Field Notes

Here, I'll be recording various notes taken during my research efforts on Israeli Women of Peace. This will be the more academic/vaguely objective portion of the blog. Personal stories will appear on the main page.
First, a word about field notes – they are essentially just records of information, without personal opinion, judgments, or organization. So these may seem rather haphazard, random, or inappropriate to you. Feel free to comment on them with ideas about what strikes you as particularly interesting or trends that you see.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010. 6-9 pm. Warsaw, Poland (Airport).
Participants:
Mercedes (Merci), an Israeli-born Jew, and a woman I’ll call Amee, an American-born Muslim of Middle Eastern descent.
Merci met her ex-husband, an American Christian Marine, in Israel. They lived for a time in Japan, on the American Military Base there. Merci and her husband divorced six years ago after having two children. He is now remarried. Merci has main custody of the children, though they visit him often. She currently works as a nurse in California. Her oldest, a girl, is twelve; her youngest, a boy, is nine. Her sister died of breast cancer a year ago (she lived in Israel). Her mother is still in the country, currently living in her sister’s house after selling the two-bedroom.
Amee married an Israeli Muslim. She has five children – a boy, eighteen, a boy, sixteen, a girl, twelve, a boy, nine, and another girl, three. (Her youngest daughter’s name is Noora, meaning “beautiful light.”) Her twelve-year-old wrote in her journal about the “interesting conversation” her mother was having with us. Her grandparents and in-laws are in Israel.
The women engaged in a discussion about their lives – in America, their reasons for visiting Israel, etc. Some mention of differences in faith occurred, though it was primarily superficial and centered mostly around similarities in the ideas of God rather than approaching any discussion of conflict.
After Amee left with her children to go to another gate, Merci: “I wouldn’t say this in front of Amee. She wouldn’t understand, because she didn’t grow up in Israel.” We’ll never have peace with the Palestinians till “mothers learn to love their kids more than they hate Israel.”
The children got along very well. Merci’s twelve-year-old girl drew a beautiful butterfly for Noora, writing her name on the paper.
Merci cited the story of Ishmael and Isaac in the Bible, recalling that God told Ishmael his descendants would fight with Isaac’s. Perhaps, according to Merci, it’s pre-ordained that Israel and Palestine fight.
Amee: “I believe that everything happens for a reason. We may not understand it, but there is a reason.”
Merci believes that Mexicans coming to California need to learn English and have no right to complain about the lack of Spanish.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010
FoEME (Friends of the Earth Middle East) guide: “Peace is knowing the other.”
FoEME Gender Roles: the Israeli office has a male manager, the rest of the office staff (including administrators) are female. There are more men in Palestine, but fairly gender-balanced. The guide believes there are more Palestinian men involved in the communities as well. However, the guide did not discuss the teachers and students involved in their education program…Also missing the perspective of a woman on which genders are better represented
Gender Balance as observed thus far:
Guide in the Old City was female; we spent another five hours with her today. All the other guides, and all the bus drivers, have been male. Both lecturers at Hebrew University were male. On this trip, there are six male and nine female students.