Within hours of his death in an Israeli hospital, Ahmed’s heart, kidneys, liver and lungs were restoring life to six other people.

It’s November 2005. Israeli soldiers raid a refugee camp inside the small Palestinian city of Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank occupied territories. The soldiers had been there before. This time, they shoot a young boy holding a toy gun. This, too, has happened before. Twelve-year-old Ahmed Khatib dies, as have many children before and after him.

But this story of Ahmed in Jenin is more than a blip in this stream of predictable news. Ahmed’s parents, in an act of peaceful resistance and anger, chose to donate his organs to save other lives. Within hours of his death in an Israeli hospital, Ahmed’s heart, kidneys, liver and lungs were restoring life to six other people. And his parents, knowing these gifts of life might well go to the “enemies” on the Israeli side of the wall, decided to make the donation without restriction.

Shot in the back of the head, Ahmed had no real chance of surviving after the bullet exploded into deadly fragments. He had been playing a dangerous game.

In the bleak world of the refugee camp, pestering soldiers on raids is one of the few entertainments available to kids. Ahmed’s mother, Abla Khatib, candidly acknowledged that her son used to throw stones at the soldiers. The kids lived in a partisan world and regarded the armed fighters on the Palestinian side as their heroes. Those armed fighters were the usual targets of the raiding Israeli soldiers. Ahmed had collected posters of death notices for the Palestinian “martyrs,” 59 of whom had been killed just blocks from his home in a fierce attack three years earlier.

The day Ahmed was shot should have been a special day. It was the first day of Eid el-Fitr, the close of Ramadan’s month-long fasting typically celebrated with numerous festivities. Ahmed had new clothes for the occasion, and he arose before dawn to help his mother with preparations. He left for the mosque just after daybreak, passing along the graveyard where his heroes, the “martyrs” of the intifada (armed resistance of the occupation) were buried. But when word of the soldiers’ arrival on yet another raid spread through the streets, Ahmed and many other youngsters swarmed into action. His parents say he did not own a toy gun, for they knew that would be dangerous. But he must have found one in that moment. And the toy he grabbed made him a target.

How deeply must parents reach for the courage to turn such a tragedy into a peace-seeking protest? Ahmed’s father, Ismail, knew suffering firsthand. He had lost a brother to kidney failure two decades earlier after a lengthy struggle, in spite of Ismail regularly donating blood for him. Had this and other hardships of living under the Israeli occupation deepened their compassion for others’ suffering? Or perhaps the parents’ compassion sprang from encountering people awaiting organ transplants while Ahmed lived out his final days on life support in an Israeli hospital.

Ismail consulted with his local religious authorities to check whether Islamic law permitted donation practices and received clear affirmation. Ahmed’s heart was given to a 12-year-old Israeli Arab girl. His lungs went to a Jewish teenager with cystic fibrosis. One kidney went to a three-year-old Jewish girl and another to a five-year-old Bedouin Arab. Ahmed’s liver was divided between a seven-month-old Jewish girl and an older Jewish mother with hepatitis.

A flurry of news coverage widely reported the surprising story, and leading Israeli politicians including then Deputy Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, called to apologize to the parents for the shooting death of their son.

Ahmed’s mother, Abla, gave this perspective: “To give away his organs was a different kind of resistance. Violence against violence is worthless. Maybe this will reach the ears of the whole world so they can distinguish between just and unjust. Maybe the Israelis will think of us differently. Maybe just one Israeli will decide not to shoot.”

Ahmed’s father adds, “The hope is that those people will learn the lesson from what I have done. Those six people will learn the lesson that we are human beings; their families, even if they were serving in the army, will consider what I have done.”

Reprinted from Hope Indeed: Remarkable Stories of Peacemakers by N. Gerald Shenk. © by Good Books (www.GoodBooks.com).  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.