Local peace activist and former City College teacher Maggie Coulter was invited by the Cultural Awareness Center Nov. 3 to discuss her experience living in the Middle East as part of the events for Native American’s History Month.
“I was delighted to receive the Cultural Awareness Center’s invitation to speak during Native American History Month about an issue affecting native peoples in another part of the world, the Palestinians,” Coulter says. “My hope was to educate students about the ongoing colonization of Palestine, which continues to displace and violate the human rights of the native peoples.
Coulter and her partner, Patricia Daugherty, spent six months in Israel only to witness the atrocities of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
During the presentation, Coulter gave her take on the history of the conflict and how the Palestinians came to be forced out of their land.
“I want to talk about the history because everything sits in a historical context and what happened in Palestine was colonialism,” Coulter says. “It is about a European power that supported moving people in an area that wasn’t theirs. That was the genesis of the situation we are talking about today.”
According to Coulter, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict began when European Jews were searching for a new land to occupy. To their dismay, they wanted the land of Palestine, but it was already taken. As a solution for the occupied land, the Israelis began to take over Palestine by slowly invading the land and relocating Palestinians into designated areas. They renamed the Palestinian land Israel.
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Lange, who is pro-Palestine and supports the education of the Israeli-Palestine issue, feels that the presentation was necessary for students and that this is an issue that will hit students on a personal level.
“I hope that students are compelled to investigate the history,” Lange says “I also hope that students are able to make a link between these events occurring in the Middle East and their lives here.”
Many of the points that Coulter pointed out about the ongoing conflict were the human rights violations towards Palestinians, such as the forcing citizens from their villages and arresting non-violent protestors during their demonstrations. Coulter also explained how the land that belongs to the Palestinians is constantly shrinking as Israel invites more and more Jews to build settlements on the land they claim is rightfully theirs.
Along with her presentation, Coulter included images from trip. Images, such a massive 26-foot tall concrete wall in the West Bank separating Palestinian communities from each other and the crowded military checkpoints in the Israeli territory, provided a not so picturesque view of current Palestinian life.
“There were many points Coulter made that were illuminating. She illustrated her talk with images that were powerful, such as the wall,” says City College history instructor Stuart Graybill. “I was startled by many of the images Coulter was able to show. It’s one thing to read about it and it’s another thing to see it.”
