Arab Catholic Randa Aweis, 58, recovers from a kidney transplant with her daughter Niveen, 26, in Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, May 21, 2021. Aweis received a donor kidney from an Israeli Jew, Yigal Yehoshua, 56, who died after being hit with stones during riots in Lod, Israel.
For nine years, Randa Aweis battled kidney disease, urgently in need of a transplant.
In mid-May, a donor was found for the 58-year-old mother of six, a Catholic Palestinian who lives in Jerusalem.
The circumstances were unusually painful because the donor — Yigal Yehoshua — a 56-year-old Jewish Israeli man from the mixed city of Lod who worked for tolerance and co-existence, was stoned to death by an Arab mob during violence by both Jews and Arabs in the city in mid-May. Arab and Jewish gangs rioted in mixed cities throughout Israel following the May 10 outbreak of violence between Israel Hamas May 10.
“Yigal will go straight to heaven, to a better place, and he will always be with me,” Aweis said from her hospital bed at Hadassah Medical Center, where the transplant was performed by Dr. Abed Khalaileh, director of Hadassah’s Kidney Transplan-tation Service, who is Muslim. “Here we must all, Christians, Muslims and Jews, strive for peace. I don’t distinguish bet-ween Christian, Muslim or Jew — we are all human beings.”