The Journal

Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED BY EMILY KOTHE AND SUZANNE YATIM Emily Kothe (left) and Suzanne Yatim stand at the top of a hill just outside the village of At-Tuwani in the southern West Bank of Palestine.

Media Credit: PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED BY EMILY KOTHE AND SUZANNE YATIM Kothe (right) and Yatim attend a demonstration put on by the children at At-Tuwani. The demonstration drew a crowd of more than 300 people.

When international human rights majors Emily Kothe and Suzanne Yatim started at Webster University, they never imagined that facing an Israeli soldier holding an AK-47 would be part of their degree requirements.

According to the United Nations Web site, the Israeli and Palestinian conflict began after World War I, when the British government declared support for the creation of a national home for Jewish people in Palestine. After World War II, the U.N. created two separate states in Palestine - one for Arab Muslims and one for Jews, with Jerusalem being neutral.

The Jewish state declared itself the independent state of Israel and began to occupy a large portion of Palestine and Jerusalem. Violence continues over the contested areas, according to the U.N. Web site.

Yatim said while she was there, Israel began building a wall to confine the Palestinians to certain areas. Palestinians will need to go through checkpoints and have permission to travel out of the areas.

"The nature of the military occupation takes away a lot of basic human rights from Palestinians," Kothe said. "It's not acceptable."

Kothe and Yatim spent part of their summer travelling through Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that intervenes in conflict situations around the world. Yatim said they presented the trip idea to the department and had it approved to fulfill the field experience requirement of their International Human Rights degree. The trip offered a different experience than an internship, which often consists of desk-job, Yatim said.

"Why sit in an office when you can get your hands dirty doing fieldwork?" Yatim said.

Kothe learned about CPT's work in Palestine when Jim Fitz, a CPT volunteer, came to WU to speak about the group's work in Columbia. She discovered that CPT had a delegation in Palestine and decided to get involved because she said it was a way that she could combine her faith and her interest in human rights work.

When Kothe told Yatim, her classmate, about the trip, Yatim said she knew that she had to make the trip as well. Because her family is from Palestine she said she wanted to help, and that it made her efforts even more fulfilling.

Yatim said she has always been interested in helping others, but that she became specifically interested in human rights work after seeing the film "Invisible Children" at WU in 2006. She said WU gave her an outlet to turn her passion into a career by offering the international human rights major.

"I couldn't imagine doing a job where it was all about money," Yatim said.

Kothe said she became interested in human rights in high school, but didn't realize she could major in it until her sophomore year at WU. She said that after taking Art Sandler's introduction to human rights class, she learned that she could incorporate human rights work into any career she chose.

The purpose of CPT's trip was to document and intervene in human rights abuses that occur between Palestinians and the Israelis. Yatim said they want to put a face on the crisis so that they could educate people in the U.S. and other western countries about the situation.

"We had to make ourselves more knowledgeable so that we can make (the public) more knowledgeable," Yatim said.

Kothe said the main goal of the group was to educate themselves so that they would be more effective in educating other people.

"If people don't know what is going on, they can't do anything about it," Kothe said.

The group faced challenges while trying to attain their goal. When the Israeli government found out that CPT planned to take action in the village of At-Tuwani, the Israeli military declared it a closed military zone. No one was permitted to enter or exit. Yatim said that the group snuck in to the village through an area that was not being guarded and had no checkpoint.

Kothe said the goal that day was to escort a group of Palestinian children through two Israeli settlements that were illegally occupying Palestinian territory. The children wanted to protest the settlements by marching through them from their own village to another Palestinian village. Yatim said she understood that the mission could involve violence.

"Going in to human rights (work), you have to realize that it is dangerous and that you might get hurt," Yatim said.

The girls walked away unharmed, but Kothe said they witnessed the Israeli military forcefully controlling the crowds, with one man being held on the ground by a soldier. She said there wasn't outright violence, but rather an awareness that violence could happen at any time.

Kothe and Yatim faced potential danger again when they decided to intervene in abuse occurring in Hebron, which is divided among Palestinians and Israelis. Kothe said that two Palestinian boys who had been out flying kites were being stoned from a rooftop by Israeli children while the Israeli military watched. Yatim said that they knew they were powerless against the military that had automatic weapons, so they intervened by documenting the abuse in the hopes it would be shown on western media.

"Our weapon is our camera," Yatim said.

Kothe said that the Israeli boys stopped their attack when CPT showed up and started taking photos.

Kothe said she never felt that she was in immediate danger during her trip, but one encounter with an Israeli soldier left her rattled. A soldier refused to point his gun at the ground as the group passed through a checkpoint area.

"It wasn't a threat, but when a gun is pointed at you it is scary," Kothe said.

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