go to medical school and give free heart operations in order to undo 1/1000th the damage he's done the world.

Some Iraqi mothers are refusing free heart surgery in Israel for their deathly ill children:

The parents of Iraqi babies with congenital heart problems are facing a dilemma: should they allow their children to be treated in Israeli hospitals when they have been brought up to believe that Israel is their mortal enemy?

Hostility towards the Jewish state in Iraq is so strong that many parents refuse to travel to Tel Aviv for free life-saving hole-in-the-heart surgery.

Some accept the offer but never reveal where their children were treated, even though the operation has not been available in Iraq since its leading cardiac clinic burnt down after the American-led invasion in 2003.

Other parents are seeking treatment elsewhere in the Arab world, despite prices of up to £15,000 for heart surgery in private clinics. They fear the stigma of being treated in Israel.

Aria, an 18-month-old baby from Kirkuk in northern Iraq, was waiting to return home last week after a successful operation at the Edith Wolfson medical centre in Tel Aviv, where 11 Iraqi children are being treated. The surgery is sponsored by Save a Child's Heart (SACH), a humanitarian organisation founded in Israel in 1996 and supported by private sources, including Christian charity groups...
...Apprehension about a hostile reaction in Iraq is common among families who opted for treatment in Israel.

The mother of Mustafa, 4, from Kirkuk, who has undergone two heart operations in six months, said: "My only fear, which spoils my joy at my son's escape from death, is the revenge my family can expect when we go back to Iraq."

Simon Fisher, the Liverpool-born executive director of SACH, said: "We welcome every child in need regardless of origin."
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"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." -General George S. Patton

Psalm 82-8: Arise, O God, judge the earth, for You inherit all the nations.