killed him," but Ahmed's mother Abla said she was visited by more than ten other mothers who lost their children in the conflict who supported the decision. The mufti of Jenin assured the family that there were no religious objections to the donation of organs, or to them going to either Israelis or Jews. While denouncing the soldiers as "criminals", Ahmed's mother Abla explained why she agreed to the donations: "We saw a lot of painful scenes in the hospital. I have seen children in deep need of organs, in deep pain. It doesn't matter who they are. We didn't specify that his organs would go to Arabs, Christians or Jews. I didn't want my son to suffer, I didn't want other children to suffer regardless of who they are". Ahmed's father Ismail worked as a car mechanic in Israel for many years. His contact with ordinary Israelis influenced his decision to donate his son's organs. On the day of his death, Ahmed had visited Jenin's "martyrs' graveyard", the cemetery for Palestinian rebels who died fighting Israel. Like most Palestinian children, Ahmed considered them heroes, prompting his father to remark that he was unsure if Ahmed would have approved the decision to donate his organs to Israelis. After his son's death, he established a youth center, the Ahmed Khatib Center for Peace, which offers a film-making course, and helped to reopen Cinema Jenin. The story about his parents' decision to donate their son's organs became the subject for the PBS documentary The Heart of Jenin. Other organ donations Organ transplants in which the recipient is a Palestinian and the donor an Israeli, or vice versa are not unusual at Hadassah Medical Center. In one case, a 41-year-old Palestinian from Bethlehem received the kidney of a 38-year-old Israeli who died of a stroke. When no suitable candidate was found in the Israeli registry, the Israeli National Center for Organ Transplantation contacted the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli family did not speak to the media, but said they felt privileged to take part in "creating the mosaic of peace". Mazen Joulani, 33, a pharmacist, was shot dead in front of a Jerusalem café in 2001. His family agreed to a heart transplant to an Israeli Jewish patient. The Israeli police said it suspected Joulani had been killed by a fellow Palestinian, a hypothesis his family rejects. In 2010, a Palestinian family from East