Nominated by Sandra Tamari:
Hedy Epstein, 85-year old Holocaust survivor and tireless champion for Palestinian rights, traveled to Cairo in December 2009 to participate in the Gaza Freedom March. This was her third attempt to visit Gaza and break the siege. She has visited the West Bank several times since 2003 and tried to board the Mavi Marmara last May to be part of the Freedom Flotilla. She organizes a monthly vigil with Women in Black in St. Louis and speaks widely about the situation in Palestine and Israel. I was one of the St. Louis delegates who accompanied Hedy during the march.
The ignorance of the history of the Jews among Egyptians that I encountered while traveling with Hedy astounded me. Egyptians in the hotels, on the street, and journalists interviewing Hedy would ask me: “Is her story true? It is hard to believe that humans would shove other humans into ovens to their death?” They simply could not fathom that kind of depravity.
Other Egyptians asked me out of earshot of Hedy how it was possible to be Jewish and not Zionist. They had never encountered that possibility before. Many asked how we met, and how a Palestinian-American like me could be friends with a Jew. “How did we reconcile our political divide?”, they wondered.
At the same time, Hedy was treated like a star in Egypt. People on the street would stop us to talk to her. A young Egyptian couple yelled out her name as they passed in their car. The media calls from the Arab press poured in. Since I was the one with the Egyptian cell phone number, I answered many of these calls. Every journalist wanted to know more about this Jewish woman who didn’t fear Arabs and wanted to go to Gaza more than anything in the world.
Hedy was interviewed by al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera, the two largest pan-Arab satellite television networks. Both networks insisted on interviewing me along with Hedy to highlight our “Palestinian-Jewish” friendship. It was satisfying to speak on al-Jazeera in Arabic about the growing number of Jewish-Americans who have joined the struggle for Palestinian freedom.
The curious questions and ignorant perspectives about Hedy’s history, political views and friendship with Palestinians shocked me. I have lived and traveled among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, in Jordan and in Lebanon and this was not an attitude I had encountered before. When I asked Hedy if she had heard these types of queries in her numerous trips to the West Bank, she answered unequivocally that she had not.
The wonderful film Salata Baladi kept coming to mind. The film tells the story of the parents the filmmaker, Nadia Kamel–her mother an Italian Jew whose family had been in Egypt for generations and her father an unrelenting Communist from a Muslim family of Turkish and Ukrainian origin. This elderly couple grew up in an Egypt that was multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-linguistic. The creation of the state of Israel saw most of the Jews of Egypt leave for Israel. The filmmaker travels to Israel with her mother to visit some of these relatives. It is poignant to hear the Israelis reflect on their memories of growing up in Cairo and their great sense of loss for what was. The Egyptian Jews of Israel still dream in Arabic.
Hedy’s presence in Egypt offered hope for a possible future—a reclaiming of Egypt’s past. When confronted with the personality of Hedy—a compassionate Jew—the Egyptians were able to let go of their narrow ideas about the Jewish people formed around images of the brutality and violence of the Israeli military. Hedy’s visit to Cairo did more to build security for the Jewish people in the Arab world than any amount of military power. Exposure and multi-culturalism are key to bridging the divides. Let’s hope that borders and walls fall so that we may begin the important work of humanizing the other.
