Spirit in Action
Delegation to the Middle East - Cathy Sultan, Tom Chisholm, Jason Hicks
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be visiting with three Chippewa Valley activists just returned from a trip to Israel and Palestine. The trip was organized by interfaith peace builders in an attempt to help U.S. citizens see the Middle East conflict with their own eyes. As always, I want to give you an opportunity to share in an experience that can't be summed up in a word bite or eight word headlines. Our three guests are Kathy Salton, Tom Chisholm, and Jason Hicks. Kathy is the author of three books about the Middle East from a human viewpoint. Her latest release is Tragedy in South Lebanon, the Israeli Hezbollah War of 2006. Tom Chisholm spent most of his work life as a military doctor, and he's a member of Veterans for Peace. Jason Hicks has a master's in conservation genetics and is pursuing a career in international conflict resolution and human rights. They are perceptive and impassioned workers for peace and justice, and I'm very pleased to welcome them for this Northern Spirit radio production. Tom, Kathy, and Jason, thank you so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. You're welcome. Happy to be here, Mark. Appreciate your time, Mark. Thank you. The three of you just got back a week ago or so from over in the Middle East. I think you saw it firsthand, which is so wonderful to see it that way instead of having the filters of our media, everything in between. I want to ask you all a little bit about what you saw there this time. I think some of you have been there before. Kathy, would you care to start out? What did you see that was different? What are you noting in terms of progress or lack of progress in the Middle East at this point? Well, the Middle East is a large geographic area. We were specifically on the Eastern Mediterranean shore in Israel and the occupied territories of the West Bank and to the gates of Gaza. I was there in March of 2002. This was at the height of the suicide bombings. It was an extremely volatile time. I found myself quite often roaming the streets and the only one there. That was in stark contrast to this time. Tourism has been booming. There were many people in the streets of Jerusalem and anywhere we went. This time, because I wasn't by myself, I had the pleasure of going with colleagues, two of whom came from the Chippewa Valley, as you will find out. We were a group from all over the United States. These were people who had never been, actually one couple had been on this trip before. They were from Peoria, Illinois, and they had taken this trip last year with their Catholic Church. This Catholic Church had found the only tour guide that they could find to take them around was a Jewish tour guide. They went all over. They spent the same amount of time we did. They never saw the wall, the separation wall. They never saw a checkpoint. These two individuals from middle-class America went back, did some homework, started saying to themselves, "Gee, there's something more to this conflict than meets the eye." After a year of intense study, they decided to take this tour again, but with interfaith peace builders, which is not a religious tour at all. We had Jews on our trip. We often have Palestinian Americans on our trip. We often have Arab Americans on our trip, and of course Christians. In that respect, it's called interfaith peace builders, but there's absolutely no religion attached to the trip we just took. This is purely secular, and we were there in a political mission, and that was to educate ourselves about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, this couple from Puri, Illinois were just blown away by what they saw this time. They went through the checkpoints. They went around the wall. They walked along the wall. They went to Gaza, I mean, to the outside, to the at its checkpoint in Gaza, and they saw things that they surely didn't see on these really tour. So this is what I stress this because I think this kind of tour is something that Americans need to see. They don't need to see a whitewashed tour. Israel proper is beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. Billions of dollars have been spent on building up this nation. It's strong, it's magnificent, but it's been built on the ruins of somebody else's villages and towns. And we saw this most starkly wherever we went. We left the West Bank and drove towards Storot, which is an Israeli town that borders on Gaza. We spent a day there talking to the people who are the recipients of the Qasam rockets from Gaza. These are people who fear for their lives. On the way there, and I'll tell you about that story in a second, but on the way there, we passed these beautiful forests, pine forests. What were these pine forests? They had been planted in '48 over destroyed Palestinian villages so that there would be no remembrance of a previous presence on that particular land. This was repeated wherever we went. You could see bits and pieces of a former life there. But for the most part, olive trees were raised to the ground. Any remembrance of a previous Palestinian society were totally erased. And I'm talking about 540 villages. So for me, what was important this time was to be with a group. And if you want, we had access to more NGOs, more individual families than I had when I went there by myself in 2002. I went there strictly on my own. I found interviews on my own. And of course, what I did was very limited. But this time we met across the board, as I mentioned earlier, we were in Storot. And the day we spent in Storot, we met people who, as I said, lived the daily conflict of wondering if a Qasam rocket is going to fall on their child's school or on their street or on their house. And these are people who reproach their own Israeli government because they know that they're being used as pawns for their government to justify their continued incursions into Gaza. They have friends who live in Gaza, and they want, and this is something we heard repeatedly from Israelis and Palestinians. We don't care what the final solution looks like. We don't care whether it's one state, two states, bi-national state. All we want to do is live in peace. We're no different from you in America. And this is, I think, was something really startling to all of us to hear. People that live right next to Gaza, who feel their lives in danger and feel like nobody's paying attention to them. 70% of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas. Of course, that's not happening. We heard that repeated again this morning in the news where the Israeli government similarly dismissed any kind of proposal on the part of Hamas to sit down and negotiate a settlement, or at least a truce or a ceasefire. It's not going to happen. But people-to-people exchanges are happening on the ground. I'll give you a perfect example. It's my favorite story. I think I tell it to everyone I see. The people in Iraq brought trucks to the wall that separates them from Gaza. Their friends on the other side brought the same sort of big, huge dump trucks to the other side. They used a conveyor belt, and they transferred rice and grain and things that were needed over to Gaza. These are their friends on the other side. There's one of the guys, Eric, who sat and spoke with us. So we used to go swimming with these guys on the Mediterranean. We used to play ball on the beach with these guys. I want the same things for my kids. I'm just a normal human being. So I think these are the precious stories that we can bring back to say it's the officials, it's the government leaders, whether it's here, whether it's there, or whether it's on the Palestinian side, who are not interested in settling this solution for whatever their particular political agendas. But the people are very much interested in living in peace. That was Kathy Sultan, who's just completed a trip over to the Middle East, over to the area of Gaza. She had two Chippewa Valley people as compatriots on this trip, and one of them is right here, Tom Chisholm. Tom, had you been over to the Middle East before, and what was your impression of your experience at this time? I've never really been in the Middle East prior to this trip, and I, in general, wasn't interested in it, I thought. I've always considered Palestine and Israel, despite its biblical history as the unholy land, particularly in my lifetime. It's been a place of constant conflict. But finally, I wanted to see, after having read President Carter's book, "Peace or Apartheid," I think its name. I wanted to corroborate his description of the problem, see the separation rule myself, and talk personally to the citizens of that beleaguered part of the former Fertile Crescent. And this group accomplished the mission for me. We visited different groups of people interested in finding a peaceful solution every day of the 11 days, I think, that we spent traveling. And we found that if, in their opinion, the leaders of the Palestinians and the leaders of the Israelis would somehow simply disappear, the people would solve the problems themselves, and there would be a single nation of equal citizenships. As it is today, as you know, the Israelis have the passports to the Palestinians. Our not citizens cannot leave their nation. If they leave, they can't return. And because of the separation wall, some people never leave their own homes anymore. Women are particularly subjected to maintaining their home while their husbands find work. If they can find it. And if they leave, they have to have a permit to get through the separation walls and the checkpoints, which are everywhere evident. Now, I've been to Berlin when the Berlin wall was present, and it is a repugnant design. This one is equally repugnant, but this wall, but even bigger and longer. But checkpoint Charlie pales in significance to some of the checkpoints, particularly the so-called terminals, where those without proper credentials must humiliate themselves by passing through, including children, from school, men, from work. Or this is something that is perhaps best described as, no, it's not surreal because it certainly is reality. But it's something that unless you see for yourself, begs description for the average American who perhaps, unfortunately, is more interested in the Green Bay Packers and their conflicts with the National Football League than the Israelis and the Palestinians. So despite my advanced age and my previous experience donated by the taxpayers for my trips with the military around various other places in the world, this was an eye-opening experience. And it's certified for me, Jim Carter's observations and his books without question. Despite the commentary and the discussions that it provoked, particularly, by the American Jewish community and Professor Dershowitz in Boston. Thank you, Tom. Jason, you're the youngest member of the delegation here from the Chippewa Valley. Have you had a long-term interest in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine? Is this your first visit over there and what was your impression of the area? I've had an interest in the area. I have an interest in international human rights, international relations, and my direct connection to the area actually, thankfully, came from Kathy. Kathy just published a book on the Hezbollah Israeli War in 2006, and I'd recently moved back to town this summer from Missoula, Montana, where I was living. And she graciously asked me if I wanted to help her proofread her book and work with her a little bit on it, and I did so, and sort of that sort of helped develop my interest in the area, and I became really, really a seeker of knowledge of trying to figure out what is actually happening there. What is happening with the Palestinians? What is happening in that conflict? Because from my perspective, it may be the defining conflict of the next 100 years, and I can maybe get into that a little bit later. That being said, it is my first trip to the Middle East, and I went there knowing that I didn't know that much. For good and bad, I came back realizing that I still don't know that much. I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge there, tremendous amount, but it's a testimony to two things, not necessarily not only potentially from some people's perspective, bias media coverage in the United States, but even more importantly, the lack of media coverage, fundamentally important. That's why it was so tremendously important for me to get that information, and the other thing being not only the lack of media coverage, the complexity of the issue. Actually, I should say the proximate complexity of the issue. I think ultimately, you can go back, and it's simple in terms of the different historical perspectives that people have, but there's a lot of complexity when you look at the issue currently, and how it's actually taking place on the ground. For me, it was a tremendous opportunity to just talk with people that live the occupation. So not only for Palestinians, the occupation is their life, because they live under it every single day. It is their way of life. It was impossible for me in the United States to even read BBC, hear each the newspaper in Israel, to really get an understanding, you have to experience it and see it for yourself. And to me, what the important thing is taking that experience, what I found, what I saw, the people I talk with, their beliefs, how they view the conflict, both Israeli and Palestinians, and come back here and share it with people in the United States to give them at least something because they have nothing. And to me, fundamentally, that's what was of most importance about this trip. Well, that having been said, Jason, what was your experience? What did you see? First hand, you saw people, you saw the buildings, you saw the wall. What was your experience? Oh, very, very difficult question to answer in a short, terse couple sentences. But what I saw was an occupation. I saw people, again, whose lives are defined by the occupations, whose ability to provide economically for themselves is limited from the barrier wall, which is being constructed, separating the West Bank from Israel, is separating doing many things, but one of which is separating people from the agricultural lands, the Palestinian people are an agricultural people. And in a lot of cases, that wall has separated them from their way, their olive orchards, their citrus groves, from their basic economic viability. It's making them not economically viable. That's one of the biggest things. Another huge issue is the encroachment of settlements into the West Bank. Israelis, settlers who now live in the West Bank, and it's important to distinguish Israeli settlers are people who are living in the West Bank across the Green Line, which was delineated in the 1949 Armatis Agreement. It's also called the Armatis Line. There's a variety of words for it. And Israelis now living in that part of the West Bank. There's about 450,000, at least 450,000 settlers in the West Bank. That population has grown 150% from 1993 to 2004. And it's important to know that that's during the Oslo Peace Accords. During that time, the settlement population was increasing. And also equally as importantly, although the peak number of settlements that were being developed peaked in 1987, new developments being created, development continued from 1994 to currently. Almost every year, literally every year, new settlements were being created again during the Oslo Peace Process. So as you can imagine, that's a difficult thing for Palestinians to swallow essentially, is the desire to want to be at the peace table, but at the same time, more and more people are coming into the West Bank. The settlement is one of the most important issues, at least from my most important political issues. In the last thing I'll say about that, throwing around statistics isn't great, but I think these are important ones in this situation. The number of Israelis living in the West Bank, the growth rate is roughly 5% annually. The growth rate of Israel, people moving into Israel proper, is about 1.8%. That's saying something about the demographics of Israelis in the West Bank and in Israel itself. So those are two sort of things that I saw on the ground, the reality that I observe that are challenged for the Palestinians. And the last thing I'll say before I give it back is the settlements essentially create a fragmentation. So the best analogy I can use is I was previously a conservation biologist. And what you have in endangered wildlife populations is you see habitat being eroded. And you see them starting to live in small, isolated populations and claves almost, if you want to call it that. And that threatens the viability of grizzly bears of numerous species in North Bank. Now in the world is habitat degradation, and you hate to say this, but that's a similar reality to what the Palestinians are living in the West Bank. The settlements are taking their lands, not just the settlements where they're using for agriculture, all the lands associated with it. And the roads that connect these settlements into the other cities in Israel are creating this small patchwork. That's the probably the best work, patchwork of Palestinians taking away their culture and their way of life. Sounds like it really has affected you, Jason. Jason, you mentioned Kathy's book or her latest of her three books. Kathy, tell us about the newest book and I guess you can outline a little bit about your past, your history in Beirut and so on. The newest book is entitled Tragedy in South Lebanon, the Israeli Hezbollah War of 2006. I have a book signing at borders on May 13th at 7 p.m. This is a book that I think it began out of my concern for Lebanon. If anybody has read my first book, Beirut Heart, they know that part of my heart does still reside in Beirut. It's a place where I found my place to grow as a young woman, a young mother, a young wife. It's a place that I joyously return to whenever possible. And I think I was totally outraged when this war, that in past incursions on the border had taken place literally on the border and not gone any farther, turned into a full-scale war with destruction, ended up killing almost 1,200 people and wounding 33,000 people. On the Israeli side there were equal tragedies, there were 39 civilians killed and 112 Israeli soldiers died. So both sides again suffered in the conflict. And what I did in this book was talk to people who lived in Haifa, Israelis and Palestinians who lived in Haifa. I've interviewed an Israeli soldier who happened to have fought in the same Pacific battle as the Hezbollah fighter I interviewed. So those two interviews are in my book, and it goes back to my, if you want my theme that I've sort of adopted as a writer, and that is to talk to the individual and tell their story, the unheard voices of the Middle East, because they're the people who were on the ground, they're the people who lived the daily conflict, and they're the people given the opportunity who would solve the conflict themselves. And it's very, very eerie, I think, to read the Israeli point of view and the Hezbollah point of view, and they're essentially saying the same thing. They're there, they're protecting their land while the Israeli will say we know we're not protecting our land, we're trying to occupy someone else's land. So there's a human aspect in the stories that I tell. The book also goes on to criticize, rightly so in my opinion, the mass media, the corporate media, for the way it handled its coverage of the war, which I found utterly disgusting. It goes and talks about recent conflicts, I mean, recent political conflicts within the Lebanese society, and how that affects not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Lebanese people themselves. And I draw on my experience from as far back as 1969 when I first moved to Beirut with my Lebanese husband, raised my children there, spent 14 and a half years there, and it's a place I still call home, so it's a place I know intimately, I know a lot of people there, and I care enough about them, Palestinians, which I didn't always care about, that was a new sort of political epiphany for me when really the first Intifada began. And the Israeli people, whom I still consider as in many respects as my heroes, because they had the courage and the fortitude and the human capacity to go down in the streets of Tel Aviv and Haifa and Jaffa in 1982 when Ariel Sharon and the IDF were bombing Beirut, and they were protesting what their government did. They're probably one of the only people in the world who did so. So there again, my theme is always people, and what people do for other people. And I think I tried to do that in this new book, too. When I was talking to you earlier, Kathy, you mentioned something about the checkpoints. Now, I've seen in the news recently, oh, they're taking down checkpoints that were internal, and so things are getting better over in those occupied territories, Gaza. What really happened? You were there to see that, and what did you witness? While we were there, Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was speaking to his guest at the moment, Condoleezza Rice, and assuring her that they would dismantle 55 roadblocks. But on the other side of his mouth, he said, oh, by the way, we're extending settlement expansion in the West Bank. So, I mean, that was a kind of a very mixed message that he was sending to Condoleezza Rice. Now, our very first meeting in Jerusalem was with the United Nations Bureau that deals with humanitarian crisis in the West Bank. And he gave a very poignant and disturbing PowerPoint presentation. He starts with his empty map. And then as his speech goes on, he starts with where the settlements are in the map. And then he adds in the Israeli-only roads in the map. And then he defines where the separation barrier is. And then he shows where the annexation of the Jordan Valley is. And suddenly, you see this map so full of military zones and closed zones. And Israeli-only roads and settlement blocks and the separation barrier that goes in some instances, 35 kilometers inside the West Bank to incorporate the aquifers and the best agricultural lands. And suddenly you say, there's never going to be a contiguous Palestinian state. We left that meeting with this Irishman who was the UN officer. And just coincidentally, the very last night we were at our hotel having dinner. He walked in with guests. He came over and saluted us, asked us how our two weeks had been. And we asked him specifically, we were all curious about the news that 50 checkpoints were being dismantled. And he chuckled because he said, just today I verified the last of those so-called checkpoints. What the Israelis had done was in front of the permanent checkpoints, a lot of which we saw, they went in and constructed other checkpoints right before these permanent ones. And then in order to fulfill his promise to Condolee Sir Rice, they went in and dismantled the most recent checkpoints that they had put up right in front of the permanent ones. So essentially, they did nothing at all. Now, it's one thing to say, oh, this guy was saying that is UN. People don't really believe the UN. Well, on the plane coming home the next day, I read in the International Herald Tribune the exact same words that this UN officer had given us. So this was not verified by one individual. This is verified by a lot of individuals. So it's a game. It's a game that apparently this administration is willing to play. Will there be a peace process, not in the near future? If we got rid of the leaders, we got rid of the military-industrial complex in this country. If we got rid of military leaders in there, surely we could have peace. Because I'm convinced, and I will remain convinced that it's a people-to-people thing and people can do it. Get rid of the leaders. Kathy, given that you had the advantage of having lived in Lebanon in the Middle East, and you lived in a country which was multi-religious in a way that the Chippewa Valley is not fully so. Is religion the problem? I mean, is it people? Is it politics? What is the cause? Can't Christianity and Judaism and Islam at their highest, couldn't they resolve the problem? Or are they always destined to be causes of the problem? Religion has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just said, it has nothing to do with the Lebanese Civil War. It was injected as a sure-fire way to inflame people. But religion has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And we heard this from Israelis and Palestinians. There is a history, world history in the Middle East of Islam and Judaism living peacefully side by side. It's the Crusaders who came in and rigged havoc along the Eastern Mediterranean. It certainly wasn't the Jews and the Muslims who lived together, who worshipped together, who converted together to each other's religions who intermarried together. There is no such thing as a religious conflict. Those who tell you that are those who are projecting that is that and trying to continue it as a religious conflict when it's not. Kathy, since you had the perspective of having been there before, I'd be interested in hearing how you think that things on the ground have changed. I've read about house demolitions, for instance. They're just tearing down villages and moving people out of the way. How does it look differently this time when you were there from, I guess, five, six years ago? I think the biggest shock for me was one of seeing the wall. In 2002 March when I was there, the wall had not begun. It began later on that year, but something I hadn't seen was an absolute total shock to me. And I must say I have to use the A-word. I have to use the A-word, which is apartheid. And that's the word that Jimmy Carter used, so I think he's given permission for the likes of us to be able to use that word as well. And in fact, Omert, when he returned from Annapolis, this was not broadcast here, of course, but in the Israeli newspapers had, it's one I read every single day, he told his nation, if we don't decide to resolve this crisis, we are going to become an apartheid nation. Now, he didn't say that because he felt sorry for the Palestinians living under the apartheid regime in the West Bank. He was talking about demographics. Now, demographics are the only thing that worries the Israeli government because sooner or later, there will be more Palestinians than Israelis living there. And that will automatically de facto create an apartheid system. But the reality is that compared in the six years, Israeli settlement expansion is rampant. One place in particular was a village that, I mean, a little hilltop vineyard, the 100 acres that we visited just outside of Bethlehem, belongs to a Christian Palestinian. He has all of the legal papers that go back to the mid-1800s in his family. He has been spending over $100,000 of his own money continuously trying to prove in an Israeli Supreme Court that that is rightfully his. Israelis have yet to declare, yes, duad nasser, that's your property and we will no longer bother you. He's hoping that ultimately he'll get that piece of paper that says he's got free and that the encroaching Israeli settlements literally around his hill will not come and swallow him up. But that is not a given. He lives with that fear every day. And for me to see the number of checkpoints, the huge terminals that were built. When I was there in March of 2002 at the Klandia checkpoint, which was one of the more considerable checkpoints at the time, it divided Ramallah from Jerusalem, I walked through. I mean, it wasn't a terminal, it wasn't anything official. Now, it's a huge big building and it says, "Welcome to Israel when you go through it." And there's a turnstile and it goes, "Click, click, click." And the person behind the booth has total charge of whether you go all the way through or you stay inside of that turnstile. Being interrogated or not. I mean, it's a hideous process. Every single man, woman and child goes through that when they're going to school. Whether it's a grade school child, whether it's a man going to work, a professor going to his university class, every single Palestinian who has to go through that checkpoint. And they can only do that if they have permission to go into Jerusalem. But these are hideous acts of cruelty. And I continuously talk about this recent visit to most people that I see if they listen to me. Because for me, it's so hard to process what I saw. And I can't keep it inside of me, I have to talk about it. Because I can't process how a nation, how a people who were so oppressed themselves and suffered so hideously at the hands of a Hitler can turn around and be doing the exact same thing to another people. No, there are not six million people who have been brutally murdered. But there is a system of oppression that should not exist in the year 2008. You know, I've never seen these checkpoints myself. You mentioned everyone has to go through them, but you then you qualified. The Israelis, do they go through the same checkpoint or is there a separate drinking fountain for the Israelis and a separate drinking fountain for the Palestinians? There's even a separate road for Israelis only. The Palestinians are not allowed to drive on. Israeli would never have to go through a checkpoint. And if they do, and they see their license plate, they're buzzed right through. But they don't go through the turnstile. There's a drive-through that an Israeli would go through. And if one of their bypass roads happens to go through one of the checkpoints, they have a special lane. They're waved right through. They never have their car stopped, their hood opened, their trunk opened, their seats taken out of the car to see if there was something being smuggled in through. There's total humiliation at every level of Palestinian life. And that is part and parcel from head to toe that has to do with the apartheid system in the West Bank. And it's so cleverly done, Mark, because you have the hilltops, which are for the most part the Israeli settlements. And then you have below, that's where the Palestinians live. And then you have the roads that go over these Palestinian towns. But now, because Palestinians are saying, "What about us? We can't get from village A to village B." They've decided to put tunnels under there. So you've got these layers in place, so that your average Israeli who lives in a settlement saying, "Mala Domingue," which is this absolutely splendid settlement we went all the way through it. Green, lush, flowers, pools, whatever. Of course, they've used the water that belongs to the Palestinians there. And they will buzz down one of these Israeli-only roads to Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem, to Haifa, to their work, home in 20 minutes, 15 to half an hour, no traffic. They never have to see any of this. Now, some of these people are economic settlers, some of these people are ideological settlers. Ideologicals are, "God gave me this land, so therefore I have the right to live here." The others, they're average Joes, and they would not otherwise have the ability to live in these plush settlements. But the governments give such lucrative deals, like, "We'll pay three-quarters of your mortgage. Go live there," because we want the West Bank populated. Does that answer your question? It sure does. I want to thank you for joining us today. Kathy, I know you have to run. I'll continue talking with Thomas and Jason here. Thank you, Kathy, for joining us for spirit and action. And for doing this witness over 20-plus years, whatever it is you've been dealing with, the Middle East. Just to remind you, you're listening to a Northern spirit radio production called "Spirit in Action." And I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. We're talking to Kathy Sultan, Tom Chisholm and Jason Hicks, just back from a two-week visit to Israel and Palestine with a group called "Interfaith Peace Builders." We just finished talking with Kathy, who is now taking off for another engagement. And now, let's hear some more from Tom Chisholm and Jason Hicks. Tom, you served in the military for a number of years. You're a veteran for peace. You're a medical doctor. What was your perspective on the medical system, the health care system there, in the Middle East, in Palestine and Israel? What did you see of that? Well, we really didn't see any of it. The Israelis have one of the best medical systems in the world, and it's a universal system in general. But it doesn't include the Palestinians. They have no human or civil rights. Strangely enough, the major hospitals are in East Jerusalem, which is a Palestinian spot. But the Palestinians have no real right to use them. Now, if you were a Palestinian in Gaza, which I call the Gaza Gulag, and you're sick and you're seriously ill, the chances are you're going to die there. You're going to die if you're a cute disease, or if the situation continues, you're going to die of starvation and thirst. But there is a way to get out. You have to make application. You have to be seriously ill. You almost have to be on the verge of death. You have to get a permit. You have to have some liaison with the Israeli physician outside of Gaza. So by the time you meet all the requirements, you're likely to die. Now, on the other hand, there is physicians for human rights that we visited in Tel Aviv. They visit the Palestinian refugee camps. So these people, for instance, in Hayshed refuge camp, which we spend a night in, have a health care facility there with a minimum amount of medical equipment for my own observation. And that was donated not by the United States, but by the Japanese. They do have physicians there. But it's basic primary care, not unlike what I deliver at the free clinic. And Chippo or the other volunteers deliver no clar. If they get seriously ill, they may go to an emergency room, and they are by law expected to be seen. If they're seen at the volunteer health clinic and they need immediate care, they are sent to either one emergency room or another, and they have to call up and see if they'll be accepted. So health care number one for the Israelis is probably the best in the world. They claim they have the lowest infant mortality rate, much lower than the United States, but they do not include the Palestinians whose infant mortality is five times what it is for the Israeli mothers. You know, Tom, I would have thought that your plate was plenty full. I know you've been active with the Veterans for Peace. I know you do a lot of work. So as a physician, even though you're a retired physician, I guess, you've had plenty on your plate. Why did you add the Middle East to the areas that you had to be concerned about? Well, I had no intention ever to go to Israel. I wasn't interested in seeing the holy sites, but I was interested in certifying, as I mentioned, what President Carter had described in his book. And so I'm left sort of disappointed that, in fact, what he said was true. And as Kathy Salton mentioned, it's almost too much to absorb, to digest and assimilate in just a few weeks. One really has to study our notes and probably go back for a second look to digest it, and I'm able to describe it either in writing or at a presentation well enough. So the average American uninformed citizen will get the picture. Thank you, Tom. Jason, I was wondering, this is your first experience going over there. You went with this Interfaith Peace Builders group. There are three of you from the Chippewa Valley. Who else was on this tour? And the composition of the group you were with, are they diverse religions? Were there Jews and Muslims and Christians and atheists in the group? What was the group like and what was the sentiment? I was really wondering if there was some kind of a Christian fundamentalist, one who we normally, they're candid in favor of Israel against everyone else. Was there anyone like that with the group who was checking out the facts? That's a great question, Mark, actually. Our group, I think, consisted of primarily Christians. I'm not going to speak for Tom, but Tom is Catholic. So there's people that are Catholic. There were some Protestants on the trip as well. There were definitely people that were atheist. There was two Jewish members on the trip. And then I myself practice Buddhism. I'm involved in the meditation group on Tuesday nights in Eau Claire. So there was a wide variety of different perspectives. Now, there was no practicing Muslim on this particular delegation, but that has been the case in the past. In the past, there has been people of the Islamic faith that have traveled with us. So, general wide diversity, in terms of Christian, more of what the United States, U.S. Christian fundamentalist, I would say that that's not the case. Like Tom said, I believe there were two people that had been on the typical "Israeli pilgrimage." So they had come and seen the sites that most people that tend to be practices of the Christian faith come to see. So they got a beautiful dichotomy, essentially, of seeing what Christians see that come visit from all over the world and the other reality that exists in Palestine that those people don't see on those trips. That contrast is a pretty interesting and beautiful thing in itself. And so another interesting sort of component, it was, well, we were there, Reverend Hagie, who is a Christian Zionist, who teaches strongly in support of Judaism and the support of Israel, happened to have a thousand parishioners traveling with him in Jerusalem when we were there. And so that created an interesting dynamic because some people in Israel are supportive of him and others are not. So that's a movement that is particularly interesting in the United States, because it's been developing, particularly over the past, I would say ten years or so, is the Christian Zionist movement, a group that's very supportive of the Jewish state of Israel. And you said there were a thousand of his parishioners with him on this particular outing of theirs. How many were in your interfaith peace builder group? The small number of thirteen. So you must have felt pretty outnumbered. Is there any sense of, we better watch our peace and cues here or else the Israeli government is going to shot us up? Is there any of that kind of fear or is it, you know, we're the big brave Americans. We can go wherever we want. We're the patrons for Israel. You know, they count on us for three billion dollars a year or so. We don't have to, you know, bite our tongue. Did you feel one way or the other? On either side, I mean, you might have felt afraid when you're amongst Palestinians as well. I'm just wondering how it felt to you in these various locales. I actually really appreciate that question mark because I can answer that and it also leads me into another, I think, very important aspect of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Personally, I didn't feel afraid. I felt more afraid of, to be most honest, from the Israeli Defense Forces, which is essentially the Israeli military. I felt personally, I can't speak for anyone else, almost no fear personally when I was in Palestine. Ramallah, Hebron, all those areas. Dehasia refugee camp. Some of our suicide bombers have come from. Where you see Saddam Hussein pictures on the wall, Sheikh Wavada, all these people. I didn't feel afraid at all there. I felt most afraid when I'd see IDF agents all over soldiers carrying M16s, all over, you see them all over Israel. You see Apache helicopters flying up and down the beach in Tel Aviv. That, to me, scares me more than anything else did. And in terms of the aspect of the international, being international is different in Israel and Palestine. Because Israel, when you're going through checkpoints, when you're dealing with the Israeli Defense Forces, they don't want to look bad in front of the international community. I mean, there's definitely some truth to that. The actions are more limited. The severity of their actions are more constrained because of that exposure. They don't want to have some ramifications come back to how they treat internationals. And that is why, for instance, the Christian peacemakers operate in Palestine. They go to checkpoints. They'll sit there at checkpoints to make sure that they're treated with dignity. The Palestinians in respect from the Israeli soldiers. Because when they're there, the Israeli military is much, much less likely to take serious action against the Palestinians. Seriously negative action, degrading their human rights. Not saying they all do that, but it's well documented that it has happened. Now, the last thing I don't want to keep going on forever, Mark, so, but to me, this is one of the most fundamental things that you're talking about. It comes back to fear. And unfortunately, and I'm not sure if Tom would agree, but to me, fear is what's driving this conflict. What you have is you have two deep differing historical perspectives. And unfortunately, those historical perspectives are living out in their current lives, in current Israeli and Palestinian lives. We talked a little bit about this before. There's also the Israeli side of this conflict. Suicide bombings from 2000 to 2005 kill a thousand Israelis. There's no doubt that's horrific and unacceptable. In Sutter wrote, "The Qasam rockets landing and terrorizing that community psychologically and killing 11 Israelis." That's unacceptable. But the question is, are those things, that violence, enough to account for the level of fear that the Israelis have in their lives? And I don't believe that's the case. I think what you have is you have 2,000 years of where Jews have been oppressed in the world, severely oppressed, murdered. I mean, the examples are numerous. And what's happened is, is that oppression has come to live now in Palestine. It's living here now. That 2,000 years has created a militaristic society. It's created a culture of fear. Not that some of the fear is in place. It does. There is some. But a lot of it has been created. It's being created in the Israeli schools. What they're taught that using military means fighting is how you solve conflicts, not using dialogue to solve conflicts. They're taught that the Arab countries want to kill them. They want to destroy them. Throw them into the sea. And when you're teaching that in the schools, it's really, really hard to escape the trappings of fear. It's almost impossible. And so I think it's very, very important for people to understand where that fear is coming from, the foundation of fear. That's what needs to be broken. The last thing I'll say before I'll hand it back to you is, I got this on both sides. In the Palestinian-Israeli side, we meet with Israeli settlers. We met with some Hebrew university students. In both cases, I heard that they want to push us into the Mediterranean Sea. That's what the Palestinians and Arabs want to do. And then we had a homestay with a Palestinian family, and I stayed with this guy Islam, who was very someone to my age. Very kind, compassionate person, was very nice to me. At the end of the night, he said to me, "Jason, the Jews want to kill all of us." And what you have here, as you can see, two very, very contrasting viewpoints on what's happening. And the problem comes from those viewpoints they have, come from who those people interact with. The people living in Hebron, their only exposure to Israelis is to the military, to the police, or to settlers. That's it, because it's illegal for Israelis to enter the West Bank. So their only view is people that hold a very, very strong opinion of how to deal with the Palestinian situation. And I don't believe that that's representative of the Israelis as a whole, of the Israeli people, of the Jews, the other Jews that live in Israel. And at the same time, the Israelis, most of them, have never met a Palestinian. All they hear is that Palestinians are terrorists, and they want to kill them, and they want to destroy them. Because again, it's illegal for them to go into the West Bank. So you have two people who've never met a "person from the other side." And to me, that strikes at the heart of the problem, and at the heart of the conflict. It's really interesting that by law, they cut off communications. So the only way that you end up seeing each other is either through rumor or through the media, whatever the media is. And so hopefully here, it's spirit and action will provide a snapshot that goes beyond the limitations that are, the curtain. Even the iron curtain, or maybe the wall, the wall that lives in between people. It's kind of interesting that you have a perspective, a religious perspective, Buddhism, which is not part of the Middle East, traditionally. How does religion look to you? I mean, you said at one point, as you were speaking, that people would think that they solve things by fighting. Evidently, that's not your perspective. Some people religiously think of themselves as soldiers of Christ, or whatever. And sometimes they think of that on a physical, and sometimes they think of it on a religious plane, which might not involve weapons, physical weapons. What's your perspective on violence, and how does religion look as you saw it there in the Middle East from a non-Christian Jewish or Muslim perspective? What I think you see is, I think you have the extremes of Israeli society, and you have the extremes of what the media portrays of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, particularly people of the Muslim faith, in terms of what means they use to achieve their ends. Which I don't think is a fair representation of the Islamic faith as a whole, and I think studies recently have borne that out. I'm not going to sit here and elaborate on it, but they did a survey, a 10-year study that John Esposito just analyzed the data set from, covering Muslim countries from around the world. And less than 1% of Muslims from around the world actually agree that using violence, target against civilians, is a justifiable means of achieving what their goals are. Less than 1%, which is astounding to me, and most interestingly, of that 1% that agree with it, use secular rationales as to why it's acceptable. We need to remove the imperialist, we need to get rid of these conquering people, they don't use the Quran or use religious viewpoints. Now, on the other hand, the people that are against using violence against civilians to achieve their goals cite the Quran in religious scripture as a rationale, why not to do it. Now, I think that's important to understand, and along with that, continuing that to the next step, I believe that most of the people in that region is Jews and Muslims fundamentally believe in peace through their religions. But what happens is it gets hijacked by a few that then use it to achieve what they want, and then the media covers it, and those people get the most press and become the most represented people of those faiths. All I can say is the Muslims and Jews that I met generally, to me, preach kindness and would like to practice compassion. I was a little bit curious about where they have you stay, where you're sleeping. Are they putting you up in the five star hotels? Are you just sleeping in people's homes? Do they have guards around you so that the settlers and the Palestinians and Israeli defense forces won't jump you? I'm just trying to get an idea of what the ambience that you're living in and how isolated or how incorporated you are into the landscape when you're there. Tom, you want to answer that? Well, we did not stay at a five star hotel, and the intention is to stay in a middle class or low class hotel. Our accommodations were satisfactory to me, and much better than a barracks. The food was fine, no one was sick, and we did not need any protection at any time. You asked Jason about fear. I had no perception or even concept of fear while I was there, except at one time when we approached a barrier with some Palestinians deliberately to see how it was maintained. Suddenly, a group of the soldiers or the guards appeared out of nowhere, it seemed to me, over the brow of the hill. One of our members mentioned that we were helping pay for it with our tax dollars, and the response was, I was surprised. I said, well, that's your problem, but I wanted where these soldiers came from until somebody pointed out a tower behind us, where a camera was so slowly revolving. They know exactly where everybody is, worth this ubiquitous system of surveillance, apparently, which occurs. But we slept overnight twice, and we felt comfortable. One time I slept in a home, a regular home with the Palestinians that was adequate. They seemed to have at that time a minimum amount of water, enough to eat and electricity at the time. The other place we stayed was at a refugee center, and they had built a special building for themselves, finally, and we had very comfortable quarters. We even had hot water in there. We weren't harassed by anybody. Did it seem the same to you there, Jason? Did you feel like the places you were in were safe, or were you out on the front? Did you really get to see what maybe the life of an average person in Gaza was like? Not in Gaza, just because it's completely closed off, so no one can go into Gaza. It would have been a good experience, but Gaza is something that I really can't comment on, because I didn't actually experience it. Now, the West Bank, because I'm from the United States, I don't think I can ever really understand what it's like for a Palestinian. But what I can do is observe and see, and come as close to that as you can. And I feel like we did a really good job like that. Just like Tom, not to reiterate what he said, but we got a wide ride. We stayed in a refugee camp. We also did a home stay with a Palestinian family. When we were in Jerusalem, we stayed in East Jerusalem, so that in itself was also another dynamic. Most Israelis don't go into East Jerusalem. In fact, when we met with Hebrew university students, we met with five of them one night for dinner to discuss the conflict, their perceptions, perspectives. At least two of them, I think three actually, had never even been in East Jerusalem before, 22 years old. They drew us on the opposite side of the city, which says a lot about their perception of the Palestinians and their perception of the conflict. One of the girls was literally in tears. You could see her eyes blowing up. She was scared to be in East Jerusalem. She was scared about what was going to happen to her. And I can't comment on the validity of her fear, because I wasn't in her shoes. I don't know what her background is, but I didn't share that same fear. This trip that you, all three of you just made was with interfaith peace builders. Do either of you have intent to sire to go back? Or is your work with interfaith peace builders is done now that you've come back? Or is it now that your work starts? Are you going to go out and talk to everyone? Do Paul Revere run through the cities and say, here's what's going on? What is your chore? What is your work now that you're back? Well, our work is manifested by our visiting with you right now. We wish to present both sides of the Israeli-Palestine story to as many people as we can, because we don't think that both sides of the story has ever told. This administration, previous administrations, may not be told by the forthcoming administration. It certainly isn't, we don't believe, printed or spoken about in the media. So it's our duties now to try to reveal the fear that we mentioned that you brought up, that this is probably magnified well out of proportion, and as used really as a political tool, even for this preemptive war that we still are suffering through so many years. We have to dispel this concept that we have something to fear. There are alternative methods of settling differences, and the most important one is to meet ordinary people. So it's our duty, having experienced a short two weeks to inform as many people as possible, that there is a problem that persists. It's not as bad as it has been in the past. It can get better, but it won't get better without our taking part in solving the problem. Well, thanks for getting the news out to people now, Tom. Jason, you got a big speaking tour set up, or do you have something else in your life to occupy you? That's an interesting thought. I do. I've been teaching. I've been substituting in the Eau Claire area. Actually this summer, I'm going to be doing an internship with a non-violent peace force, which is based out of Minneapolis, which is sort of a continuation of my experience in Israel and Palestine. I made it directly to the conflict. I pretty much echo exactly what Tom said. He summarized it very well. I think the one other thing too is that it's important for us to meet with our legislators. So Tom and I have both. I mean, I'm going to try and I'd like to meet with fine gold. I'd like to meet with coal. I'd like to talk to people that have their ear in how they determine their own policy and their voting policy in the Senate. That's also a goal of mine. I appreciate the work you did, both going out, putting yourselves on the front lines there. As we said, once you step through the fear, you can see a lot of good going on on both sides there. I'm glad that you bring it back. Keep sharing the word here in the Chippewa Valley. Thanks so much, Jason Tom and Kathy, who's already on a road there. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Very welcome. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate your time. We've been listening to a Spirit and Action interview with Kathy Salton, Tom Chisholm, and Jason Hicks just back from a two-week visit to Israel and Palestine with a group called Interfaith Peace Builders. Find more out about this group via their interfaithpeacebuilders.org website. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You