Posted on 03/02/2005 8:37:24 PM PST by anotherview
Mar. 2, 2005 21:29 | Updated Mar. 3, 2005 4:52
Hadassah nominated for Nobel prize
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Cited for its promotion of Jewish-Arab cooperation and human values despite the ongoing violence in the region it serves, the Hadassah Medical Organization has been nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The unnamed four nominators, who by Norwegian Nobel Committee rules can come only from the ranks of senior government officials or professors in their countries, are in the US, Canada, Australia and Israel.
The previous Israeli Nobel Peace Prize laureates were Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Menachem Begin.
The Nobel Peace Prize has since 1901 been awarded in December in Oslo. The 2004 prize was given to Wangari Maathai, an environmental activist in Kenya, for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.
Celebrating its 93rd birthday this month, the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America is the founder and benefactor of the Hadassah Medical Organization, which places great emphasis on clinical and scientific research with the aim of advancing and improving medical care.
Several reasons were given by the nominators for their choice: The two medical centers are run according to humanitarian Jewish values that require giving high level of health care to people of all ages, religions and ethnic origins. It has worked flawlessly, they said, to implement these values throughout the raging terrorist violence of the last four and a half years, while treating more intifada victims than any other medical centers in the country.
It is also an example of Jewish-Arab cooperation, as it has trained Palestinian pediatric oncology specialists from Augusta Victoria Hospital in east Jerusalem on behalf of the Peres Institute for Peace.
"I can't think of a nicer way to celebrate our founding," commented Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America president June Walker.
She said that one of the nominating petitions explained: "Awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to [the] Hadassah Medical Organization would be recognition of [its] work and an example to the world that hatred and suspicion can be overcome by people of goodwill."
The Peace Prize has, in accordance with Alfred Nobel's will, been awarded by a committee of five, appointed by the Storting (the Norwegian Parliament), but without the committee being formally responsible to the Storting.
The committee's composition reflects the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting, but the committee has elected its own chairman and deputy chairman.
Deciding who has done the most to promote peace during the year is a highly political matter, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
"The task requires an ability and a will to view conflicts in the world community as objectively as possible while keeping a strong commitment to certain common moral and political principles," it said.
On the evening of March 24, 700 Hadassah members from the US are coming to Jerusalem to mark the official opening of its new emergency medicine department in Ein Kerem.
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