In 2005, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in Jenin by Israeli soldiers who said they thought his toy gun was real. But his heart still beats, because his family decided to allow his organs to be donated to six ailing children in Israel.

Palestinian Ismael Khatib with Samah Gadban, a Druze girl in Israel who received a heart from Khatib’s son after he was killed by Israeli soldiers in 2005.

The PBS documentary TV series “Wide Angle” featured the story in its latest broadcast, following Ismael Khatib, two years after his son Ahmed’s death, through Israel to visit three of the organ recipients.
Khatib spent time in Israeli jails in the 1980s as a militant who fought against occupation.

But now he runs the Ahmed Khatib Center for Peace, a small youth center in the Jenin refugee camp.

In the moments after receiving the devastating news from doctors in an Israeli hospital that his son could not be saved, Khatib gave permission for Ahmed’s kidney’s, liver, lungs and heart to be used to save other children.

“Children have nothing to do with the conflicts between us and the Israelis,” Khatib said.

Watch a clip from “Heart of Jenin” below.

Watch the full version at www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/heart-of-jenin/video-full-episode/5120.

Mohamed Kabua, a Bedouin boy from the Negev Desert who received Ahmed’s second kidney.

The film follows Khatib as he traveled to the village of Pkiin in northern Israel to visit the family of Samah Gadban, a Druze girl who received Ahmed’s heart at age 12, and to the Negev Desert, where he visited the Bedouin family of six-year-old Mohamed Kabua, who received one of the boy’s kidneys.
An emotional outpouirng of gratitude filled the first two visits, and a tension-racked, intense meeting over bitter coffee characterized the third.

Khatib and the film crew went to Jerusalem to visit the Orthodox Jewish family of Menuha Levinson, a toddler who received Ahmed’s second kidney. The family initially was reluctant to meet the donor’s Arab father, but later obliged.

Menuha Levinson, the daughter of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, who received one of Ahmed Khatib’s kidneys.

“The families of these children owe Ismael Khatib thanks because he gave them the gift of life. We are indebted to Ismael Khatib because he gave us hope,” said the film’s director Leon Geller.
His co-directer Marcus Vetter, after completing the film, helped launch an effort to restore and reopen Cinema Jenin, a movie theater that had been closed since 1987, to enhance a filmmaking course at Khatib’s youth center.

Visit www.cinemajenin.com for more information.