For the past five years, Israeli Yuval Roth and his organization “On the Road to Recovery,” have been driving sick Palestinians back and forth across the border to Israeli hospitals so that they can get treatment for their illnesses. The West Bank understandably doesn’t have the greatest health care system. Israel does, so if a Palestinian can reach those hospitals, they have a much better chance of surviving:

It’s also expensive to make the trip to Israeli hospitals. Although the Palestinian Authority allows sick children and adults to leave the West Bank for treatment, Palestinians are not allowed to drive past the checkpoints. To get to Israeli hospitals, they’d have to take a taxi, which would cost at least $90 each way.

Fortunately, there is Roth and his organization, Derech Hachlama (“On the Road to Recovery”). Since 2006, Roth and his team of volunteers have been giving Palestinians a lifeline.

I’m not sure if this policy is Israeli or Palestinian. Possibly Israeli, and I guess it’s for good reason, as it’d be too easy to get a car bomb into Israel if they let just anybody pass. So this is the option that many Palestinians have if they need treatment.

This isn’t an obvious candidate for Freedom Week, but if you think about it, it absolutely fits. Here is an Israeli who is taking a lot of risk going into an area where he knows many of the residents don’t like his people. Yet he still does it out of compassion. What better way is there for Israel to fight the propaganda of organizations like Hamas than by winning hearts and minds with actions like Roth’s? Not many better ways, I think.