DEARBORN – A year after a speech from Cindy Corrie, the mother of young American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed while demonstrating against a house demolition in Gaza, the Michigan Peace Team hosted three similarly inspiring women at its 2012 annual banquet ‘Women of Conscience & Courage, Women Who Challenge’ at Greenfield Manor on Sunday, April 29. 

Hedy EpsteinPhotos courtesy of Barefield Design Works

All three of the MPT’s keynote speakers have participated in missions to Gaza, but the last high profile attempt, the 2011 Gaza flotilla led by the ‘Audacity of Hope’ boat from the U.S., was unsuccessful as the Israeli and American governments stepped in to put an end to the worldwide act of defiance against  the siege and blockade. 

“We were held at a port controlled by the American government for four weeks in a Greek jail, no water, no food, no toilet, until our attorneys finally got us out,” said speaker Hedy Epstein, a Jewish American activist for Palestine and Holocaust survivor. 

“Our boat is still sitting there in the harbor in Greece waiting to go to Gaza,” the 87-year-old said, getting choked up with emotion. Epstein believes as many others do that the detainment was ordered due to pressure from the Israeli and American governments on the debt-saddled nation. 

Also speaking was Ann Wright, an award-winning former U.S. Army colonel and U.S. Deputy Ambassador who was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and reopen the embassy there in December 2001. 

Ann Wright

Wright, who was on the 2010 Gaza flotilla and helped organize the 2011 one, spoke about her resignation on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, calling it perhaps the longest resignation letter that’s ever been submitted, in which she detailed her frustrations with the invasion without U.N. Security Council approval and on a lack of evidence, the lack of effort in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the erosion of U.S. civil liberties and more. 

She said that the Operation Cast Lead attacks in late 2008-early 2009 against Gaza were what jump-started her peace activism efforts even more, decrying the inhumanity of the attacks while also thanking the MPT and praising their work in the region. 

The Michigan Peace Team (MPT) is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1993 to raise awareness of humanitarian causes both at home and abroad and empowering people to become active in non-violent intervention. The MPT has had an enduring presence in the West Bank and has trained non-violent activists for working roles there in the face of the illegal settlements and occupation by Israel, as well as other hot zones, including Juarez, Mexico; Haiti, Cairo, Bosnia, and Panama among others. In addition, they have sent teams to help keep the peace at protests by the extremist Westboro Baptist Church and Pastor Terry Jones in Michigan. 

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat, the third keynote speaker on the evening and a Palestinian American Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement organizer, human rights attorney, and Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, spoke about the struggle against Zionism in relation to other struggles across the world. 

“There are unspoken institutional norms that we all grapple with, whether it is Zionism in Palestine or the system of classism and racism in the United States, or the system throughout the world of patriarchy, this is a single system that is interconnected,” she said. 

She said she realized growing up that the struggle to empower women is one of providing equality for all including minority men for example, and that the system is the target, not any specific group of people themselves, just as is true in Palestine. 

“This is not about Jew vs. Arab and has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity, (Zionism) is a political condition that was created as human beings that we can dismantle as human beings.

“We can dismantle a type of institution that seeks to create an exclusive homeland for the Jewish people at the expense of indigenous population that belongs there and yearns to go home.” 

Awards were also given out on the evening to Marygrove College of Detroit for its landmark Master’s in Social Justice Program (Organizational Award); Dr. Gloria House of UM-Deaborn, a professor and author who has been active in African American community development and Third World Solidarity Causes (Scholar Activist Award); the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom of Michigan (Activist Award) for nearly 100 years of marching on behalf of peace and justice; and the Palestinian Freedom Riders (Rachel Corrie Award), a group of activists including Michigan’s Huwaida Arraf along with many Palestinians who staged a non-violent sit-in of segregated Israeli settler buses in November 2011 in line with a well known American civil rights movement protest. 

Despite the treatment Epstein has received in Palestine and Israel during her protests, including being strip searched at the airport and imprisoned, she pledged to continue to return and told the audience to remain optimistic in spite of the odds.

“Our goal is to work hard for peace and justice, or should I say to work hard for justice, because peace comes after justice, as someone said at one of the tables I was sitting at,” she said. 

The MPT will begin training new volunteers for its missions in June, and more information can be found at www.michiganpeaceteam.org on how to apply.