One family’s struggle to survive in Gaza

Written by
Doug Hostetter, Member of the Pax Christi International United Nations Team 
In cooperation with  
Amgad Al-Mhalwi, Staff of Al-Najd Developmental Forum

March 2024

Before joining the Pax Christi Advocacy Team at the United Nations, I directed the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) United Nations Office in New York for more than a decade and co-chaired the Israel/Palestine NGO Working Group Israel/Palestine at the UN. MCC supported several NGOs that were doing relieve, development and peace work in Israel and Palestine. On visits to Gaza, I became friends with several staff members of Al-Najd Developmental Forum, one of the MCC supporting NGOs with headquarters in Gaza City. Al-Najd, with Mennonite support, helped Gazan families develop home gardens and raise rabbits & chickens.

I have kept in touch with two of the Al-Najd staff over the years through Facebook Messenger. After the Hamas attack on October 7 and the Israelis response of massive bombing, I soon learned that in the early bombing the building that housed Al-Najd was completely destroyed and Mostafa Al-Naffar, one of my staff friends there had also been killed.  My remaining friend, Amgad Al-Mhalwi, who has worked at Al-Najd for 17 years, has continued sending me updates on his family.  

Amgad’s family, originally from Hamama (25 miles north of Gaza), but in 1948 Israeli military forces drove the family out of Hamama to the Nuseirt refugee camp near Gaza City, in what the Palestinians call the “Nakba” (“the catastrophe,” when during the creation of the state of Israel, the Israeli army forced the evacuation of more than 400 Palestinian villages).  Amgad (36) and his wife Qamer (25), both former university students, married five years ago and now have two boys, Majd (4) and Ibrahim (2 and a half).  Amgad and Qamer lived with his extended family of about 50 people in a compound of houses near Gaza City.  When the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) ordered everyone to leave northern Gaza in the first week of the war, several of Amgad’s extended family were killed while trying to travel to the south as ordered.  Amgad decided that it was safer to shelter in the north rather than getting killed trying to go south.  

“We left our house first to my aunt’s house, then to my uncle’s house, then to my wife’s family’s house, then to Al-Huda School in the Sheikh Radwan area, and after that, Ramez Luxury School, then Musab bin Omair School, and the finally to Umar bin Aas School.”

 Each time that they moved, it was because of shelling and bombing in that area, but actually there was no safe place to go.  

The Umar bin Aas school was already overcrowded but Amgad found a classroom on the third floor of the school (about 5 X 5 meters) which provided a safe, if crowded, refuge for the 55 people of Amgad’s extended family.

The school seemed secure until November 19, when the IDF moved into the area and started shelling.  

“My brother, the shells were everywhere. They were all around, next to the school. Many of the children who were in the school courtyard were injured and died. A shell came behind the school and people began to flee under the bombardment.

We said, ‘What do we do? Where do you go under heavy bombardment?’ We decided it was safest to stay in school. 

I was just outside the classroom door when, shortly after the afternoon prayer, at 3:20 PM a tank shell hit the classroom wall sending shrapnel throughout the classroom. The explosion blew me away from the door, and when I reentered the classroom, it was full of blood and screaming.

My beautiful father is dead, and my uncle’s wife does was not moving, and my sister’s neck was sliced open. I am crying, and my brother was praying, he died while praying. My wife face is bloody, her whole body is covered in blood. She is crying and screaming, and my children are crying and screaming, my whole family is screaming. I was in shock, uninjured and watching everyone scream.  

The most beautiful people in the world died that day. My father, the most affectionate person in the world, my brother who loved my children so much. My sister, who in my heart was more like my daughter, and my aunt was the 4^thmember of my family to die in that room.

Thirty people were killed in the school that day and over a hundred were wounded.  Three shells hit the school while we were there, and a 4^th exploded as we were fleeing, and I don’t know how many hit later.

I carried my two children and took my wife, sister, and brother to the nearest medical clinic.

My older brother told me that he would bury my dead family members. I was unable to say goodbye to any of them. The bombs and shells were falling, and I had to try to get my children to safety. 

It was the worst day of my life. 

Both of my boys had been in the room by their mother when the shell hit that night. They had witnessed their grandfather, their uncle, and their aunt being killed, with blood all over everyone in the classroom.  My sister was bleeding profusely from her neck, my cousin had his hand severed, and shrapnel had destroyed both of my brother’s eyes. The boys were screaming, quaking in fear and peeing in their pants”.  

I did not hear from Amgad for a month and a half and was worried that he and his family had been killed in the massive bombing.  Amgad and family miraculously had made their way, mostly walking, the 20 miles from Gaza City to Rafah on the Egyptian border. I finally got a short message: 

“We are in Rafah. My family is tired, sick and cold. We do not even have a tent to live in”.  

Amgad eventually was able to buy a nylon tent for $400, but there was no heat, and food and water were very hard to find.

“The children became sick. We need psychological support and food. We are very tired. We long to return to our homes, even though they are destroyed.

The experience of that night in the bloody classroom has changed my boys. Najd now always wants to sleep with Amgad and Ibrahim always wants to sleep with Qamer. When the boys heard bombing, they wet their pants and ran terrified to their parents. If they see red, even a piece of clothing, they run away screaming, blood, blood, blood”.

On February 12 the Israeli Defense Forces rescued two Israeli hostages in Gaza. To distract from the IDF operation to rescue the hostages, they bombed and shelled other areas of Rafah killing at least 67 Palestinian women and children. 

Amgad and his family were living in a nylon tent in Rafah that night, February 12th.

“Tonight was very difficult
Very strong bombardment
I saw my son Majd trying to hide from the bombing
He was trembling as he tried to hide his face in the ground, thinking that if no one could see him, he wouldn’t die.

Food, money, water for me, that’s ok, but here we are not safe. We need safety. 
Please pressure your government to end this war and the occupation.”

Fred van Iersel and the importance of study and prayer for peace-activists – Gied ten Berge

“PAX for Peace” in the Netherlands is 75 years old. From his commitment, theologian Fred van Iersel felt heir to this peace movement. For two years he was general secretary of one of the ‘forerunners’ Pax Christi NL, combining it with a professorship for issues of spiritual care in the armed forces. Earlier, he was a Catholic council member in the Dutch IKV (Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad / Interchurch Peace Council, PAX’s other constituent). Gied ten Berge held intensive talks with Van Iersel during his illness until his death on 27 July 2023. Fred van iersel would have liked to write a kind of ‘testament’ for the peace movement, but death intervened. Ten Berge wrote the draft for such a text and, after consulting with his widow Marieke Feuth, he reworked it into his own.

Full text available here.

Fred van Iersel (1954-2023) in his last stage of life on the beach of Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands.
Image by: Gied ten Berge

Nicaragua Bishop Rolando José Álvarez sentenced for raising his voice in the face of injustice !

Source : https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253648/imprisoned-nicaraguan-bishop-deserves-us-support-religious-freedom-advocates-say

Brussels, February 15th, 2023

Pax Christi International, a global movement for peace and nonviolence, is deeply concerned about the unjust sentence of 26 years imprisonment handed down by the Appeals Court of Managua, Nicaragua against the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando José Álvarez, for allegedly engaging in treason, undermining national integrity, and spreading false news. Bishop Alvarez has actively advocated for civil and political rights, including for freedom of expression, conscience, and religion, and for the protection of human rights.

Pax Christi expresses its solidarity as well with the Catholic bishops’ conference of Nicaragua, which has been similarly subject to prosecution and harassment for taking positions in support of civil and political rights.

We pray for those who are striving with great effort to build a more just and peaceful Nicaragua. We stand in solidarity with the Catholic Church and other faith-based and civil society organizations calling for genuine democracy grounded in international human rights standards.

Pax Christi International is a plural faith-based peace network, promoting peace, respect for human rights, justice, ecological sustainability, and reconciliation for almost eight decades

#pci #paxchristiinternational #peace #humanrights #nicaragua #rolandoalvarez

To dowload our statement in english, press here !

Para descargar nuestra declaración en inglés, pulse aquí !

PCI’s UN representative Doug Hostetter shares his path of nonviolence

Listen to the part one of the interview with Doug.

Listen to the second part of the interview with Doug.

Pax Christi International has been fortunate to have Doug Hostetter as part of our team of volunteers at the United Nations in New York for several years.

Doug, a Mennonite and conscientious objector, served in the middle of a hot zone during the Vietnam War supporting the people who lived there. He shared his incredible story with Alan Winson and Rebecca McKean with Bar Crawl Radio in mid-June 2022.

In the second part of the interview, Doug describes his daily activities in and around the Tam Ky battle zone during the Vietnam War – his interaction with the U.S. American Marines and a very different relationship with U.S. officers who saw his positive work with the local population – as sapping GI morale. This led to a decision he had to make when he learned that the CIA was putting out rumors that could lead to his assassination. He describes surviving the violence of the two-week TET offensive of 1968 and the human devastation that he witnessed afterwards.

Doug’s experiences in Vietnam established his life path working for peace throughout the world: in Nicaragua during the Contra War, in Iraq with his attempts to prevent the First Gulf War by trading a plane-full of medicine with the Iraqis for U.S. citizens and UN hostages, and his work to save Bosnian students from genocide in the 1990s.

Listen to the part one of the interview with Doug.Listen to the second part of the interview with Doug.

In a world rife with intense violence, this story of a man of nonviolence should be heard.

Hohourongo: Reconciliation and Peace Making

The following is a contribution to our Peace Stories blog and to the Pax Christi International movement from our friends in Aotearoa (New Zealand). This is a contextual theological contribution on peace making. Photo: Pedro Szekely via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Led by Kevin McBride, our Pax Christi Aotearoa New Zealand section thinks it is important that we develop a spirituality of peace that is right for our part of the world and that there is much we can learn from Māori as the indigenous people of our country. To be in dialogue with Māori about these things is a way of addressing the harm and disrespect that was generated by colonisation. It is a dialogue that restores healing to all in our country.

At a recent study on Pax Christi and a Spirituality for Peace, Rangi Davis shared this lovely reflection on the Māori concept of Hohourongo. It is a model she uses in her teaching and counselling practice. Rangi explained that to move along the pathway to hohourongo, other important Māori principles are needed, namely, tika, pono, and aroha working alongside tapu, mana, noa and turanga (see explanations below). Rangi’s understandings developed under the guidance of Pa Henare Tate (Rev. Dr. Henare Tate) who was a preeminent scholar and teacher of Māori theology and spirituality.

Hohourongo

The imagery is:

picking up the pieces, putting together again, binding the wounds,

healing the wounds, mending the rifts, re-connecting the severed links,

 replacing the lost, empowering, reclaiming wellness,

reclaiming relationships, balancing the scales,

casting off the rubbish, entering the house of Rongo (Peace)

Hohourongo indicates a violation has occurred to Atua, tangata and whenua (God, people and land) and there is need for restoring tapu and mana through reconciliation or settlement. Hohourongo heals and restores wellbeing to people. The restoring of spiritual wellbeing restores psychological wellness and physical health. Violation severs relationships. Hohourongo re-connects and strengthens the severed three-fold relationship with God, people and land.

Violation ignores and tramples upon tapu restrictions and weakens the power of that safety measure. Hohourongo restores to tapu boundaries the power to safeguard the tapu and mana of all things that exist.

Hohourongo and tika, pono and aroha

Violation is the result of failing to act according to tika, pono and aroha.

Tika is needed to re-establish and maintain right relationships to make right responses and for the right exercise of mana by following the process of hohourongo.

Pono in the first place reveals the reality of the act and the effect of violation on the victim and perpetrator and their whānau (family, community). Secondly, it reveals the reality of the damage done. Thirdly it ensures all steps are taken to repair the damage. Fourthly, if there is no truth or integrity, hohourongo is not effected.

Aroha must always be a part of hohourongo because there is always need for compassion, sacrifice, generosity, and even affection during the process of victim, perpetrator and whānau.

Elements for Hohourongo

Admission, sorrow for the violation, resolve to mend and make right, utu or compensation is required of the perpetrator.

Signs/Whakamā, tears, sorrow, maybe relief.

The victim and whānau can determine the format of the hui hohourongo.

Acceptance of confession, sorrow, admission of guilt and utu, the compensation, granting forgiveness if hohourongo is to be achieved.

Signs/ Maybe tears, karakia, hariru and hongi.

Kua houtia te rongo – reconciliation has been achieved.

Kua tau te rangimarie – peace has been established.

I end with this Psalm 119:10:

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light to my path.”

“Ma te tini me te mano kia taea” With all our contributions we can achieve it.

Arohanui, Rangi

The Essence of Peace for Aotearoa

It is very important as we in Pax Christi Aotearoa-New Zealand explore the foundations of our work for peace, along with other sections and associates across the world, that we ground our principles in the vital essence of the land, the taha wairua of its Tangata Whenua, the Maori people. 

And while it is fully appropriate that we do this, it is also very much in the spirit of the founder of the Pax Christi movement, Marthe Dortel-Claudot, who saw it as a means of reconciliation and of mending the divisions that had been caused by years of warfare among European neighbours. In a similar way, we can heal the wounds of colonisation in our own land and become a sign of hope to others in our region and beyond engaged in working for peace for all, everywhere.

In the spirit of justice, love and peace

Kevin McBride 

A force stronger than war

20 years after 9/11, an American reflects on the power of friendship

By Doug Hostetter, Pax Christi International United Nations Representative (New York)

This article was originally published on the Anabaptist World website on 26 August 2021.

Photo: Abdul Hadi, pictured with Doug Hostetter in August 2002, returned to his home in Qala Kuja, Afghanistan, three years after it was destroyed in fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. Mennonite Central Committee and Church World Service helped him rebuild. — Doug Hostetter

When I arrived in Afghanistan to deliver humanitarian aid seven weeks after 9/11, the first question an Afghan farmer asked me was, “Why is the U.S. attacking our country? Your government was so helpful when we were occupied by the Soviet Union. We thought America was our friend.”

Fumbling for a response, I said, “A group of militants, from an organization with headquarters in your country, destroyed two buildings a half kilometer tall in New York City, killing almost 3,000 people.”

He looked confused. This appeared to be new information. We were in Kunduz, a province with no electricity, running water or paved roads, where the tallest building was one story high.

Twenty years later, people still are asking questions about the U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Many of these questions center on the impact of U.S. military action and the consequences of the 20-year war. Many Americans understand the U.S. did not win the war, and they question its high cost in blood and treasure. But they might not know what other choices their country might have made.

In Afghanistan, and earlier in Vietnam, I have seen the futility of war and the power of compassionate assistance to restore hope and build friendship.

My reflections on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 are informed by my convictions as an Anabaptist Christian, service with Mennonite Central Committee in Vietnam 50 years ago, conversations with Afghans 20 years ago and my role as MCC liaison to the United Nations from 2006 to 2018.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the 20 years of war that followed, have had profound and disastrous effects on the U.S. and Afghanistan. By making war, the U.S. turned a country whose people thought Americans were their friends into an enemy.

For many Americans, the logic of the Afghan war was clear: As the innocent victim of an unprovoked attack, the U.S. had to retaliate. On closer examination, things get a bit messier.

It is true Al-Qaeda militants based in Afghanistan hijacked the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon. But the hijackers were all Arabs, mostly Saudis, with not a single Afghan among them. Given Al-Qaeda’s secrecy, it is highly unlikely the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan even knew the 9/11 attacks were going to happen.

When it was determined that ­Al-Qaeda carried out the attacks, the U.S. government demanded Afghanistan immediately arrest or expel Al-Qaeda leaders.

The Afghan government requested a few weeks to organize a Loya Jirga (grand assembly of Afghan traditional leaders) to make that decision. The U.S. refused and responded militarily with massive bombings followed by ground troops.

The war was a blatant violation of the United Nations Charter and international law. The U.S. chose not to bring the matter to the U.N. Security Council but instead to initiate a war with NATO allies.

The attacks of 9/11 were serious crimes that should have brought decisive responses from law enforcement. Had the U.S. responded through INTERPOL, the international police organization, most nations would have given their support. Russia, China, the European Union, the United Nations and even most Muslim countries would have joined the effort to bring the 9/11 criminal plotters to justice.

Instead, the U.S. alienated the Muslim world, and many of our allies, by starting a war that resulted in more than 241,000 deaths, including 2,400 U.S. service members.

As the most powerful country in the world was preparing to attack the poorest country in Asia, I contacted MCC and the American Friends Service Committee to ask if they would join with a previously planned October trip to deliver food to Afghanistan. A small Afghan American organization, Help the Afghan Children, had organized the trip.

MCC and the AFSC agreed. They asked if I would represent them and accompany the organization’s director, Suraya Sadeed, to deliver food to displaced people in northern Afghanistan.

Sadeed played a key role in a story of compassionate ministry to Afghan people who suffered great tragedy due to the U.S. war.

She and her husband had emigrated to the United States in the late 1970s as the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. A decade later, after the Soviet defeat, she returned to Afghanistan and discovered great need. She came back to the U.S., started a small charity and returned regularly to assist children.

I asked Sadeed how she could work in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. How was it possible to have a medical clinic for women and girls in Kabul?

“There are good people in every country, every religion and even every political organization,” she responded. “I found a Taliban leader I thought I could trust. I asked, ‘What would you do if your wife or daughter had a difficult pregnancy?’ ”

He responded, “I would pray to God.”

“Yes,” Sadeed told him, “but there are professionals who can save lives in childbirth.”

“We could never allow a doctor to see a woman during childbirth,” he responded.

(All female doctors had been dismissed when the Taliban took over.)

When she promised to staff the clinic only with women, he agreed.

Then, in an instant, years of work was undone.

Just before we entered Afghanistan, Sadeed learned that chief pediatrician Dr. Belquis, internist Dr. Rahma and a registered nurse from the clinic were all killed in the U.S. bombing of Kabul.

American bombs had also killed four boys from the Help the Afghan Children Vocational Training Center in Jalabad.

Friendship and hope can be fostered through love and compassion — or destroyed in an instant by the weapons of war.

Positive change cannot be imposed by outsiders, but culturally sensitive assistance can make a difference. With funds from MCC, the AFSC and my family and friends, I was able to collect $60,000. Together with $70,000 that Help the Afghan Children collected, we were able to bring $130,000 to neighboring Tajikistan. There a supplier would convert our funds into 239 tons of wheat, sugar and cooking oil, which was loaded on 19 trucks and brought across the northern border into Afghanistan.

Sadeed and I traveled ahead. A few days later in Afghanistan, our supplies caught up with us. Afghans who had fled the U.S. bombing further south warmly welcomed us. We had enough supplies to feed 3,600 families of seven for one month.

As the U.S. withdraws its last combat troops, some will say the military must remain so Americans can build schools, modernize the country and protect Afghan girls.

Despite the rhetoric of politicians, wars are fought for material and strategic reasons, never for development, education or human rights.

From years of working in a war zone (I served three years with MCC in Vietnam at the height of that war), I have learned the military does not have the right equipment or training for nation building or the empowerment of women.

The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for 20 years. We have sacrificed the lives of thousands of U.S. service members and contractors and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians. Yet most Afghan people’s lives are worse today than when the U.S. invaded two decades ago.

Change in Afghanistan will need to be led by Afghans, not by foreigners whose weapons have caused great suffering and claimed many lives. Social change must be driven internally, not imposed through military occupation.

Eight months later, in 2002, when it was safe to travel to Kabul, MCC asked me to return to Afghanistan to visit a home-rebuilding project in Parwan Province. MCC was working with Church World Service to rebuild Afghan homes destroyed by war.

I met again with Afghans who had lost everything in the war. Once again, people welcomed me warmly as I brought a token of hope from people who believe love is stronger than vengeance and nonviolence a better choice than war.

Doug Hostetter served with MCC from 1966 to 1969 in Vietnam and October-November 2001 and July-August 2002 in Afghanistan. He directed MCC’s United Nations office from 2006 to 2018.