Twenty years ago, her conscience drove her to Beirut to answer an SOS for an orthopaedic surgeon to treat war victims. She was in the thick of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and treated scores of patients with gunshot wounds non-stop for 72 hours without food, water or sleep. She saw firsthand the results of the slaughter bodies of mostly women and children on the roadside, or decaying under shelled homes. And when the soldiers came for her and her colleagues, she herself was almost killed.

Dr Ang Swee Chai, who was then 34, a petite figure at under 1.5m and weighing 45kg, has withstood all that and more. Yet it was the children of Sabra and Shatila, she says, who taught her the meaning of courage.

A few days after the carnage which saw more than 2,400 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese killed, she was walking in despair through the camp alleys when she suddenly found herself being hugged by a small boy.

It was a child she had treated before. He was crying as his father was dead, but he was also glad to see her as he thought she had been killed by the soldiers, too.

More children came to her. When one of them spotted her pocket camera, all clamoured to have their picture taken in front of their demolished homes.

"Let the Israelis come," Ang recalls the children shouting. "Maybe we'll die tomorrow, but you'll be able to show your country that the children of Sabra and Shatila are not afraid."

Then, smiling ethereally as only children can, the children who have just been made orphans and homeless, made the victory sign with their hands for the world to see.

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Ang has kept her promise to the children. She has shown that picture and others documenting the horrors inflicted upon Palestinian refugees in Beirut that year more than a thousand times all over the world.

She showed that picture again on Sunday at a hotel in Petaling Jaya, to some 200 people at the first Malaysian launch of her book, From Beirut to Jerusalem . At the end of the slide show she said quietly, "At least I could do this for them."

Born in Penang and brought up in Singapore where she obtained her medical degree, Ang who is a Christian, had until her Beirut experience believed in the creation of an Israeli state as the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies.

But the nightly telecast of the Israeli bombing of Beirut in 1982 jolted her. Troubled by the incomprehensible killing of civilians, she knew what she had to do when she heard the SOS soon after.

Her husband Francis Khoo, a Singaporean lawyer in exile, supported her decision to quit her job and their home in London. Once in Lebanon, Ang volunteered to work with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. She was assigned to the Gaza Hospital in Sabra and Shatila camps, and it was there, through their deaths, that she discovered the Palestinians to be the proud people that they are, with a stoic strength and generosity of spirit that shines through even in the worst of times.

Driven by the need to continue helping the Palestinians after her contract ended a few months later, she and her husband helped found the Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) in 1984, a charity organisation which supplies medicine and equipment to Palestinians in exile or occupied territories and occasionally brings patients to Britain for treatment.

She has returned to Beirut on other missions since the 1982 massacre, documenting her experiences in From Beirut to Jerusalem , a testimony of what she and many brave volunteers, Palestinians and Jews went through to support the Palestinian cause not only the right to return to their land, but even to exile and a life.

Pray every day

Now in Malaysia on a family visit and to launch the second edition of her book, Ang recalls her journey to Jerusalem to testify at the Israeli Kahan Commission set up to investigate the 1982 massacre. It was a personally moving experience as she realised she was tracing the steps which all Palestinian refugees hope to make one day.

"Even if you can't make that journey with them, pray every night that they are able to return to pray in Jerusalem. Not just the Muslim Palestinians, but also the Christian Palestinians," she told the 200-odd crowd at the book launch.

Her book is a sober and timely reminder of how the Palestinians' lot has changed little 20 years on, though there have been two Intifada (uprisings) against the Israeli occupiers. Most illuminating is that the person held indirectly responsible for the massacre then is today the prime minister of Israel.

I asked Ang if she had ever given her book to anyone to drive home the message. She says those prejudiced would never touch it. Her sister Swee Kim, a college lecturer in KL, was also at the launch and chimes in that only the uninitiated or already attuned to what's happening there would want to read the book. Even some of her church friends, Ang says, "think I have gone to the devil".

But to those whose lives she has saved and is still saving through MAP, Ang is their angel. Due recognition came as early as in 1987, when she was awarded the Star of Palestine, the highest award for service to the Palestinians.

In his tribute to Ang and her husband at the launch on Sunday, PRM president Dr Syed Husin Ali who is a close friend of the couple said, "If we have lost in Malaysia and Singapore, a great daughter and a great son, England and in fact, the world have gained instead. Both are exemplary people who selflessly help others to regain their dignity."

The second edition of From Beirut to Jerusalem is published by The Other Press and Islamic Book Trust and available at RM25 from www.ibtbooks

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