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Palestinians Neglected, Trio Says

Sherene Abdulhadi (left), a Muslim Arab, Amira Hillal, a Christian Palestinian, and Roni Hammerman, a Jewish Israeli, speak at EMU on Thursday night.
Photo by Michael Reilly

By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record

Amira Hillal's eyes flashed when she talked of Israeli soldiers who invaded her family's home, arrested her father and seized his business.

"He's in jail now," Hillal said. "We don't know when he'll get out."

Hillal, 26, a Christian who lives along Palestine’s embattled West Bank sector, depicted the hardship that she says Palestinians routinely face as an occupied region of the Middle East. Hillal and two other women described a people confined by a larger neighboring nation.

Also speaking were Sherene Abdulhadi, a Muslim Palestinian, and Roni Hammerman, a Jewish Israeli. The three were at EMU's Martin Chapel on Thursday as part of a two-week "Jerusalem Women Speak" tour of churches, schools and civic groups throughout the U.S.

The program is sponsored by Partners for Peace, a non-profit group that promotes efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. The event was a joint presentation of Partners for Peace and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, campus ministries and Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Abdulhadi, 30, said that due to global media’s incomplete coverage of the Middle East, Americans know little about what really goes on there.

In most people's minds, the Middle East faces daily conflict among Christians, Jews and Muslims. But the key issue, she said, revolves around Israel's desire to rule Palestine.

"This is hardly a religious conflict," Abdulhadi said. "This is about political and economic control of land resources."

Old Fears

Hammerman, 65, believes Jewish aggression in Palestine stems from ingrained fears of Jewish people, who had face past persecution since biblical times, culminating in the 20th-century Holocaust.

"Suffering doesn't always make people better," said Hammerman, whose family endured Nazi atrocities. "Jewish people are handicapped by their fear that things that happened before will happen again. We can not fight anti-Semitism by controlling and oppressing other people."

One audience member, David Kaeuper, 62, a retired foreign service official from Timberville, called the Israeli-Palestinian struggle an "absolutely essential issue" for outsiders.

"Much of the foreign policy of the U.S. for the past 40 years has hinged on this issue. The message these women bring is one that will make an impact on helping to resolve the Middle Eastern impasse," he said.

Dorothy Jean Weaver, professor of New Testament at EMU, who has led numerous tours to Jerusalem, said that Abdulhadi, Hammerman and Hillal helped clarify a globally vague issue.

"We don't have a clear picture of what’s going on," Weaver said. "It's very important that we, as Americans, come to a better understanding about what’s happening in Israel and Palestine."

‘Unfair To Blame Israelis’

Not everyone shares the three women’s views.

Called for a comment after the event, Janet Kohen, president of the Temple Beth El, said that observers outside the Middle East should see both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

"I can only speak for myself, but I think that at the very least there are a lot of people who have misguided opinions about what is going on with Palestine and Israel," Kohen said.

Kohen added that supporters of Palestine's position overlook Israeli victims in the long-standing feud between the two Middle East adversaries. Palestinian terrorists have helped to aggravate tensions, she said.

"If you have to live your life always worried about .… whether or not you, or someone you love, is going to get blown up, it will give you a different opinion," Kohen said. "It's totally unfair to blame Israelis for the poverty and lack of education in a country when their leaders take no responsibility for that. A culture that teaches children to blow themselves and others up is an anathema to me."

— article by: Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record; posted October 28, 2005