AAPER and Baltzer Team Up

Since the spring of 2006, Anna Baltzer, the author of A Witness in Palestine, A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories, has given more than 700 presentations on the plight of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The demand for her talks is so high, Baltzer said, that she is refusing as many invitations as she is accepting. So Baltzer is now collaborating with the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights (AAPER) to train others on how to organize, speak to, and educate their local communities about the Palestinian situation. The training sessions are specifically geared for those returning from delegations to the occupied Palestinian territories, impassioned yet uncertain about the next step.

Participants in Baltzer’s four-hour speaker training workshop receive practical tips on how to organize a presentation, locate a venue, and field hostile questions from the audience.

For those who want to take their advocacy work up a notch, AAPER’s public education associate Sarah Scruggs is providing an online organizer training workshop. The one-and-a-half-hour course instructs participants in the “general principles of organizing,” including how to build a base of supporters and identify the means and methods for educating citizens and legislators. The two workshops are offered in tandem or independently.

The idea for the trainings was born out of Baltzer’s experience on the lecture circuit. Whether speaking at a university in the Northeast, or a church in a small Midwestern town, Baltzer said, her audiences often included people who told her they had been to Israel/Palestine and seen the oppression of the Palestinians, but felt unable to effectively communicate what they had witnessed.

Baltzer herself experienced similar feelings of inadequacy after her first trip to the region. Traumatized and impassioned by what she saw, she said, she remained silent and “carried around this guilt.” She now hopes to empower other silent witnesses with her training workshops that emphasize speaking from one’s own experiences. The goal is to “carpet the country” with articulate citizen educators and organizers who can help build a grassroots movement for an equitable U.S. policy toward Palestine, she said.

So far, interest in the fledging initiative seems to be keen. Baltzer has already given four workshops, including one at the National Organizers’ Conference of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation held in Chicago, IL Sept. 12 and 13. Forty-six people showed up for her Aug. 31 presentation in Madison, WI—one participant having driven from Omaha, NE.

“It was double the attendance we expected,” said event organizer Rev. Joan Deming. As development director of Pilgrims of Ibillin, a non-profit that supports schools established by Palestinian educator and Catholic priest Elias Chacour, Deming organizes U.S. delegations to Israel/Palestine. “Some make the trip as Christian pilgrims. They come back having seen more than they expected,” she noted.

“The goal of the workshop was to help people understand how to present the conflict without inflaming polarity,” Reverend Deming said. Delegates “are coming back to talk to Americans who think they know the story in Israel. The wall, the checkpoints, the Palestinian perspective, those are stories that are hard for Americans to hear.”

According to Deming, a favorite section of the workshop was “Fielding Hostile Questions.” “Anna gave us 10 to 12 really typical arguments, things like, ”˜You sound anti-Semitic’ or ”˜but the wall makes things more secure,’” she explained. “We talked about ways to respond to those difficult questions in a way that keeps the door open.”

While no hard numbers are available, U.S. delegations to Israel/Palestine appear to be on the rise. A quick perusal of the Web site for Friends of Sabeel-North America, a Christian organization working for a just resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, reveals that 28 different delegations are scheduled to visit the region between October and December. The Washington, DC-based Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB), which has been hosting fact-finding tours to Israel/Palestine since 2001, reports an increase in the number of participants per tour. “Historically, we have had 15 to 20 people per delegation. This year, our July delegation had 23 people and our October delegation will have over 32,” said Mike Daly, IFPB program coordinator.

Although some organizations include media or outreach training in their itinerary, most do not have the capacity to follow up with delegates once they return to the U.S., said Scruggs. She and Baltzer hope their training workshops will become part of a delegation’s curriculum.

For Baltzer, telling others about what visitors have witnessed in Palestine is an obligation to the Palestinians who have taken the time to tell their painful stories. “Palestinians tell their stories over and over again to delegations not because they want someone to listen or feel sympathetic,” she noted, “but because they trust that delegates will inform others in the United States about what they have learned.”

For more information on the training workshops contact Sarah Scruggs at (202) 683-8438 or <>. The speaker training is by donation—no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

—Claire Schaeffer-Duffy