By Josh Keating

Last Tuesday Oberlin students heard vastly different accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when two representatives from the group Parent’s Circle came to speak.

The event, which was titled Israeli-Palestinian Families for Peace, featured two speakers: Yitzak Frankenthal, the group’s coordinator whose son Arik was kidnapped and killed by Hamas at the age of 19 and Gazi Brigit whose 14 year old stepbrother was killed by the Israeli military in 2000.

Despite serving in the Israeli Army at the time of his death, Frankenthal describes his son as “very peaceful and very close to many Arabs.”

“If they had known who he was, they would not have killed him,” he said. “He was always looking for a peaceful solution.”

After Arik’s death Frankenthal devoted himself to activism and lobbying. Eventually he befriended Israeli leader Yitzak Rabin, who was later slain. He even accompanied Rabin to Oslo when he received the Nobel peace prize.

Frankenthal, who described himself as an Orthodox Jew and an Israeli patriot said that “to make peace with his enemy was not only a human duty but a religious one.”

He also brushed aside any comparison between the Palestinian cause and that of Al-Qaeda. “Bin Laden represents ideological terror, Palestinian terror is the terror of despair,” he said.

Brigit, from the Hebron district of the West Bank said that his young brother’s only crime was being a Palestinian.

“If we don’t look at each other as human beings the fighting will continue,” he said.

As to whether it was hard coming face to face with the other side, both men said their similarities far outweighed thire differences.

“We have the same color blood,” Gazi said. “We’ve paid the highest price and no one can shut our mouth.”

The speaking tour is just one of the many projects the Parent’s Circle sponsors. Others include education projects in Jewish and Palestinian elementary school and running a phone line which connects Arab and Israeli callers at random to facilitate dialogue.

The group’s activities have not always been popular in its home countries, especially among other bereaved families.

“Most of the bereaved have become very right wing and are very against what we are doing,” Frankenthal said.

“The situation is much harder on the Palestinian side,” Brigit said. “We have no security or authority. If my life is threatened I have nowhere to go.”

He is currently fighting to keep his job in the Hebron municipal government where his superiors do not approve of his activities with the Circle.

“What I’m doing could be a mistake,” Frankenthal said. “It could be that when the Palestinians receive a state the violence will not stop, but if it is a mistake, it’s one I’m willing to make because this occupation is a form of terror. It has destroyed the lives of the Palestinians and also Israeli society.”

The event was cosponsored by the Office of the President, the Muslim Students Association, the Multicultural Resource Center, the Campus Dialogue Center, Tikkun, Hillel, Oberlin Zionists and the Oberlin Co-op Association’s Committee on Privilege and Oppression.

Oberlin’s Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Shimon Brand, opened the proceedings by reminding the audience that it was the second day of Ramadan, a holiday which he said “teaches that we have the ability to cleanse even the worst deeds.”