Dr. Hisham Ammous: Life as Clinical Surgery

Sept 1, 1944 - June 6, 2025

Hisham Saifedean Rashid Ammous was born in the village of Atteel in Palestine on September 1, 1944. After finishing high school in nearby Fadiliya school in Tulkarem, he moved to Saudi Arabia to work as a school teacher, then to Kuwait to work in the electric company. Unsatisfied with his career, he decided to become a doctor, and applied for a scholarship from the Jordanian government to the University of Madrid in Spain, through the Spanish embassy in Jordan. He moved to Madrid without speaking a word of Spanish, but graduated as a surgeon with distinction in 1976. After that scholarship, he practically never needed, asked for, or took anything from anyone until his last day.

In his five decades as a surgeon, Dr. Ammous must have performed over 20,000 surgeries across Spain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Brazil, Lebanon, and Libya. He relished his work as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. To his profession and mission, he was the most devoutly dedicated man. He lived for surgery. Come rain, shine, snow, checkpoints, military invasions, cranky kids, genocide, or regional war, he found a way to make it to Al Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem almost every day, braving countless Israeli occupation checkpoints and dealing with the young criminals manning them and getting all of their life's meaning from the impunity they have to make the lives of innocent Palestinians hell. He became a regular traveler to wars and refugee camps to perform surgeries. He worked nonstop all day for days on end in warzones. He went to Gaza for surgeries after every Israeli mass slaughter over the years, and was desperate for the current genocide to end so he could return. His favorite 'vacation' was to visit me in Lebanon and perform dozens of free surgeries for destitute refugees.

His discipline was supernatural. He was never late for anything in his life, and was never disorganized. No matter what life threw at him, he relentlessly pursued his mission and was always prepared. His doggedness, determination, focus, and obsession will sound insane to most people, which is why most people will never perform 20,000 surgeries or do anything remotely as important with their lives. In his wake, hundreds of messages have poured in from people remembering how he helped them with his kind generosity, healed them with his skilled hands, and made them laugh with his legendary searing wit. Among the most amazing stories I heard was that he gave his patients’ families the keys to his hospital office so they could sleep in it and not have to drive through hours of checkpoints every day.

His supreme motivation in life, and the thing that gave life meaning for him, was to give his children a life better than the one he had, and he dedicated himself to it until the very end. He never ceased repeating this lesson to me, and he exemplified it every day. All his time, attention, and interests revolved around improving the lives of his children. He understood the whole of our human civilization rests on the foundation of people investing in giving their children a better life, and this was also the most profound lesson I learned from years of studying economics, and the central theme and most important lesson of my third and best book, Principles of Economics. For teaching me this lesson before I could read, that book was dedicated to him.

He is survived by his two sons, Ahmad and me, his daughter Dana, and three loving grandchildren who lit up his last ten years. Nothing can compare with the joy his grandchildren brought him. No money or accomplishment by him or me could have made him happier than my 2 year old making ever more outrageous demands for gifts as she tries to discover if there is anything he won't get her. His joy around her convinced me that the best thing you can do for your parents is to give them grandchildren. It seems offensive that life could be this simple and banal, that mere reproduction is the secret to its satisfaction, but he showed me it was true, and far from banal. We humans are wired to spend our lives seeking reproduction, and having it shape our happiness and satisfaction, because we wouldn't exist otherwise.

In my 44 years of life, I never recall seeing him bedridden with illness, and after five decades of caring for patients and children, he must have dreaded the thought of being on the receiving end of the care of others.

Dr. Ammous passed on the first day of Eid Al Adha, while taking a nap, after having called his friends and family to exchange Eid greetings. He died suddenly and immediately, and almost certainly felt nothing, and never had to suffer any serious illness or confront his impending mortality.

He lived blissfully immersed in his life's mission until its very last second. And he succeeded in it completely and perfectly. He gave his children everything they needed until they needed nothing more from him. The only consolation in his passing is that until his last minute he was strong, cheerful, healthy, sharply-dressed, and eagerly looking forward to seeing his grandchildren in a few days and giving them the many gifts he bought for them, and looking forward to vacationing this summer with his family in his beloved Madrid.

In his passing, he deprived his loving children of the chance to provide him a tiny fraction of the love and care he provided them for decades. This was a man determined to contribute more to this world than take from it, and to give his children everything. And he accomplished his life's mission clinically, like his surgeries.

Alpe di Siusi

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#[0] please take the time to read my private message on an idea, to empower the Bitcoin network and change the "Bitcoin is bad" narrative and bring better awareness to the sentiments and the possibility of a bitcoin future, incentivizing spending on the Lighting Network, bring more content, creators, and individuals to Nostr

Thank you

⚡

Yeah he is very passionate and loud about Bitcoin 💯

What should be also noted is that Both Hal Finney and Dorian Nakamoto both lived in Temple City, California (which is not San Francisco where the images above was from), and Hal himself was also born in California.

Steve Jobs, however WAS born in San Francisco.

So, it turns out that Steve Job’s health began to deteriorate 2008, and even Bloomberg published an obituary of him mistakenly august 2008.

But a ‘coincidence’ is that his health deteriorated to the level that Phil Schiller had to deliver apples keynote presentation instead of steve in the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009. January 5 2009, apple made an announcement that jobs had a “hormone imbalance” that he had been suffering from for a few months. He announced a leave of absence from apple for 6 months that lasted from January until June 2009.

So series of events…

1) Steve jobs health began to deteriorate from 2008 and had to take time off of work until about June 2009.

2) That same time, satoshi wrote the white paper and published it 30th October 2008, wrote the first code for ₿itcoin and launched the network 9th Jan 2009.

3) The time the network was launched was the time announcements were made about his health to apple employees.

4) During all that time, Steve jobs was not working for apple, but away from work. Could he have directed his attention to ₿itcoin? Hmm 🤔. I don’t think so, but if he did, he had the free time to do that.

5) April 2009 Steve had a liver transplant, so if satoshi was actively posting during that time then that would eliminate Steve as being satoshi, assuming satoshi is one single person and nobody was collaborating with him.

6) Tim Cook offered a portion of his Liver to Steve to help his condition, so one could suggest both Steve and Tim were working together on ₿itcoin? Hence the current discovery of the white paper and the image clue above, but do I believe that? Not as it is. I would personally need more evidence. But there is some ‘smoke’…

Ok, so there’s more…

So satoshi officially ended his involvement with ₿itcoin, handed over the bitcoin.org domain and access to the GitHub repository December 2010, and Steve job announced an extended leave of absence January 2011…

Satoshi last send an email July 2011 and august Steve jobs admitted to hospital.

There seems to be a lot of historical coincidences here.