Israeli Kidney Donor Risked Divorce And Disgrace To Save A Gaza Boy’s Life

An Israeli woman who had three relatives murdered by Palestinian terrorists has donated her kidney to an ill boy from Gaza.

Her donation offer occurred during a period of high tension between Israel and Gaza.

Israel was in active conflict with the Gaza Strip from May 6-21, when a ceasefire was declared. In mid-June, Israeli airstrikes targeted militant sites in Gaza, and Palestinians responded by sending fire-filled balloons across the border.

Idit Harel Segal, a mother of three, decided to donate one of her kidneys “to do a good deed.” She said she was inspired by her Holocaust-survivor grandfather, who taught her “to live a meaningful life.”

Segal, who lives in the northern village of Eshhar, said she faced stiff opposition from her “staunchly rightist” family, with her own father even telling her husband, Yuval, that he should file for divorce. The family members were upset that she might be risking her life; they did not know who the potential recipient would be at the time, according to local media reports.

Segal said the only relatives who supported her resolution were her three children, ages 23, 15 and 10.

When Segal first made her decision, she was unaware the recipient would be a 3-year-old Gazan boy.

The boy had a congenital kidney disease and had required dialysis his whole life. None of his relatives were found to be suitable donors for him.

In a touching act of reciprocity, the boy’s 31-year-old father, a taxi driver, agreed to donate one of his kidneys to an Israeli woman, so his son would be next in line for treatment. He made the decision despite his family home having been destroyed, apparently in an Israeli airstrike, during the May hostilities.

After learning of her kidney’s recipient, Segal was still determined to go through with the procedure, even though her paternal grandparents had been killed by Palestinian terrorists in an attack in Jerusalem in 1948.

Her father’s adoptive uncle lost his life in a subsequent terrorist attack in Jerusalem in 2002, during the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising).

Segal and the boy went through with the procedure last month at the Rabin Medical Centre‘s Bellinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel.

It was only when she arrived at the hospital that she met the young recipient and his parents, according to local media. When she learned their home had been destroyed in the fighting, media reports said, she gave them all the money she had with her. Another person she met in the hospital also helped raise money for the family.

(Edited by Judith Isacoff and Fern Siegel)