Soccer Dad

A Doctor Pays

It's hard to imagine how Dr. Shmuel Yurfest feels. He is a skilled surgeon who has treated many Arab patients including one member of Islamic Jihad who blew his hand off while playing with explosives.

In May, 2003, though his world changed as he describes:

"As I was doing that, a girl wearing a simple dress passed me. I remember the back of her neck. It was covered with sweat...I never saw her face," Yurfest recalled.

"I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to her while another security guard scanned her with a metal detector. Suddenly the metal-detector started beeping and beeping.

"At the same time I was told I could go. I put my keys in my pocket. I heard more and more beeps from the metal detector scanning the girl. Then just as I was about to walk off there was an enormous explosion," Yurfest said.

Now Dr. Yurfest is nearly blind and deaf due to the injuries he endured at the hand of that murderou young woman. He notes ruefully a comment he once made:

Yurfest has had six months to replay the incident in his mind and the year that preceded it in which he saved the life of a suicide bomber wounded when his explosives detonated prematurely and reattached the hand of a bomb-maker who only hours earlier had helped kill 13 Israeli soldiers.

"I remember commenting to one of the nurses during the surgery (on the bomb-maker), 'Tell the terrorists, when they make a bomb for me to make sure it's a small one because I have saved the lives of many of them'," Yurfest said.

"But I never for a moment thought it would come true."

Dr. Yurfest isn't the only Israeli doctor to be affected by the vicious Palestinian violence. This past summer Dr. David Appelbaum was killed along with his daughter in Jerusalem. In 2001 Drs. Yevgenya Malchin (though she apparently was no longer practicing), Mario Golden and Shmuel Gillis were all killed in terror attacks. Dr. Gillis was well known for the wonderful treatment he gave his patients - Arab or Jew. But this is what the Arabs wish to destroy; a society that produces such righteous people.

Dr. Yurfest did what he had to do because his profession demands it. And if he ever recovers enough to perform surgery again, I suspect that he would operate even the most noxious of terrorists again. Despite the tragedy the occurred to him, Dr. Yurfest possesses tremendous nobility. Even the terrorists couldn't take that away from him.
Crossposted on Bsurot Tovot and SoccerDad.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 26, 2003 9:30 AM