Now how do you like it?
Cecilie Surasky reported this news yesterday on Muzzlewatch about eleven Brandeis students who took up a challenge from Jimmy Carter to visit the West Bank, Palestine to appreciate the political situation for themselves.
Cecilie Sarasky continues,
When the world as we know it nearly collapsed when Palestine: Peace not Apartheid author Jimmy Carter spoke at Brandeis in `07, a strange thing happened. Students there gave him a standing ovation. In turn, he challenged them to go to the West Bank to see and judge for themselves. What a novel idea. Something, oh, just a handful of our elected officials might try considering. It’s like checking on your investments.
A number of students (eleven to be exact shown to the right), occupying various points on the political continuum, took Carter up on his challenge. The result, now available, makes for captivating reading.Imagine that- human beings openly grappling with difficult moral, political and cultural/religious questions. How refreshing.
The student’s report on the West Bank was published in June 2008.
It is entitled:
Report on the Feb. 18-22, 2008, Study Mission
by Brandeis Students to Israel and the West Bank
June 2008
The report is introduced by Jimmy Carter.
In January 2007, I visited a number of university campuses during a tour to explain and promote the sale of my book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” My most exciting and gratifying presentation was at Brandeis University, where I suggested that a group of students or faculty “visit the occupied territories for a few days to determine whether I have exaggerated or incorrectly described the plight of the Palestinians.” My hope was that the travelers could observe personally the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians and assess the living conditions of people in the West Bank and Gaza. Later, I was informed that there were students who desired to make the trip but that they did not have financial support or permission from the university to go as an official delegation. Having some funds remaining from my Nobel Prize, I offered to help finance the excursion but to refrain from being involved in the mission’s itinerary or basic purposes. My only request was that, after returning, the students make reports of their experiences. I was informed that the students had decided to spend as much time as possible with Palestinian families in the West Bank in order to ascertain their living conditions.
Selected from the original planning group, the student delegation included organizer Justin Kang, former student union president Alison Schwartzbaum, student union president Shreeva Sinha, treasurer Choon Woo Ha, minority senator Gabe Gaskin, Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Rajiv Ramakrishnan, Deborah Laufer, Ben Mernick, Lisa Hanania, and Noam Shuster. The latter two are native Israelis and fluent in Arabic.
Careful plans were completed, and the trip was made in February 2008. After spending three days in Israel, including a visit to Al-Quds University (Brandeis’ sister school), the group then went to Bethlehem, Hebron, Mas’ha, and Ramallah and spent nights with host families in the Dheisheh refugee camp. The final two days were spent in a Jewish-Arab border community called Neve Shalom, or “the Oasis of Peace.”
Several months later in a meeting at The Carter Center with the students, they informed me that a continuing group had been organized on the Brandeis campus. I informed them that equivalent funds would be available for another excursion to the Middle East, with the itinerary modified as recommended by the
first group.I was deeply impressed by the literary quality, substance, and emotion of the individual trip reports. I suggested that they be published in print and posted on the Internet, and the students offered their own newly established Web site for this purpose (www. studentscrossingboundaries.com). We trust that this will provide an additional insight into needs and opportunities in the West Bank that might help lead to peace for Israel and her neighbors.
Individual essays contributed by these eleven Brandeis students can be read on their site, Students Crossing Bounderies.
