From the Olive Groves of Ma' ale Avia

Today I write to you from the misty hills covered with rows upon rows of olive trees and wild flowers. I am staying with a family in Ma'ale Avia, a tiny village on a hill side with less than 100 familes that fuctions as a communial healing community. Irit the head of the household is a midwife of 5 years now after being a nurse most of her life. She has worked in the hospitals of the Galilee where she has expericed quite a mix of ethnic and religous cultures in the hospital. She said she has struggled with some anti semitism in the past but on the whole loves her job. I asked her about some of the challeges she has faced. She seemed a little timid to answer and said more to me off camera than she would on camera but I am learning alot.

A challenge she mentioned was that she felt like some of the women did not have enough control over their own birth. Sometimes an Arab woman would come in and the mother was there but you had to be wise to ask if it was her mother or the mother of her husband. Many times the pregnant woman did not want the husband's mother to be there and often you could see that they might not have gotten along but the woman is not alowed to tell the mother to leave unless they are out of the room.

I also talked to Irit a lot about her life and her feelings on the political situation. She does not have optimism for the future and that too much damage has already been done. She also thinks it is nieve to come in and try to have everyone try an live together. People have different needs and different styles of living their life and should not all be forced to live together. I think it was difficult to express her opinon from the translation but what I got from it was that she believed in celabrating the differences instead of forcing people to change.