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Shevet Achim Association Saves Tens of Children From Enemy States
Families
from Iraq, Kurdistan, and Gaza are staying in the house of the Shevet
Achim association on Prophets Street in Jerusalem and waiting
for heart surgeries that will save the lives of their children.
The founder Jonathan Miles heard the voice of Jesus call him to come to
the land twenty years ago, and since then he is busy saving souls.
Along the way he tries to bridge between the peoples of the region.
March 10, 2010
By Yuval Hyman
Maariv
On
the roof of the courtyard of what was once the Marienshtift Children’s
Hospital on Prophets Street the chirping of happy birds can be heard,
cut off from the noisy reality. Opposite the roof is a blue
wooden door. Behind it are six mothers and six children. When they open
the door the children trample from the bedroom to the living room,
curious to see who arrived. A glance into the bedroom reveals six steel
beds standing one after the other, arranged as if they were ready for a
parade in coordinated colors.
Six
mothers, six small children. Anyone would expect to see chaos there.
Mattresses turned over, beds not made, toys in every corner.
Instead, there is exemplary order, a shining floor and even the
Jerusalem stone walls are beaming. The atmosphere is like only Mother
can make. Warm and pampered. Giftwrapped. Really it was
pleasant, although a little strange.
The house of the Shevet Achim association.
“Working in obedience to the words of Jesus.” Photos: Simi Nachtieler
When
was the last time you saw five mothers from Kurdistan and another from
a village north of Baghdad, living with six children under one roof on
Prophets Street? At least according to history, there is no place
more suitable than this courtyard to house the dozen guests from the
land that once was ruled by Saddam Hussein.
Between
1872 and 1899 the German noble Dr. Max Sandretzki established in the
courtyard the first children’s hospital in the Middle East that
specialized in children’s medicine. 111 years after the splendid
initiative of the noble doctor, who treated all the children of the
region without discrimination of race or religion, the American
Jonathan Miles rented the historic building and established the
association Shevet Achim that helps children with heart problems from
the Mediterranean region, from no matter what country.
Miles,
a devout Christian, takes me for a short tour of impressions in
the courtyard. He tells of the bishop from the Syrian Church who
was the original occupant, afterward about the author Arthur Koestler
who arrived with nothing after Kibbutz Hephzibah refused to accept him
as a member, and then about the family of architects Ben Dor which
established there a fine office. He stops for a moment opposite a
small stone wall, the first prototype of artificial Jerusalem stone
from the days when there was a shortage of the original.
The
place almost hasn’t changed and in 2001 there returned to it, with
slight variation, its original purpose. Dr. Sandretzky had a
vision to serve all the children of the region, so also with
Miles. “I only know that we hope to continue in the spirit of Dr.
Sandretzki without distinction between religion and race,” says
Miles. “In the region there are children dying from lack of
treatment while there are wonderful hospitals here in the land and
heart surgeons sitting without work and very much wanting to help.”
Strong Yearnings
Redheaded
Barzan, eight years old, has a big heart. So big, that his life
was in danger. This sweet Kurdish child recently underwent
surgery to repair his enlarged heart at Schneider Hospital. He
sees us and switches on. He pulls his shirt down and shows us  the bandage that covers the fresh stitches. “Schneider, Schneider” he declares.
Two
more heart examinations remain. If everything will be OK, he and
his mother will return to [their city] on the Kurdistan-Iran border, to
the father, the big brothers, and the four-month-old baby that Mother
gave birth to very shortly before she landed at Ben Gurion.
The
lips of Deeman, a shy three-year-old, are hidden by a big
pacifier. It covers the fact that they are blue from lack of
oxygen, a result of a hole in the heart and a blocked artery. She
is the next one to meet with the surgeon’s knife.
Next
to her is Bakr, the only one who is not from the Kurdish region but
from [an Arab region of Iraq]. He and his mother are the veterans
in the group. Eight months they are staying under the roof of
Shevet Achim. He already underwent one surgery but then they
discovered that a valve was leaking and he is now waiting for a second
surgery.
It
is apparent that he is the veteran of the group. He communicates
easily, offers us a can of Pringles to buy our votes, honoring with
onion-flavored chips. When we leave, he will be the first to
raise his voice and shout “OK, OK.” The rest join him after a
moment. He will also run to the door after it is closed and shout
after us, “Ma Al Salama” [“Go with peace”].
Also
on the residential floor is Ahmed. There remains Parwa and
Bahzad, that just that day went for examinations. Bahzad, by the
way, arrived at the hospital almost two months ago as he was hovering
between life and death. Now his condition is excellent and he is
at the end of the process.
But
not all is so rosy in the historic building. The yearning for
family is great and the daily phone conversation ends in tears.
There were also extreme incidents when the family of the husband left
behind pressured him to marry a second wife since his wife and child
were absent for so long.
“The
average stay is 2-3 months, but some are staying up to a year,” says
Justina Al-Sidodi, manager of the house. “The children adapt more
quickly than the mothers. They have games, they play with each
other, and they are happy enough most of the time. For the
mothers the adjustment is more difficult.”
Communication
is the main problem between the team and the mothers. Almost all
of them arrive from Kurdistan and do not speak Arabic. One way to
overcome the lack of communication is by means of the large Kurdish
[Jewish] community in the city. The second way is the way of
Marcel Marceau [the famous mime].
“Sometimes
this is really funny because we are speaking with movements of the
hands, face and body and they answer us in the same way,” Al-Sidodi
continues, and tells how the children pass the time during the
day. “The children are playing on the roof, volunteers are coming
and making music with them. You could say they have here a
private kindergarten. We take them on trips in the city, and
especially to the sea since most of them have never seen the ocean.”
Life With Meaning
Miles,
age 48, began a career as a local television journalist in Albany, New
York. What did he care about Israel at all? He grew up in a
family that he describes as having deep faith, and strayed from the
path his parents showed him. “I was more interested in living  for myself than for God,” he testifies.
“I
did things that according to the Tanakh I should not have done.
At the age of 27 I turned back in repentance. In Hebrew this
doesn’t sound good since the connotation is orthodox and very
religious, and this wasn’t the case. Really I wanted that my life
would have some meaning.”
He
started to learn Tanakh [Torah, prophets, and writings] and New
Testament, taught religion in New York City, and then arrived for his
first visit in the Holy Land. Here he had a religious experience
that changed his life. “I can’t explain in a logical way how I
heard the voice, but I heard the voice of Jesus ask me if I would come
to the land,” he tells. “It was strong enough for me to reply
‘Yes.'
“I
called my wife, who was pregnant with our fourth child (the family has
six children). We didn’t have money, or work, or a place to live, but
we decided to come. I traveled to bring my family. Just
then the Gulf War broke out, Saddam Hussein threatened and from a
natural perspective this was pretty foolish to come to Israel without
any evident reason and without knowing how we would exist here, but I
believed in the words of Jesus.”
These
were the days of the early 90’s and the world saw the Soviet empire
break up into little pieces. Miles volunteered with the organization
Christian Friends of Israel that decided to help new immigrants from
the Soviet Union. “They arrived without anything,” he recalls,
“Only with a few suitcases and sat on the floors of empty apartments.
“The
idea was to receive the immigrants with a blessing and tell them a few
simple things: ‘We Christians owe much to the Jews. We
received from you our faith, the Tanakh and the Messiah, and we want to
return to you something in exchange, in faith that God brought you here
and that your future will be good.’
“This
was a wonderful time. The elderly Russian babushkas would start to weep
and tell how they always thought that all the world hated them, and
they didn’t know that they had any friends in the world. I
believe that this is how many Israelis today feel, but they do have
friends since there will always be people like me who love Israel
because of faith in the Tanakh.”
And Thanks to Ezer Weizman
Basically
Miles believes that the redemption of the world, in other words the
resurrection of Jesus, will take place only when all the people of
Israel will return to the Holy Land. I asked him if he is an
evangelist, like George Bush. He demurred a little. “I am a
follower of Jesus. I don’t belong to any group. But yes, we
do see things in the same way.”
From
here Miles continued to the story of what was the catalyst for the
start of his work helping children with health problems. “I
worked a few years with the Russian Jews, and one day a Russian mother
came to the office, not Jewish, and with her was her son Andrei, a
beautiful 13-year-old boy. She sat across from me and said to me,
‘My son is dying, we came to Israel in the last effort to save his
life.’
“She
told that the doctors at Hadassah said they could save him, but the
hospital wants 64 thousand dollars and they don’t have any money.
She asked if I was willing to help them. This wasn’t what we did,
because we took care of books, furniture, a little dental care, not
more than that. I tried to delay the matter, tried to escape, and
finally said to her that I had to check their story with Hadassah.
“I
traveled there and met with one of the doctors, secretly hoping in my
heart that the story wasn’t true, because this was a disaster.
The doctor told me that it was all true, it was possible to save him
from leukemia, but that he wouldn’t be admitted until the last dollar
was paid. I returned the next day to the woman and what kept me
from telling her ‘I’m sorry but the only thing I can do is pray for
your son before he goes to the next world’ was the story of the Good
Samaritan.
“I
told Andrei and his mother that I don’t really know how to help them,
but first of all we will pray, and secondly I will tell people about
the story and we’ll see what will happen. Within a month all
kinds of Christians, Messianic Jews, and secular Israelis that heard
about Andrei began to pressure Hadassah to lower the price.
Finally this reached the office of Ezer Weizman, who was then the
president, and Hadassah lowered the price. They became
essentially a partner, and Andrei was treated.
"This
was a very powerful moment, because instead of sending this boy away as
if he was worth less than others, he knew that he was as valuable as
any other child and his life was as valuable as the life of anyone
else. He died about one year after the treatment. There is
no regret about this because he died with the knowledge that he was
loved, and that everything possible was done for him.
“I
saw that there was an opportunity,” Miles continues. “In Israel
there are magnificent health services, the best in the world, that our
neighbors don’t have.” According to his words, a friend just then
returned from Gaza and began to persuade him to travel there to see
what was happening. This was just after the signing of the Oslo
accords.
“Until
then I didn’t have any connection with Palestinians,” says Miles, “I
didn’t think about them and they were not in my heart. My friend
returned from there and told how isolated the people were there and how
grateful they were to anyone who came to visit them. Finally I
succeeded to overcome my fears and went down there, and it was amazing.
“Eventually
I moved with my family to live in the Shabura refugee camp. Many
children died there, a few kilometers from the medical centers in
Israel. This was in 1996. Before the accords these children
were referred by the Civil Administration for treatment in Israel, and
after the accords this stopped, and none of the hospitals in Gaza could
do heart surgeries and many other treatments.”
With Passion for Kurdistan
Miles
left Christian Friends of Israel in 1994 and decided to focus on
helping children with heart problems. To make everything official
he established an association named Light to the Nations [Goyim].
A  strange choice in consideration of the fact that he himself is a goy. “I received light from the people of Israel and I am grateful,” he explains.
About
the same time the Save a Child's Heart association of the late
cardiologist Dr. Ami Cohen made the headlines, and Miles read about it
in the newspaper. He contacted Dr. Cohen and asked if he was
interested in treating Gaza children. “He said that he was very
happy to help, but he had no contacts there,” he tells.
“Two
projects joined together. Ami was a great partner. We began
to bring children and many lives were saved. Ami was a man of
faith. Neither of us had any money and he would always say to me,
‘Don’t worry about the money, just bring the children. Afterwards we’ll
sort it out,’ and somehow Ami always succeeded. This started in
about 1995.
“Five
years later we left Gaza and arrived in Jerusalem. Then I saw
this building, read about the history, and decided to rent it in
2001. I changed the name, because we had moved over to working
mostly with Arabs and Muslims, because they had the greatest needs and
were the closest to home, and also because while it is true that it is
enough to save a child’s life, there is also here a possibility to
bring together and reconcile people, and we see beautiful things in the
hospitals taking place between the team and the children and their
families.
“In
2003, after the war in Iraq, I changed the name because I don’t think
of the Arabs as goyim but rather as brothers, in the wider sense of the
word. We saw in the scriptures that Israel is a house of prayer
for all peoples. There are very beautiful verses in the
prophets. Israel is a blessing to all peoples. Certainly
for Arabs and Muslims, since they and the Jews have the same father and
history, two heavenly peoples that are cousins if not brothers, and
Shevet Achim seemed to me more suitable—that the two sides of the
family would come closer together.”
The
US Army took control of Iraq and Miles traveled there after he read
that the only hospital that performed heart surgery was burned and all
the equipment stolen. He understood that hundreds of children
were in danger.
“Not
at all,” he replies to the question of whether he was afraid.
“The terror had not yet started. We would take a taxi from Amman.
American soldiers were manning the border. At first I didn’t
think that we would be able to bring an Iraqi child to Israel, so we
sent children to the US and to Europe, but in November 2003 I arrived
at the hospital in Kirkuk and met with an American army doctor just as
a family entered with a two-day-old baby.
“The
doctor took out his equipment, found that her great arteries were
switched and said that she needs to get to an advanced medical center
within two weeks. I felt that I stood before a test, how to get a
two-day-old baby from Kirkuk and bring her to an advanced medical
center in less than two weeks? The only place I knew of that
would take her was the Wolfson Medical Center.
“Within
a week we organized many people to help. The Iraqi cardiologist
was born in Tikrit and he was a relative of Saddam Hussein. He
needed to carry out a procedure on her heart in order that she could
travel safely. He spoke by telephone with Dr. Akiva Tamir from
Wolfson and their conversation was full of respect, with the purpose of
saving the child.
“She
reached Tel Aviv and this was something very beautiful, but she died
after a month passed. Her parents came with her, returned to
their village in Iraq and told how the doctors took care of their
daughter and fought for her life. On the heels of this five more
children came to us. Since then and until today we are working
together with Save a Child’s Heart.
Without Stamps in the Passport
Shevet
Achim helps about 60 children each year. In the beginning
children came to them from all parts of Iraq. Lately a Kurdish
NGO became a partner that has as its patron Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, the
wife of Jalal Talibani who is a Kurd, the president of Iraq. This
is only one of the reasons why most of the children coming to the house
on Prophets Street are from Kurdistan.
“There
was a controversy after the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq
became upset that children were coming to Israel and they put pressure
on,” Miles explains as the second reason.
Scholars?
“Religion sometimes can be something very destructive. Not always.”
How long does it take to get permission?
“About
two weeks. The embassy in Amman works closely with us, also the
Foreign Ministry and also the Interior Ministry. Once they
understand what we are doing, they give permission easily.”
Have you had any opposition from anti-missionary groups in Israel?
“Someone
wrote on our sign ‘Beware—missionaries,’ I don’t know why.
Besides this, we don’t have problems with anyone. Listen, we are
very open. We are who we are. We are working from faith and
in obedience to the words of Jesus.”
Why aren’t you bringing children from other Muslim countries?
I
contacted doctors in Lebanon but met with a stone wall. There is
a lot of fear. I was many times in Egypt in order to see if it
was pssible to open a channel from there—but nothing. There is
much fear of the government there. The Egyptians know they will
have many problems from the government if they come to Israel.”
And Jordan?
There
were a few coming from Jordan, but the king makes many efforts to treat
his people. And they have a couple of good heart surgeons.”
How does the government in Iraq look at this?
The
family that came from [an Arab region in Iraq] simply got on an
airplane to Jordan. We do some of these things under the
radar. If she went to the Ministry of Health in Baghdad to
request permission it is reasonable to assume they would make for her
many problems. So from the start we are not asking permission and
getting on the plane.”
And what happens when they return and there is a stamp in the passport?
“No, they don’t stamp their passports. If you ask to keep a low profile, they won’t stamp your passport.”
Why did you coose to focus especially on children suffering from heart problems?
“In
the beginning we treated a range of children and discovered that it is
much harder to treat at a distance a case of cancer, that requires
proximity to a medical center for a long time and the percentage of
success is much lower. With us we’re generally speaking about one
surgery, recovery of a few weeks and the child returns home. This
is very effective, and there is success of more than 90 percent.
Heart surgery is the closest thing to miraculous healing that is
possible to find.”
Translated from original Hebrew article.
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