title: A Doctor's Testimony: Medical Neutrality and the Visibility of Palestinian Grievances in Jewish-Israeli Publics.
abstract: This paper follows the testimony of Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician who bears witness to his experiences working, living, and suffering under Israeli rule. He presents his story as a doctor's story, drawing on his identity as a medical professional to gain credibility and visibility and to challenge the limited legitimacy of Palestinian grievances. In this paper, I explore his testimony as a medical voice that at once recounts the suffering and loss endured by the Palestinian people and also struggles to negotiate the values associated with being a "reliable" witness. Consequently, I ethnographically examine the social life and reception of his story in Jewish-Israeli publics. In comparison with most Palestinian narratives, Abuelaish's testimony achieved an extremely rare degree of visibility and sympathy, a phenomenon that calls out for analysis. I identify the boundaries that typically render Palestinian grievances invisible to Israeli publics and suggest how medicine's self-proclaimed ethos of neutrality served as a channel for crossing them. Finally, I reflect on the political possibilities and limitations of medical witnessing to render suffering visible and arouse compassion toward those construed as a dangerous/enemy Other.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 301 Alumni Building, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA. gshalev@unc.edu.
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Shalev
mesh_terms: D000068337:Armed Conflicts / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel / Q000208:ethnology; D010820:Physicians / Q000266:history
keywords: Israel/Palestine; Medical neutrality; Medical professionals; Publics; Witnessing