Professor shares Palestine perspective
Even professors need an education.
Steve Hanks, a professor in the department of management and human services in the College of Business, took the position of the dean of Administration and Financial Services at the Arab American University-Jenin for the school year 2001-02.
He and his wife, Jean, addressed students Thursday about their experiences in Palestine.
“It was a life-changing experience,” Jean said.
They lived in the city of Jenin with three of their kids. Israeli tanks were never a threat to the university, which was set higher in the hills. They got all their food from a nearby store. It was about the size of the kitchen, Jean said, explaining that she had to pick out food by the pictures on their labels.
A message that Steve would like to deliver to USU is that “we need to recognize whether a person is Arab, or a Palestinian, or an American, or Israeli or Iraqi, they’re all human beings. I think we should be very careful about stereotyping other people that we might not understand.”
Steve arrived in Jenin on Sept. 11, 2001, and made plans for his family to join him later.
“The people were so good to us and so nice,” Jean said. “They said how sorry they were about Sept. 11.”
While the Hanks family sees the Palestinians in this way, some Americans may have another perspective.
Steve pointed to pictures of Israelis broadcast on CNN.
“Every time there is a suicide attack you see pictures like this. In the minds of most Americans, we see the Israeli side of that perspective; we don’t see the Palestinian side. I think our perceptions were not any different than yours before we went there,” he said.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are Palestinian territories, but the Israelis built settlements there and then built roads.
“Palestinians couldn’t drive on that road. They couldn’t even cross it,” he said. “Travel is nearly impossible for these people.”
This conflict is about occupation, he said, and it’s also about humiliation.
“The Israelis aren’t particularly careful about not having civilian casualties – not much for human rights, I guess,” Steve said.
The Israelis destroyed roads, limiting or prohibiting the travel of Palestinian people. Unemployment is very high there, so if a person had a job he would go to extreme measures to make it there. Steve said he saw mountain trails people hiked to reach their jobs when they couldn’t drive.
Many of the Palestinian buildings were shot at and destroyed.
“The Ministry of Education … certainly a terrorist target,” he said.
After seeing the extreme conditions in Palestine, Steve said, his perspectives on the conflict began to change.
“The problem that I have after living there day to day is drawing the line of who’s a terrorist and who’s a freedom fighter,” he said.
Steve asked what the difference is between a suicide bomber going to a restaurant and killing 40 people and an Israeli missile shooting a building, killing 9 and injuring 40.
Khalil Sueliman, Steve’s colleague, taught first aid. He was killed by Israeli soldiers while trying to save an injured little girl.
“Now we have to ask: Is the U.S an impartial mediator? There is in the U.S. a huge pro-Israeli lobby. We’re really the only ones that can say, ‘Look Israel, you have to stand behind this line,'” he said.
When Steve asked the grocery store owner in Jenin what gift he wanted from the United States, the owner replied, “Bring us peace.”
An audience member asked whether the Palestinians still have hope in the United States.
Steve said although the United States provides weapons for Israel, he thinks Palestinians still have hope.
“We’re not saying everybody in Israel is bad, nor are we saying everybody in Palestine is good. I don’t fully understand all the complexities of international relations, but Israel hasn’t been a very friendly neighbor.”
A problem that faces the two sides is that neither can feel the other’s pain, Steve said.
Shauna Peters, a Logan resident, was one of the attendees at the presentation.
“I’m glad I came. It was nice to see a side that we don’t usually see, and I have Israeli cousins, so we usually hear the Israeli side of it. We want life to be good for everybody,” she said.
Valena Kisner, another Logan resident and attendee, said, “It was an eye-opening experience for me to see the great injustices done to the Palestinians.”
-jannahz2002@yahoo.com