A Palestinian Patient Advocate with Rabbis for Human Rights

Zakaria Sadeh is a Muslim Palestinian from the West Bank.  He was born in 1978, ten years into the occupation, and grew up in a Muslim village near Nablus, within close proximity to several Jewish settlements.  From an early age, Zakaria felt comfortable talking to his Jewish neighbors.  He learned their language, and because of his fluency in both Hebrew and Arabic, he eventually found his calling in helping Palestinians who required medical care in Israeli hospitals and clinics.  These people were often intimidated by the Israeli bureaucracy and their own inability to understand the language.  Thus began his work, since the time of his early adulthood, in serving as a patient advocate, accompanying them, jumping through the hoops and the hurdles of red tape, and interpreting for them.  As security became more intense in the intervening years, Zakaria’s expertise was also required to get these patients through the myriad of checkpoints, which were designed to make it as difficult as possible for Palestinians to get to Israel to receive badly needed medical care.  Mr. Sadeh has worked in this capacity, both as a volunteer and as a paid consultant, with Physicians for Human Rights, Machsom Watch, and other organizations, but primarily as a Field Director for Rabbis for Human Rights.

Because of his gift for helping people, he became very well known and highly sought after throughout the West Bank.  Tragically, however, there were also very serious threats against him and his family, and Mr. Sadeh made the decision to move with his family to the United States, where they now reside.  He continues to work via Skype as a consultant for Rabbis for Human Rights.