Hear the Story of “Galilee Medical Center: a Model for Coexistence”
After more than one year and nine months of Israel’s struggle for survival against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and its other proxies, here is a good news story you won’t want to miss.
On Wednesday, September 17th at 7:30 PM our community will have a unique opportunity to hear the inspiring story of “Galilee Medical Center: a Model for Coexistence.”
The event is co-sponsored by Partnership2Gether for Western Galilee, Sunnyside Presbyterian Church, The Simon Foundation of Temple Beth-El, and the Federation’s local Partnership2Gether committee. It will take place at the Jewish Federation.
The keynote speaker for the event will be Dr. Khaled Atalla, Director of Emergency Medicine at Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Israel.
Since the hospital is located just a few miles from Israel’s border with Lebanon, Galilee Medical Center has faced many challenges. After Hezbollah began its attacks on October 8th, 2023, the entire hospital moved into its underground facility and faced the extreme challenges of coping with routine visits to the ER and battlefield wounds of both civilians and IDF soldiers.
Yet the story behind that story is that this hospital, and its patients and staff, serve as a model for coexistence and provide great hope for the future.
Galilee Medical Center serves an incredibly diverse region of Israel called Western Galilee that includes Christian-Arabs, Muslim-Arabs, Druze, and Jews. All are Israeli citizens. The patients and staff of the hospital reflect this fascinating ethnic diversity.
The story of Galilee Medical Center that Dr. Atalla will share provides a microcosm of what peace could look like one day in the Middle East, a region where bitter ethnic and religious rivalries have become the norm.
Our Jewish Federation is connected to Western Galilee through Partnership2Gether, a co-sponsor of this event along with the Jewish Federation.
Dr. Khaled Atalla, an Arab citizen of Israel, was born in 1985 to a Christian family in Kfar Yassif village. In 2003, he started medical school at The Technion in Haifa where he met Jasmin, a Muslim-Arab, and they married after they both graduated from medical school.
In August 2016, Dr. Atalla and his family moved to Nes-Ammim, a special village founded in 1964 by European Christians as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people after the Holocaust. Among its aims and activities, Nes-Ammim strives to contribute to peace-making by organizing seminars of encounter and dialogue between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
After Dr. Atalla graduated medical school in 2011, he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa in 2016. Dr. Atalla also worked as a Clinical Instructor at the Technion and served as a Clinical Tutor for clinical rotations of medical students. He was recognized for Excellence in Medical Training two times with awards.
During his Internal Medicine residency, he became interested in Emergency Medicine, and he subsequently performed a residency in the field at Galilee Medical Center from 2016 to 2019.
Following his Emergency Medicine residency, Dr. Atalla completed a year of Emergency Medicine Fellowship training and an additional six months of extra fellowship training focused on Emergency Medicine Leadership at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
In April 2022, Dr. Atalla returned to Galilee Medical Center, as a senior physician and began serving as director of the hospital’s Emergency Department.
Our thanks and appreciation to our co-sponsors including Sunnyside Presbyterian Church, The Simon Foundation of Temple Beth-El, and the Federation’s Partnership2Gether committee for hosting this event.
This event is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP at TheJewishFed.org/GMC so that we will know how to organize seating.