Begin to heal political conflicts by healing people’s bodies, said a prominent Israeli physician who spoke at U of T about the conflict in the Middle East.

On Sept. 19, Dr. Rivka Carmi visited the University of Toronto to give a lecture on the role academics have in promoting peace between Arabs and Israelis.

Dr. Rivka Carmi is the dean of medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Israel. She is also the first female dean of medicine in the Middle East. She is also part of the Visiting Professors for Peace Program, part of the Isabel Silverman Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO).

CISEPO is a non-governmental organization, working with Mount Sinai Hospital and the University of Toronto to lead collaborative health programs between Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians to promote cooperation, understanding, mutual respect, friendship—and ultimately peace—between these countries.

Carmi gave examples of how academics have contributed to the health and education of the Negev Bedouin population, issues that politics and weapons have failed to resolve.

She said the infant mortality rate among the Negev Bedouin population has been on the rise in recent years due to birth defects as a result of marriages within families.

The role of CISEPO is to train locals to run community-based programs to help educate and increase knowledge among the population, and to promote prenatal testing, she said.

CISEPO also has many other projects, such as the Israeli and Palestinian Diabetes Project and newborn hearing screening involving Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians.

It is the goal of CISEPO to rise above the current political climate in the Middle East with the aid of academic institutions to address the many medical and health issues that exist in the region today, she said.

Unfortunately, as Carmi pointed out, the impact these collaborative programs have on peacemaking between the countries has been very small.

But Dr. Carmi remained optimistic, and concluded her lecture by quoting from John F. Kennedy: “We should not let our fears prevent us from pursuing our hopes and from trying to make them come true.”