Tag: israel
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The Other Side of the Green Line
Sheikh Mahmoud (courtesy of Nizar Khatib) The Stone House, June 7, 1967. Blessedly the war was short. I was a newlywed. Nineteen years old. An American Jew from NYC who married into a Palestinian family from East Jerusalem, Jordan after a very brief courtship— an unlikely occurrence. Faisal and I were busy planning our honeymoon…
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Remembering the 6-Day War
La JicaritaAn Online Magazine of Environmental Politics in New Mexico July 11, 2025 Fifty-eight years have passed since the ’67 War, a war I survived under the protection of a Palestinian family. We had no idea that the face of the Middle East had been irrevocably changed. June 5, 1967 I am a newlywed. Nineteen…
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Apartheid Separation Wall
A Palestinian living in Ayda Refugee Camp, one mile north of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, points to his trees on the other side of the Apartheid Separation Wall. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI visited the refugee camp and said, “It’s tragic to see these walls being erected.” The Palestinian farmer whose hand points toward his fields…
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We Remember
Zochrot means remember. Our group walking through a national park near Jerusalem with Eitan Bronstein, a rugged-looking middle-aged Israeli unquestioningly joined the Israeli army at eighteen. Years later, he learned a more complex version of history and became the director of Zochrot, an Israeli organization whose members erect handmade signs in Arabic and Hebrew naming Palestinian villages…
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Ayda Refugee Camp
Photo taken by Iris keltz in Ayda Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank. 1948 is the date of the Palestinian Nakba. Over 500 villages were destroyed, erased, bulldozed, destroyed. In Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramleh, Lynda, and more Palestinian homes filled with their owners’ belongings were given to homeless Jewish immigrants. Palestinian watched their villages…
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Gaza on my mind
I remember Gaza in 1998. I was traveling with a group sponsored by Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam/the Oasis of Peace. A unique village in Israel where Palestinian and Jewish Israelis lived in community sending their children to the same school where they learned each other’s language, history and customs. Our tour included Gaza. Abject fear made me…
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At The Crossroads of Justice
A debate that has been raging in my family for 53 years, is now being argued across the American-Jewish community. Peter Beinart, an influential Jewish-American journalist and intellectual, recently claimed that Jewish dehumanization of Palestinians is the greatest threat to a peaceful resolution. In 1967, a Palestinian family from East Jerusalem offered me sanctuary during…
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Unexpected Bride in the Promised Land has finally been published
Nighthawk Press: Pub. date: May 1, 2017Historical Memoir, 293 pp. $19.95 paperbackAvailable at bookstores, online retailers, orNighthawk Presshttp://www.nighthawkpress.com/titles/unexpected-bride-promised-land/Iris Keltz might be the only Jew, American or Israeli, to have found sanctuary with the Palestinians during a war that changed the face of the Middle East. The Israeli military victory in 1967 should have been a…
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Boycott is Kosher
I was shocked when I first heard Jewish leaders in my community denounce the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement started by Palestinians living in the West Bank. Call me naive, but considering Israelis had been living under the threat of bombs exploding on buses, in shopping malls, restaurants, and other public places, there should…
Through My Eyes 