Abigail Klein Leichman
September 3, 2017, Updated September 14, 2017

American television host, comedian and producer Conan O’Brien told the medical team at Safed’s Ziv Medical Center that they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for their free humanitarian treatment of Syrian men, women and children spirited across the border to Israel after being wounded in Syria’s ongoing civil war.

“I am amazed and excited by what is being done here at Ziv for the sake of people from a neighboring country and an enemy, and I think you are the ones who need to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” O’Brien told the medical staff.

Ziv and other northern Israeli hospitals have accepted more than 3,000 Syrian civilians brought to Israel by various humanitarian NGOs in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces. Safed (Tzfat) is about 40 miles from the Syrian border.

Conan O’Brien visiting Syrian patients at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, Israel. Photo via Facebook

Among the Ziv personnel O’Brien met was Dr. Alejandro Roisentul, the Argentinean-born head of the medical center’s maxillofacial surgery unit, who recently was honored by Buenos Aires for his humanitarian work with wounded Syrians at Ziv.

The celebrity also spoke with Syrian patients and with Israeli-Arab social worker Fares Issa, who is responsible for the psychosocial care of Syrian civilians treated at Ziv.

O’Brien is in Israel for the first time, filming an episode of his travel series “Conan without Borders.”

Over the course of the past week, among other activities, O’Brien has dined with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, met Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot, floated in the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee, shot a scene for the hit Israeli TV show Fauda, trained with a female IDF combat battalion, dropped in on a youth hackathon in Jerusalem, played matkot on the Tel Aviv beach, danced and chatted with Palestinian Arab teens and shopkeepers in a West Bank village, picnicked with an Israeli-Arab family in Jaffa, and had a fake bar mitzvah at a Tel Aviv synagogue.


On September 1, he posted this tongue-in-cheek message on Facebook: “This is my 7th day in #Israel, my body is 62% hummus.”

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