Two EMU student organizations are co-sponsoring an event meant to challenge the EMU and larger community with the issue of economic justice in Israel-Palestine.

J. Daryl and Cindy Byler, Mennonite Central Committee Middle East representatives for Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, will speak 8 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Common Grounds Coffeehouse in the University Commons.

The couple will focus on facts on the ground following the Israeli offense on Gaza and the larger Israeli occupation, draw connections between U.S. policy and present the need for a morally responsible investment/divestment campaign.

The Bylers will also speak at a forum 3:45-5:15 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 19, in the Strite Conference Room of EMU’s Campus Center. They will reflect on MCC’s approach and activities in interfaith bridgebuilding and the challenges they encounter in their work.

Daryl Byler, a 1979 EMU graduate, is an attorney and former director of MCC’s Washington, D.C., office. He was named EMU’s “alumnus of the year” in 1992.

The EMU Peace Fellowship and Res Judicata student pre-law group are co-sponsoring Wednesday’s program. Thursday’s forum is co-sponsored by the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society (ACRS) and the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).

Admission is free to both events.

Everyone entering Lehman Auditorium Wednesday morning, Apr. 23, for the final chapel of spring semester was asked to produce a personal identification or “please step aside.”

Students in EMU’s semester-long Middle East program acted as border guards as people convened for the chapel service as reminder of the reality that people experience daily at checkpoints separating Israel and Palestine.

Students Kelly Brewer, Daniel Akers and Lindsey Reinford light candles of hope at the close of the chapel program for the people they met in the Middle East. Click here to see more photos… Photo by Jon Styer

The group of 30 students left campus Jan. 11, led by Linford L. Stutzman, associate professor of culture and mission at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Janet M. Stutzman, former director of alumni/parent relations at EMU. They returned Apr. 22.

The group lived and studied in Israel and the West Bank, immersing themselves in the ancient/modern world of Jews, Christians and Muslims. They studied in Jerusalem and worked in an Israeli kibbutz and at Nazareth Village, a recreation of first century village at the time of Jesus.

‘Following Jesus’

“We learned firsthand about following Jesus by being in the very places where he walked,” said EMU sophomore Grace Schrock Hurst from Harrisonburg, Va. “We are home wherever we have our anchor in Him, the foundation of our faith.”

“We heard many stories and experiences of Israeli and Palestinian people,” noted EMU junior Kelly Smucker from Canby, Ore., and sophomore Jenny Hochstetler from Iowa City, Iowa. “Both have valid concerns. There are no easy answers. They all want the same thing – a sense of security and a future for their children,” they said.

“We came back with a sense of hope amid many difficult questions,” added EMU senior Hannah Yoder from Hubbard, Ore.

Guatemala and U.S/Mexico Cross-cultural

The 19 students in EMU’s semester-long Guatemala and U.S/Mexico Border seminar, led by associate campus pastor Byron J. Peachey and faculty member Deanna Durham, led a chapel service Monday, Apr. 21. They reflected on “early culture shock” as they hit the ground running, quickly immersing themselves in intense language study.

Brian Hackman imitates their cross-cultural leader, Byron J. Peachey, while others sit in the “bus.” Peachey provided entertainment and humor on the many long bus rides, students said. Photo by Jon Styer

Before arriving in Guatemala, the group spent 10 days on the Mexico-Arizona border, talking with persons working on all sides of the immigration issue. As one student stated: “This experience really helped put faces on this many-faceted story.”

EMU junior Chris Hollinger from Lancaster, Pa., said his most “unforgettable” experience was a visit to a huge cemetery and sprawling city dump in Guatemala City, watching people pick through garbage. “This is a way of life for many,” he said. “They do it just to survive. How do you tell them that God loves them?” he asked.

An eye-opener for EMU sophomore Chris Esh from Philadelphia, Pa., was discovering that “Guatemalans drink inferior coffee while their best product is exported.” He came away convinced of “the need for more cooperatives that produce fairly-traded coffee, pay workers a fair wage and give greater respect for God’s creation.”

Among other highlights for the group: living with their host families and “quickly feeling loved and accepted,” field trips to awe-inspiring sites and seeing community service projects that “give local people a sense of dignity.”

Alain Epp Weaver, long-term Mennonite Central Committee representative in Palestine/Israel and specialist in Jewish-Christian dialogue, will discuss the possibilities for reconciliation between Israeli Jews and internally-displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel through tours being organized to Palestinian villages inside Israel that were destroyed in 1948.

Ala Eldin Hamdan, Fadi Rabieh and Ruba Musleh, students in EMU’s from Palestine/Israel, will join Epp for a panel discussion on Middle East issues.

The presentation is open to the public free of charge. For more information, call (540) 432-4490.

Archbishop Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Arab, Christian and citizen of the modern state of Israel, brought his call for human understanding and practical response to the protracted conflict in the Middle East to the greater Harrisonburg area, Oct. 23-25. He addressed a service club, an interdenominational pastors group, students and faculty at two local universities and the broader community.

Elias Chacour (l.) talks with former EMU President Myron S. Augsburger of Harrisonburg.
Photo by Jim Bishop

In every setting during his three-day visit, Chacour underscored the critical need for active peacebuilding in his strife-torn region.

“Every time you take the side of one of the peoples here, you become just one more enemy to the other,” he said. “What is needed are bridge builders who start in the middle to reach each side.

“Humanity today is waging war against an idea – against terrorism – that when responded to with violence only breeds more violence.

“Help stop the generalizations – calling persons radicals, fanatics, terrorists,” Chacour pleaded. “Don’t condemn an entire people because of the actions of some who act out of desperation in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip, in the refugee camps.

“Peace needs no contemplators,” he told his audience. “It needs actors, persons who are willing to get their hands dirty, to be salt and light, connecting people with each other and to God.

‘Rediscover what God has created’

“If I would have one message, it is for persons to look in the mirror and rediscover what God has created all of us to be – that includes reaching out to those we don’t agree with, our enemies,” Chacour said.

“We don’t need more Christian groups coming to view the historic sites of the Holy Land,” told an ecumenical gathering of church leaders. “What we need is your friendship, for you to stand in solidarity and to build bridges to people on all sides of this conflict, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

“Go to your own Galilee and serve others, forgive them and help them live together in peace,” he challenged.

Chacour, a three-times nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, is president and founder of Mar Elias Educational Institutions in the Galilee area of northern Israel. The school system serves 3,000 young people, aged kindergarten through college, from the major faith traditions in that area of the world

By Tom Mitchell, Daily News-Record

Upon taking the podium at Monday

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

Sherene Abdulhadi, a Muslim Palestinian from Jerusalem, Roni Hammerman, a Jewish Israeli from Jerusalem, and Amira Hillal, a Christian Palestinian from Beit Sahour in the West Bank, will speak and answer questions in two settings – 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27 in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU and at 8:30 p.m. in the Common Grounds Coffeehouse in the University Commons.

The women’s appearance here is part of a two-week “Jerusalem Women Speak” tour of congregations, schools and civic groups in 15 cities across the United States. They are sponsored by Partners for Peace (), a Washington, D.C.-based non-government organization working on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, in cooperation with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), campus ministries and Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

“With the ‘war on terror’ it is more important than ever for Americans to understand the complex situation in the Middle East,” a spokesperson for Partner for Peace said. Policy decisions made in Washington, our personal safety and the increasing cost of energy, which affects so many aspects of our lives from the cost of transportation to heating our homes, are connected to the Middle East.

“A just resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian issue is in the interest of all Americans and will contribute to stability in a region of great strategic and economic importance to the United States,” he said.

Sherene Abdulhadi, a Muslim Palestinian

Sherene Abdulhadi

Sherene Abdulhadi, 30, was born into a Muslim family and raised in a secular household in occupied Jerusalem. In 1995, she graduated from Boston College, majoring in social psychology and women锟絪 studies. She went on to earn her masters degree in conflict resolution and international development at George Mason University. Since that time, she has worked with a broad range of Palestinian businesses and NGOs on institutional capacity building and management consulting and has devoted her career to Palestinian economic development and the sustenance of Palestinian private sector.

Ms Abdulhadi has worked as a policy analyst for the Joint Palestinian-Israeli Economic Committee of the Technical Support Unit established in 1998 to work out mechanisms for managing issues related to the environment, labor, telecommunications, tax regulation, trade policy and other issues critical to Israeli and Palestinian cooperation.

She also consulted for various Palestinian organizations, most prominent of which is the Palestine Trade Promotion Organization (PalTrade). Working for PalTrade, Ms. Abdulhadi experienced firsthand the constraints imposed on the Palestinian economy by Israeli occupation policies.

More recently, Ms. Abdulhadi joined the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), West Bank and Gaza Mission, working as a trade and industrial adviser. Her work focused on the economic realities facing Palestinian trade and commerce following Israel锟絪 “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip.

Roni Hammerman, a Jewish Israeli

Roni Hammerman

Roni Hammerman, 65, lives in Jerusalem where she heads the department of humanities at the Bloomfield Library for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her father was active in the anti-fascist movement in Austria and spent time in the Woellersdorf concentration camp in 1934. After his release, he immigrated to Palestine where he met Ms. Hammerman锟絪 mother who had moved to the British administered territory from Hungary.

Dr. Hammerman’s family moved to Vienna in 1947 before the establishment of the state of Israel. She was brought up in Austria, attended the University of Vienna and spent two semesters at the University of Moscow studying Russian language and literature. She received her doctorate in Russian from the University of Vienna in 1968 and returned to Israel the following year. She taught Russian literature at the Hebrew University for ten years before taking her current position in 1979.

Hammerman is actively involved in Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch), a women’s human rights monitoring group which observes and reports on the conduct of Israeli soldiers at military and police checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. She has worked in the Israeli Peace Camp for many years, and during the first Palestinian Intifada participated in a group monitoring the incarceration of Palestinian children at the Israeli Police Prison in Jerusalem. Most of the children were imprisoned for throwing stones.

Amira Hillal, a Christian Palestinian

Amira Hillal

Amira Hillal, 26, is the women锟絪 project coordinator and administrative assistant for the Alternative Information Center (AIC). The AIC is a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization with offices in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour. Her work focuses on the dissemination of critical information and grassroots organizing skills. The AIC works to inform the Palestinian, Israeli and international communities about the current situation in Palestine/Israel.

The Women锟絪 Project, which she coordinates, aims to educate Palestinian women about the social and political issues that shape their lives. The project helps the women open avenues of involvement and participation in Palestinian society and politics.

Ms. Hillal is married and her daughter, Maisam, is two years old. She dreams of moving freely through all of Palestine without any barriers and complications and to feel that she has dignity as a Palestinian woman wherever she goes. Her hope is that one day she will be able to take Maisam to the zoo. She has never been to a zoo because Israeli occupation authorities refuse to grant her mother the necessary permits to travel through the military checkpoints segregating Bethlehem from Jerusalem.

Hillal states that her close working relationship with Israeli colleagues in the AIC “reflects my belief that the Palestinian people锟絪 ambition is to coexist with Israelis and to live in peace like human beings all over the world.”

Admission to the women’s presentations is free; donations will be accepted.

For more information, contact Matt Byrne or Jacob Pace (Partners for Peace).

An EMU program is aiming to turn the world around and make it a much more boring place.

Students are hoping to reverse anger and aggression through the .

The program hosted its annual open house on Saturday. The event serves as a fund-raiser, said program co-director Ruth Hoover Zimmerman.

But it

Eastern Mennonite Seminary is making plans for a study tour to the Middle East next spring.

Dorothy Jean Weaver, professor of New Testament at EMS, and Kevin A. Clark, a Virginia Mennonite Conference pastor, will host “Places, People and Prayers: A Cross-Cultural Encounter with the Holy Land,” May 4-27, 2005.

The trip will provide “a rich and multi-faceted introduction that has been home

The MCC-sponsored Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) participants from the Middle East, from left: Suzanne Dababne, Bassem Thabet, Rita Sawaya, Nabil Korieh (Father Daniel), and Rev. Radi Atalla Iskandar. This year, MCC provided scholarships for 17 of the 170 SPI participants from all continents.
Photo by Joel Fath

“The Middle East wouldn’t be itself without the Christians,” says Rita Sawaya, a Lebanese archaeologist and human rights worker.

But in the land where Jesus was born and where churches trace their history to the first centuries following his death and resurrection, the number of Christians is declining steadily. They are struggling to define their role and envision a future.

Sawaya was one of five Middle Easterners sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to attend this year’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute at EMU in Harrisonburg, Va. The others came from Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Their backgrounds highlight the diversity within the Middle Eastern Christian community, but all five also speak eloquently on a common theme: the unique role that Christians can play as peacemakers in the Middle East.

Nowhere is the declining number of Christians in the Middle East more dramatic than in Palestine, Jesus’ birthplace. In 1950, Christians made up 15 percent of what is now the West Bank and Gaza Strip; today, they are less than 2 percent.

Bassem Thabet, who works with MCC in Jerusalem, says Palestinian Christians are in an extremely difficult position. Squeezed by the Israeli occupation and attempts to “divide and conquer” on one end, and by the growth of Islamic extremism on the other, many are choosing to emigrate.

“Emigration is open to me,” says Thabet, whose brother lives in England. “But I feel that I need to stay.” While Christians’ minority status makes them vulnerable, it also lends credibility to their calls for both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work for peace, he says.

In Lebanon, Christians’ numbers are also dropping. Once a majority, with more access to wealth and education than their Muslim counterparts, Christians now make up some 30 percent of the population. The country was torn apart by civil war during the 1970s and ’80s.

Sawaya, a former refugee, remembers the horrors of that time.

“When you’ve suffered a lot, you sense the real meaning of peace, both within yourself and with others,” she says.

Her dream is now to create a conflict transformation program in Lebanon similar to the one she saw at EMU. Influencing her country in this way is part of her duty as a Christian, Sawaya says, pointing out that Christian thinkers and leaders have long played a key role in shaping the culture of the Middle East.

For Radi Atalla Iskandar, a similar conviction developed as he grew up in an area of Egypt split evenly along Christian-Muslim lines. The region was volatile, with Muslims resenting Christians’ great economic prosperity and power. But Iskandar observed how his father, a village official and a Christian, was able to maintain peace by building good relationships with Muslims.

Now a Presbyterian pastor in the city of Alexandria, Iskandar is an enthusiastic promoter of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Religious leaders with whom he works have begun to cooperate on addressing social problems, such as poverty, that create the conditions in which religious extremism flourishes.

“This dialogue is a journey, not something that’s finished,” he says.

His commitment and that of other Christians in the region give Sawaya hope. She draws a cross and labels each of its four points with one of the Middle East’s major religions: Islam, Judaism, Druze, Christianity. Christians are at the bottom of the diagram, she says, “because I see them as holding up and supporting the peace process.”

Rachel B. Miller Moreland is a writer/editor for MCC Communications.