By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Brochure distributed as part of Jerusalem Women Speak

At a Dayton stop on the lecture tour, Jerusalem Women Speak, billed as “women working for a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” one panelist threw her support behind the right of Hamas to use terror against the Jewish state.

The panel was presented by the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Partners for Peace, at the University of Dayton on the evening of Nov. 17 as part of a 12-city U.S. tour.

During the question-and-answer period, this writer asked the three panelists if they believe Hamas is justified in using terror against Israel.

“There are people living under military occupation by the state of Israel and for so many years. And those people, according to international law, they have the right to defend themselves,” said panelist Enas Muthaffar, a Muslim filmmaker living in east Jerusalem.

She bristled at the use of the term “terror.”

“Let’s not label people as being terrorists because if Hamas is a terrorist group, then Israel is a terrorist state,” Muthaffar said.

Another panelist, Dr. Julia Chaitin, identified herself as a Zionist and a pacifist. A lecturer in the department of social work at Sapir College near Sderot, Israel — the target of Kassam rockets fired from adjacent Gaza — she said she is against all forms of terrorism.

“I think that innocent people should never be the victims of suicide bombings, Kassam rockets or the Israeli Air Force dropping bombs on them,” the Jewish Israeli said. “When people shoot rockets into Sderot or into Sapir, where I teach, I hold them responsible. However, I hold the people who shot the rockets responsible and not the women and children and the old and the young and the people who had nothing to do with them. So therefore, they should not be under siege.”

The third panelist, Lucy Talgieh, an Arab Christian from Bethlehem, did not respond to the question about the use of terror by Hamas.

She did say, as well as Chaitin, that she favors a two-state solution to the conflict.

During the Q&A, Muthaffar initially said that she believes Israel has the right to exist, but later said that a two-state solution “will not be a right solution, a just solution for the Palestinians, for so many reasons.”

“I think the only solution for this country is a one-state solution,” she added. “That’s the only answer for such a small country. You really cannot have two states on this very small land.”

A one-state solution would effectively bring about the end of the Jewish state, given the Arab majority that would result from combining Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem into one nation.

The program began with Talgieh’s presentation about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. “In the 20th century, the Palestinian was exiled, disposed from the land,” she said. “In the 21st-century, they started the struggle to end the military occupations that started in ‘48 with the declaration of Israel. The result of the declaration of the state destroyed and deported people from their land.”

Israeli Dr. Danny Eylon, professor of materials engineering at the University of Dayton, remarked to the panel during the Q&A that Talgieh presented the history “as if the Jews tried to take by force the land of the Palestinian.”

“And the date when Israel was declared in May of ‘48,” he said, “it was an official invasion of seven Arab nations into Israel. So if you don’t bring those parts, everything looks like (Israeli) aggression.”

Chaitin then added, “With history, there’s actually very little fact. There’s narratives. There’s facts and then there’s interpretation. And there’s an Israeli narrative to this history and there’s a Palestinian narrative of this history. We have to be cognizant of the fact that…not that one is right and one is wrong.”

Meagan Buren, research and training director for The Israel Project, a non-profit Israel advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said that Partners for Peace only presents one side of the conflict.

“You only have to look at their Web site and at their action alerts, for example,” Buren said. “I see a whole lot of action alerts on stopping Israel from doing things, but I see zero on stopping Palestinian terrorism. And I think that speaks very clearly to what this organization is about. We should all be talking about peace and we should all be talking about a better future, but let’s be honest about what your organization is promoting.”

The University of Dayton event, attended mainly by students, was sponsored by the university’s Religious Studies Department, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Women’s Center and the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office.

While in Dayton, Jerusalem Women Speak presented their panel at Sinclair Community College and at Christ United Methodist Church in Kettering.