'Jerusalem Women,' Touring as Partners for Peace, Fault Israeli Policies

October 20, 2006

Author: Ruth Walker

Source: Harvard University Gazette

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.19/05-peace.html

"I am coming here to say, help us. America is involved in this conflict, and is feeding it. Wherever you stand, stand for justice."

That was the contention and the directive of Ghada Ageel, a third-generation Palestinian Muslim refugee, at the Harvard Divinity School Friday (Oct. 13).

She was there as part of "Jerusalem Women Speak," a three-woman panel on a tour of New England sponsored by the organization Partners for Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group. The Pluralism Project sponsored the University event.

Ageel (from left), Shireen Khamis, and Rela Mazali are touring New England together to present their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ageel and her fellow-panelists - Shireen Khamis, a Palestinan Christian from Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, and Rela Mazali, a Jewish Israeli - are touring to speak from their own experience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All three women described themselves at one point or another in the session as relatively "privileged." But they said they saw American news organizations and the U.S. government as biased and unreceptive to reports of Palestinian suffering. This unanimity of views was typical of the session.