c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Robi Damelin remembers intense discussions she had with her son, David, when he was called up to duty again in the Israeli Army and assigned to serve in the occupied territories.

As a peace activist, David, then 28, faced a crisis. If he went to serve, he believed he would be contributing to the misery of an occupied Palestinian community. If he defied the military’s orders, he worried that he would set a bad example for his students at Tel Aviv University, where he was a teaching assistant while completing graduate studies in philosophy.

David decided to serve. He and nine other Israelis were killed a few days later by a sniper while guarding a roadblock near Ofra in the West Bank.

Two and a half years later, his mother is a peace activist with The Parents’ Circle, an organization of more than 500 bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families working for an end to a cycle of revenge between the two communities. Call them idealistic, but they believe forgiveness and reconciliation can replace hate and fear.

“I lost my child, but I did not lose my head,” says Damelin. “The sniper didn’t kill David because he was David. He killed him as a symbol of an occupying army.”

At a time when peace talks have been stalled, Damelin’s work with The Parents’ Circle has brought her to the United States to promote the cause. Last week the group visited half a dozen cities _ including New York, Chicago and Philadelphia _ to call on Americans to form a coalition and advocate a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

At a Washington news conference Oct. 21, she was joined by Nadwa Sarandah, a Palestinian woman whose sister, Naela, 48, was stabbed to death in the heart in Jerusalem, while she worked as a public health consultant helping Palestinians.

The two women urged Americans to pressure U.S. leaders to provide leadership and take an active role in a peace process that would create two independent states.

“Being an Israeli and Palestinian doesn’t mean we have two voices,” said Sarandah, explaining that her group aimed to prevent the killing of more people. “We have one voice. We have one message: `Don’t take sides. Don’t be pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. Be pro-solutions.”’

The Parents’ Circle has the support of interfaith religious groups in the United States.

Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church outside Philadelphia co-hosted Damelin and Sarandah’s visit to the Mainline Reform Temple in Philadelphia on Oct. 19. Congregation Beth Emeth and Concordia Lutheran Church were among the co-sponsors of the women’s appearance at the Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Wilmington, Del., the next day.

“We need to seize the opportunity for dialogue,” said M. Bruce Lustig, senior rabbi at Washington Hebrew Congregation, at the news conference in Washington. “We don’t just face each other over reconciliation over death, but we face each other in opportunities in reconciliation over life.”

Americans from all religious backgrounds should form a coalition across ideological and religious lines to pressure U.S. senators and representatives to take action, Damelin said.

She said Americans may not always realize it, but events in the Middle East can affect the United States in an interdependent world.

“What happens in our country, you may not know it, will affect your lives.”

The Parents’ Circle sponsors projects to promote dialogue and reconciliation between the two communities. Projects include a telephone hot line that allows Israelis and Palestinians to share their experiences, visits to local high schools where students get a chance to meet people from the other community, summer camps for Palestinian and Israeli children, and international media campaigns.

The group also recently launched the Jerusalem Candle of Hope, a joint business venture between about 50 Israeli and Palestinian women to foster dialogue. The Israeli women manufacture the candles near Nazareth, while Palestinian women embroider the bags for the candles near Bethlehem. Their goal is to promote peace and help make reconciliation possible, said Amber Chand, co-founder of Eziba, the U.S.-based Internet retail crafts company that launched the candle project with The Parents’ Circle.

“We look at business as a very positive, powerful source for transformation in communities,” said Chand.

Damelin said one day she plans to meet the sniper who killed her son _ the Israeli Army notified her before her departure to the United States that he had been caught. “He may show some sign of repentance when he sees me,” she said, and realize that “all mothers are the same. We all go to bed with the same pain.”

MO/PH END YAKAR