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Life God gave this land!? 

2021.05.11 08:38

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Did God give This Land?

 

Yesterday was exceptionally busy all day at the office till 5:00 PM though two of originally scheduled patients- both are from out of state- failed to make and deferred till next Monday.

Since I announced I would stop my clinical service along the end of June before I hit age 83 like my mentor Leonel Villavicencio did, so many of old(?) patients- some were the infants when I saw first but now grown-up adults! - wanted to receive my final(?) opinion/verdict on their mostly vascular malformation-related problem, I gave care for decades. But due to the limited time I have to allow only the patients who really need my recommendation for the future prospects of their condition although they all will be taken over by my protégés scattered throughout the world to give proper care.   

 

That is NOT the point I wish to bring up this time but one old retired professor of nuclear physics who originally immigrated(?) from Russia- someone who knows him told me he was actually smuggled out by the CIA during the cold war era to help one critical government project.

He was not originally scheduled among the patients my staff assigned yesterday clinic but he called up the office manager - GWU (George Washington Univ) group holds a few satellite offices in the Washington suburb in addition to the main office at the downtown main hospital to help the patients!-, begging to come to see me to the clinic after the regular schedule before I leave.

 

He is now 93 years old but robust healthy, racially Jewish, and drives all the way from a remote corner of the Maryland suburb to my Reston satellite office, crossing Potomac River, through congested beltway, mostly alone but occasionally with his elderly daughter. Yes, he came alone this time and sat in the waiting room for more than an hour till I finish the work so that I invited him to my private office room instead of the patient exam room since he would not need a physical exam this time.

 

I was extremely tired after intense work all day but it was a sheer pleasure to sit around with him to chat ‘how the world treats him’ for more than 30 minutes including his recent visit to Jerusalem as the last(?) tribute to his ancestral land. I was so surprised to listen to his such critical rather negative view on the traditional claim on ‘occupied West bank’ as a Jewish homeland, which was almost identical to the view of my mentor, another Jewish Russian, who gave me a special privilege to inherit his world-pioneering works on the lymphatic reconstruction, shared with me years ago as a total surprise.  

 

Nevertheless, I don’t know how many of you watch ALJAZEERA or France 24, but my blood boiled up to watching the scene to show one old Palestinian woman weeping helplessly, sitting alone next to her demolished house/shack - her house was demolished only because her house is simply too close to new Jewish settlement area which belongs to Palestinians. A settler spat out ‘this is our land, our God gave!!!’ unabashedly in an interview. Rather proudly shouted! No hesitation!

 

I don’t know but how you all would react if anyone should come to your doorway asking you to “get out because their God gave this land/house”? This is NOT my inquiry but the question I got from my mentor, Prof. Victor Krylov back in 2005 while he was visiting me to the U.S. to Reston, Virginia soon after I got back home from Korea, who escaped out to Tel Aviv right after the collapse of Soviet Union and stayed briefly in Israel till we rescued him out to the U.S.  He was eventually persuaded to come back home to Moscow by his pupils even though he was fully resettled at Urbana Champaign.

 

Over the breakfast table, while visiting us to our house at Reston, Virginia, Prof. Krylov suddenly threw such blunt question as a total surprise, “how would you react if anyone should come to your doorway asking you to get out because their God gave this land/house?”; I was totally off-guarded to respond on this sensitive Zionism issue especially on this resettlement at the occupied land. But he was so critical, more than Arab colleagues of mine, to surprise me. Indeed I never expected such harsh criticism from Jewish people ever.

 

Indeed, Prof. Krylov is racially Jew and his wife is pure Russian/Slav, born in Russia but worked as the 'head' of Institute of Advanced Medicine and Technology at Moscow which is exceptional in Russia as I know of so that we never imagined he was a Jew till he got out from Russia to Tel Aviv and eager to move to the States so that we knew he doesn’t want to settle in Israel.

 

Anyhow, he was apparently invited by a young department chairman while in Tel Aviv, who happened to be the son of his close friend to his new house one day, which happened to be located in such a controversial new Jewish settlement area. Prof. Krylov did not know till he got there. Victor was surprised when he was told “this is our land, our God gave!!!”.

 

Would you quietly accept such demand to give away your house if someone comes demanding to empty because “this is our land, our God gave!!!”?

How you’d like it?

 

BB Lee

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