Susanne Speaks in the Pioneer Valley

My friends at GoNomad have the good fortune to live and work right up the street from one of the nation's premier liberal arts colleges; Amherst, Massachusetts. And even though I stopped in only briefly, I could feel the free-thinking spirit and smell the sweet pizza slices wafting in from Antonios. You know your in a college town when that happens.

You also know your in a college town when a woman like Susanne Hoder can give a powerful, revealing, 2 hour presentation on her visit to the Holy Land without retribution.

She visited the region for several months staying with Christian, Islam and Jewish families alike; sharing Rosh Hashanah with a Rabbi, Communion with preachers and Ramadan with Muslims. When she returned home she decided to gather her thoughts, photos and film on the subject and share it with America.

Susan provides a rare insight on Middle East tensions, the sensitivities of all three religions and the culprits of why the conflict continues.

"We can't protect Israeli's if we only understand Israeli's," she says. "We also have to understand what's happening to Palestinians if we want to protect Israelis."

Susanne points out that many measures the Israelis take to make Israel safe are actually doing just the opposite. She also points out that the general Israeli public (as well as us Americans) are unaware of the extent of aggression and intimidation used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to segregate the three cultures. She's right.

Be it the residuals of WWII or the close bonds of a representative democracy or my misunderstanding of the Muslim religion, I've always felt more sympathy with the Jewish plight than the Muslim plight." But this isn't about religion insists Susan.

"This is a struggle about land," she says. It's not an animosity between 2 peoples because of the religion they practice or antisemitism. It's a process of a people loosing their land and water and opposing that process."

Susan goes on to point out flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention including destroying biblical land for shopping malls, settlements and industrial parks for use by one ethnic group alone. Intimidation, hostility, torture and the building of a giant wall called the "Matrix of Control" also cuts the region into pocketed isolated areas.

Of course, this infuriates and instigates the Christian and Muslim Palestinians and if you've ever watch television news it's the car and bus bombings that you'll see, not the forced occupation of privately owned land that's causing it.

There's so much more to this topic but for a travel blog I think I've gone well beyond the parameters of my usual light and fluffy topics. Still, for those interested in learning more visit here and here. Thanks for reading.