By Emi Bendler
The room in the Congregational Church was filled to the brim with people of all ages on Thursday for a talk on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The event was sponsored by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, and it featured speaker Maria Filippone, who discused how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has affected Gaza.
There has been an on and off dispute between Palestine and Israel for many years, resulting in several conflicts and difficult living conditions.
Filippone is a family physician from Des Moines who has traveled to Gaza twice to aid its people.
She stressed that she believes we only hear the point of view of the people of Israel.
“We are literally the last country in the world to listen to this [the people of Palestine’s] narrative,” she told the audience.
Filippone discussed her experience in Gaza and described the limitations and hardships facing the people who live there.
“There’s very little freedom of movement for Palestinians,” she said. “There’s no freedom of movement for Gazans.”
She noted the population problem in Gaza, noting that Rhode Island is approximately nine times bigger than Gaza, yet has 1 million fewer people.
Many people refer to Gaza as “the world’s largest open air prison,” she said. “I disagree with that,” she said. “Prisoners in prisons get water, food, and medical care. Gazans don’t get that.”
At one point, she said, “There’s no PTSD in Gaza because the trauma is ongoing.”
Although she expressed her distaste with the way Israel treats the Palestinians, she made it clear that there is a difference between Zionism and Judaism.
“Not all Jewish people are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jewish,” she said.
In addition, Filippone said, Gazans don’t hate Jewish people and, in turn, welcome them.
She recounted an experience in which a Jewish woman traveling with her wore earrings shaped in the Star of David almost every day, and the woman was not treated any differently.
Finally, she ended with saying the best way to help the situation was to get educated.
She is not the only one to give this advice. Ed Flaherty and Maisaa Abu Dagga echoed the belief.
“Reading is the easiest thing to do,” Flaherty said.
He also suggested reaching out to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Rep. Dave Loebsack. He said if people want to get really extreme, they can stop paying their taxes to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
“It’s a very complicated situation,” said Abu Dagga said, who is originally from Gaza but hasn’t been back in 10 years. “I’m here to learn how I can reach people to teach them about what is going on.”
Abu Dagga said her reason for attending the event was rooted in her absence from Gaza. She also said she came to figure out just how many Americans, and specifically Iowans, know about the conflict.
“I need to know what is going on. I want people to know we’re all human.”