Increasingly, the victims of conflict in the Middle East are women and children.
After spending 10 months in the West Bank, Fulbright fellow and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Middle East history professor Heidi Morrison will share some of the stories of Palestinian children and their experiences of modern warfare on Saturday. Morrison lived in Ramallah during her fellowships, conducting oral history research with children who grew up during the second intifada, or second uprising, against Israeli occupation, from 2000 to 2005.
“War has increasingly been targeting civilians, with the majority of deaths being women and children,” Morrison said. “It is actually taking place in their places of daily life.”
In America, places like schools and homes are considered safe places for children and families, even during adverse times. In Palestine, not even schools are sanctuaries for children, who are often the target of indiscriminate violence.
“There is no safe place for them to go,” Morrison said. “They are constantly living in a state of war.”
Morrison became interested in the Middle East after she received a scholarship to participate in
a study tour of Egypt. That interest continued to develop in college, where she studied modern Middle East history and developed a passion for focusing on children and their history in the region.
As part of her Fulbright fellowship, she taught seminars at Birzeit University’s Ibrahiem Abu Lughold Institute of International Studies. But Saturday’s talk will focus mostly on Morrison’s experiences living in the Palestinian occupied territories and the experiences of the children she interviewed.
Many of the Palestinian children she spoke with feel overlooked, Morrison said. A lot of focus internationally is on the impact of the conflict on Israeli children, and Morrison said it part of how the West dehumanizes the conflict by treating the Palestinian children as if they don’t exist.
Morrison hopes to help show the humanity of the Palestinian people and the occupation, especially those who resist peacefully. The majority of the Palestinians get through their daily life using art and music as a way to be seen and heard.
“The normal people who live and exist there do so peacefully,” she said. “The majority of Palestinians are not violent.”
U.S. involvement is a complicated subject in Palestine, and Morrison said her presentation will help people understand. During the fellowship, Morrison said, Palestinians showed her bullets and talked about the loss of loved ones killed by weapons supplied with U.S. tax dollars.
“Palestinians are very upset with what the American government supports,” she said. “But they showed me nothing but kindness and support.”
In the end, Morrison’s goal is the same one as the Fulbright program that helped her study in Palestine: She hopes to build a greater understanding and compassion for different cultures and their experiences.
“I hope they walk away understanding what it is like to be a Palestinian child growing up in unimaginable conflict,” she said. “I see myself in a position to share their stories.”
