WUNRN
Peace X Peace
Infinite Variety: Women of the Holy Land
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A Christian Arab, a religious Jew, a Muslim who does stand-up comedy, an Israeli
army officer, a gypsy with Palestinian roots hundreds of years old, and a psychologist with Uzbek ancestry: These are just a few of the women Patricia Smith Melton and our Peace X Peace liaisons interviewed for the upcoming book Sixty Years, Sixty Women. As residents of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, they share—uneasily—a common space in geography and history. Yet what Shakespeare said of Cleopatra can be said of the women of the Holy Land as, indeed, of brave women everywhere: “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
Interviews by Patricia Smith Melton -
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For more than 45 years, Badia Khalaf has directed a center for children with disabilities. She is a widow with three successful children of her own. Her family has deep roots in Palestine.
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Badia Khalaf |
The best thing in life is love, without love we cannot live. As Christians, we want only peace. This is our Christianity. We can love each other, we can live with each other. It’s not hard for us to live with Jewish people, Israeli people.
You want to live the Golden Rule?
I hope to live with each other, and that we have our independent state beside the Israelis with peace for our sons and grandchildren.
What happens without love? Do you shrivel up and die?
No, but I don’t want to live without love. Love each other, our sons, our country, the people, Palestine, I love Ramallah. I’ve been many places but Palestine is my country, and everyone loves their country. We hope peace comes and an independent state with Jerusalem as our capital. That’s our aim in life, nothing more.
I lived in bandit times in Jordan and, now with the occupation, I have lived hard times all my life. For my sons, for the Israelis’ sons, and for the people of Palestine, it’s hard.
You’ve never lost hope?
Never. I always have hope in everything.
Tell me about your family.
We’re from the original people of Ramallah. We moved from Jordan over 500 years ago to this area. My aunt established this association for children with special needs and hearing difficulties in 1925. My cousin was the mayor of Ramallah, Kareem Khalaf. They bombed his car and his feet were cut off.
Who bombed his car?
It is the occupation. The Israelis, because he was political, the mayor. At that time, we were very angry because of the situation. Daily.
Can you forgive?
God tells us to forgive, Christianity tells us to forgive. It is war, it is an occupation, so from time to time this happens.
Do you ever get sad?
When my husband died, but it passed. I was 24; now I’m 70 with three children. My daughter was born after her father’s death so I worked hard to help my children get a good education. They are in engineering in the United States. Osama has restaurants in Ramallah and Jericho. Because I had very hard times, I can now feel happy, and thank God for everything.
Everything is possible. Women can do more than men. I’ve been with the association since 1962 when we rented two rooms only. Now we own this center and the land around it, and a center for mentally retarded children, and we built another building that we rent so we can gain money from renting this house. We women did all this in the hard times of Palestine.
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Chana Pasternak is a Jewish Israeli and the director of Kolech, the Religious Women’s Forum. Until recently she served in Meimad, a Zionist political party that allies with Labor and is conservative in religion but progressive on most other issues. She has four children and four grandchildren.
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Chana Pasternak |
The men always express themselves, and they are heard, but the voices, especially of religious women, aren’t heard. And all religious responsibility has been for men, very little for women. It’s time women should be heard.
What does it mean to be a religious woman?
For me it is to be obligated to your belief, to yourself, to your country, and to a feminist agenda. Together these things are hard. There are contradictions between religion and being a mother, between working outside and raising a family, between your obligation to your family and to yourself.
I was raised in a Cheredim school; my parents were ultra Orthodox. When I was 18, I decided to go to the university. My family was angry, and my high school teachers turned their heads when they saw me like I did something horrible against humanity.
My parents survived the Holocaust. My father lost his first wife and three kids. For such people, that their only child, a daughter, should go out to live another life wasn’t easy. But that’s what I decided, that’s what I did, and that’s what I do.
I opened myself and found a terrific world, so interesting, so fulfilling. I share beliefs of possibility with my friends: to live together and make a better community because, most of all, we are human beings who must live together.
You call yourself a feminist.
To be a feminist is to see the need of every woman, to give space to every woman to live by her belief and her way of thinking. Every woman responds differently. If an Arabic woman or a Jewish woman is happy to have 10 children, that’s fine. I don’t like the way extreme feminists say, “You shouldn’t have children, you should think about yourself.” The real feminist way is to let every woman feel happy with herself.
Are you different from other women?
I am a woman so I am the same, but I am different in that I’m not afraid. I scream out, and I’m proud of it. I shout,” Equality!” Like a woman should be in the rabbinical court, but no women are Orthodox rabbis. Every morning I say, “Wow, God, help me today to do something to improve equality.”
So we speak to rabbis and say they are an important part of the religious community, but unfortunately, they are not very brave. Our belief is, there are “seventy faces to the Torah,” and to go to the extreme translation is not accepted by us. There are wise women who know their Torah, and who are able to teach different things than many rabbis say. It’s impossible that women should be prisoners by authority. These women are much more brave than the rabbis.
You have a personal relationship with God?
We are good friends. At least, from my side! I don’t know about His side. I am thankful He forgives me, because I have many questions and I get so angry. I’m sure He helps me to fulfill my agenda and the agenda of many women.
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Raised as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, Ihsan Turkieh learned early how to rise above circumstances. She insisted on equal education and opportunity but made her message more appealing by presenting herself as a comedian. Since 2002, she has worked with the Center for Peace performing with Israeli Jews, Christians, and other Muslim actors in Jewish and Palestinian schools across Israel.
A checkpoint is a horrible scene,
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Ihsan Turkieh |
but as a comedian, I like to play
the simple Palestinian lady. She says to the soldier, “Please, my daughter, she is in the hospital, let me go to see my daughter.” He barks, “Do you have a permit? If you don’t have a permit, you will not pass.” She pleads, “Let me go, let me go.” He yells, “Yallah, get away from here!” She curses the Wall and yells back, “I wish a tsunami takes the Wall, takes you. Then both of us will be at rest at the end!” The Israelis laugh, but it is very black comedy.
Are you ever sad?
A long time ago. … Okay, many things make me sad, but I learned to be strong and not to cry in front of people. When you face horrible things in your childhood, losing people you love, going from place to place because there is no place to live, after that the rest is nothing.
When I applied to act with Israelis, they asked me to write down terrorist countries I’d been to. I said, “I’ve lived my life in terrorist countries, my husband was a hero of the PLO killed in the war of Lebanon.” And I told myself, “Israelis are my archenemy, how can I work with them?” But you can’t change someone from right to left. First you have to take them over a bridge.
Are you afraid of anything?
I am only afraid of God, not anybody else. If you are scared, you will not take a risk. Nothing is impossible. If you want to do something, just do it. But think carefully. …
The problem with many Palestinians is they become accustomed to any situation. They say to themselves, “Okay, the Israelis make checkpoints, but we will find a way and go. Okay, they built the wall, but we will find a way and go.” Always they create alternatives. Sometimes this is not good because you make the enemy smarter to create next steps to close the holes. He needs to realize he is the occupier, he built the wall, and he needs to fix the problem.
Are there are Israelis willing to fix the problem?
I’ve been interacting with Israelis for 10 years. I’ve met many gorgeous people, very nice, talented, and human. Even in the States, I met Jewish Americans who don’t agree with many of Israel’s policies. I discovered something amazing about Jewish Americans. I asked them, “If you don’t agree with many Israeli policies and feel that it is tough on the Palestinians, why do you support them?” One gave me a good answer. He said, “Israel should stay.” I respect this. I wish for a day when we just say, “Palestine should stay, Palestine first.”
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Amira Dotan served in the Israeli Defense Forces for 22 years and became Israel’s first woman brigadier general. As a member of the Kadima party in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, she serves on several powerful committees, including Foreign Affairs and Defense, and on the subcommittee on Trafficking of Women. She is a mother of three and a grandmother.
Feminism is the ability to do what you want to do. It must be on the table immediately that there are two different genders. Women need to say men are who they are and we are who we are, and to be proud of who we are instead of spending so much energy imitating men. Then we will have more energy to do what we want to do, and questions of harassment and violence lessen because men see you as equal.
As a brigadier general, did you see yourself as a peacekeeper or a fighter?
That was not one of the questions we in the Israeli Defense Forces asked ourselves. The unique part of it is there in the name. We want to be strong to defend ourselves. Peace is part of it, in making sure no one harms our family and our country. We don’t send our children, our soldiers to fight somebody else’s wars and we don’t want somebody else to fight our wars, we are doing it with our own 10 fingers. The notion of defense is part of peace.
Do you have hope there will be a time when Israel will not need a defense force?
Always. I am very optimistic. I will do my best to make sure that we work people-to-people on the ground to deal with the human sides of living in the Middle East. It’s not about big issues like peace and war, it’s about how to find your counterparts in order to live peacefully.
Do you have Palestinian counterparts?
Absolutely. When my husband passed away, I felt I had to give birth to something. I asked Shimon Perez to bring together a network of women in the Middle East. We put together an NGO of businesswomen of Jordon, Palestine, Morocco, and ourselves. The first meeting was June of 1995. I told my friends, the Israeli participants, I believe that it will be easier for me to deal with the other Middle Eastern participants than the Palestinians. From your experiences in the Defense Forces, you feel that they are your enemy. Yet, they came to Tel Aviv and my immediate feeling of sisterhood was with the Palestinian women. When I saw those Palestinian women, it was as if we had grown up together, we had the same jokes, the same understanding, the same mentality.
If you could speak with all Palestinian women, what would you say?
I would say that in our hearts, each of us knows the truth. We should play our game and not someone else’s game. Our game is to make sure our children and children’s children will live in peace and understanding.
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Amoun Sleem is the director of
the Domari Society, which serves the gypsies of Israel and Palestine. Amoun
also runs the Middle East’s first Gypsy Center. She is unmarried and has a close-knit,
supportive family, with five brothers and three sisters.
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Amoun Sleem |
You don’t see gypsies fighting around the
world. They look for the simple life and they look with beautiful eyes. Our
flag means green for the land, blue for the sky, and wheels for traveling.
People should learn from the gypsies: be open, make your hearts green for
everybody.
People have images of gypsies—painted
wagons, horses, always moving.
People make up stories: gypsies make magic,
gypsies read palms, gypsies are dirty. I think the people who make jokes about
gypsies are the stupid ones. We like to be happy in the moment God has given
us. Because we are simple, we never feel like envying others. We love our
families and our neighbors.
Gypsies are a people of freedom who love
the land and animals, but these things are missing now. Gypsies’ concerns are
forbidden in this holy land. So much that existed 100 years ago with our tribes
and traditions doesn’t exist because of the pressure. Freedom will be when
gypsies are an accepted community with rights. Even though gypsies don’t like
too much contact with outsiders, now they want to mix with any society that
will give them a chance and treat them as citizens in this land.
Who are the gypsies?
The Domari society, the gypsy people, came
out of India 3,000 years ago. We’ve lived here for 500 years. I can say I am an
international woman. I have Palestinian roots because we have lived in this
holy land for hundreds of years, and we support the Jewish society as neighbors
and friends. We open our hearts and homes to any people on earth who can be
welcomed as a friend of gypsies.
Six to seven thousand gypsies live in the
country—Palestine and Jerusalem, though it is hard to contact people in the
West Bank, and I’ve not had contact with my tribe in Gaza for 10 years.
Why do people fight?
I would say they are stupid. If people are
fighting for something, what good is that? If you are fighting for money, well,
money is something you can use, but it is not everything. The same with land.
When you die, you do not take land with you. God created this earth for all
people to live on without fighting.
What were you like as a little girl?
I sold post cards, I ran after tourists.
Those were my golden years. I learned a lot from the street, from tourists, I
learned to be a businesswoman. I knew very few words of English: “Just one
dollar, one dollar.” Now I have a diploma in business administration and
hospitality management.
But
I am doing things for my people, I know what it means to be discriminated
against. God has given me a kind of brains that cause me to think differently.
Good work takes time. No one can reach her dream in a short time. But peace is
not a dream, it can happen. Each person can start to make peace inside his
heart, to love his neighbor. If we want to make it happen, it can happen.
Nobody is weak.
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Trained as a clinical psychologist,
Jerusalem resident Tirza Moussaieff “found herself”
earning a doctorate in Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. She uses
Kabbalistic imagery in her therapy to help people get out of their analytical
minds and experience love. Her ancestry is Bukharan from Uzbekistan.
The Torah says Redemption will come from
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Tirza Moussaieff |
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women this time. Women give birth to
children and are more open and sensitive. They see reality. Men are little boys.
But there is hope because women have a lot of power over men. If they guide men
with respect and knowledge, I think men will be happy to receive it because
they are more lost than women. They are little boys with toys. When they are
impotent, they love to use a gun. If you look at the profile of major generals,
I wouldn’t be surprised if you find a background of impotency.
Men and women need to learn to use our
energies properly, to enhance our power and not dominate each other. If we can
respect each other, violence in the family and the community can be headed off.
We each have our special talent for what we came to do in the world.
What did you come to do in the world?
I like to think I came to help create
paradise.
How can anyone help create paradise?
Grab the person you imagine you hate the
most and tell them how much you love them, how great they are, how much you
want to express your love but were too embarrassed. Hate doesn’t exist except
in our imagination. Do you have the courage to do that? If everyone did that,
can you imagine how the energy in the world would shift?
There are only two ways of being: love and
fear. All negative emotions come under fear, and we have to remove the fear to
see that we love each other. When we remove the veils, everything is available
to us.
People have a lot of fear, a lot of
anxiety. I teach people to clean their negative emotions so they can open their
souls to God, to light, and to recognize it inside other people. When we come
to a place of feeling that we are God and that everybody is God, then all we
can do is celebrate. We would never think of doing anything as ridiculous and
crazy as hurting someone else.
When we hurt someone, we hurt ourselves. I
would love to have Paradise on earth, and I don’t see why not. It’s not the
Arabs against the Israelis or the Israelis against Arabs. When someone is in
pain, it affects us all. Our happiness cannot be complete until everyone is
content. With the war and disease in the world, we are all responsible.
Each person has this power?
Every person has power. We are suppressed
Gods walking around hiding the fact that we are God. It’s time to take the mask
off. We are all co-creators with God, we can create anything. When a few minds
get together, that’s powerful.
Can the problems of this region be solved
through minds?
I
don’t think intellectualism can solve any problem. We need a power that is
clearer and stronger than logic. In everyday language, we need a miracle, but
miracles are here all the time if we open to them.
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