Yesterday night Mr. Curt Bell came to Salem Lutheran Church to present upon “Why Palestinian Rights Matter to Me and You” with a Q&A session following afterwards. Mr. Bell, a retired neuroscientist, is now an advocate for social justice in Palestine and, in a greater sense, an advocate for peace. Being born in Bahrain then going to high school in Beirut, Lebanon Mr. Bell was able to experience various cultures an interact with people of different ethnic groups. After going to Jerusalem, Bell had a firsthand encounter in seeing the “overcrowded, smelly and sad’” Palestinian camps which lay on the outside of the holy city. From seeing the horrors of the camps, Mr. Bell took initiative to act. However, his story of advocacy did not really start until the Iraqi war broke out. Bell addresses three distinct segments within Violations of Palestinian Human Rights’ presentation; what …show more content…
He illustrates Palestinian human rights’ violations both in the ways he spoke and the visual images provided in the presentation, in doing so eloquently. Images of Palestinians “crowded in line like cattle” trying to enter Jerusalem for work and Palestinian children playing in the rubble that used to stand their homes, provoked emotion among the audience. Mr. Bell brought up the concept of blowback within the conflict saying that “when one people are oppressed, it is a blowback on the oppressors”. Essentially meaning that the oppressors, in this case Israelis, should expect the unwanted effects for their terrible actions (tear gas, firebombs, kidnapping children) taken upon the oppressed Palestinians. He also focused on addressing how Palestinian children undergo mistreatment where children, mainly boys, are