Aussie grandmother risks violence on Hebron streets

The Melbourne Anglican
Beryl Rule - Monday, June 4, 2007
Although “a grandmother in her mid-70’s” no longer conjures up an image of shawls and rocking-chairs, it is not likely to evoke the picture of a woman putting herself at risk in a West Bank hotspot. But if Mary Baxter happens to be the grandmother under discussion, that second image is the accurate one. The clergy widow and retired applied statistics professor has spent a total of 12 months in Hebron during the last three years, acting as a human rights observer and trying to shield Palestinian children from intimidation by hostile Israeli settlers.

Mary’s first visit to Israel was in 1977, for an ecology conference. Returning with her husband on a clergy tour 10 years later she was disturbed to see that churches had been boarded up, Christians moved out, and there were threatening groups of Israeli youths roaming the streets.

During her husband’s period as a locum in Damascus, the following year, they were horrified to see on television that Palestinians were being bashed by rifle butts. Their awareness of problems increased when the then Bishop of Jerusalem said he wanted Australian nurses for the hospitals, because they could serve as independent witnesses against the violence being done to Palestinians.

After her husband’s death Mary continued to take a close interest in the sufferings of the Palestinian people and to try to find an organization which could help her to return to Israel. A sermon by Archdeacon Barry Smith, her parish priest, triggered the decision to go anyway. So in 2004, armed only with an AngliCORD brief to visit some Anglican Hospitals, she set off.

“I visited the hospitals and the David Penman Medical Centre, and I also attended three demonstrations against Israel’s security barrier in Budrus and Beit Awwa, but I realised I was too old for demonstrations – I wasn’t quick enough over the rough ground!” Mary admitted, adding that speed is essential when you are running from tear gas and rubber bullets!

Accordingly, when she returned in September 2005, she had a different role: as a volunteer human rights observer with International Solidarity, a non-violent organization, in the Israeli controlled section of Hebron. The Palestinian population there is 3,500; Jewish settlers number 500, but they are “passionate and aggressive”, Mary explained, and protected by the troops.

Palestinian children on their way to and from school are frequently harassed by the settlers, and the Israeli soldiers ignore their plight. Mary has made it her particular brief to try to make friends with the soldiers and ask for help when the children are being threatened. She personally accompanies children – although she is not supposed to do this – if no other protection is forthcoming.

“I come out of my house when the children are going to school, at seven in the morning, and again from one to two in the afternoon, when they are going home. Settler women and children throw stones at them and push them, and won’t let them past. It’s very traumatic for the Palestinian kids, and if I walk with them the settlers complain to the soldiers about me. These young soldiers – 18 and 19 year olds – are in Hebron for three months at a time to protect the settlers. They often have nothing to do and are very bored, and they hate it. They like to talk. I have worked with young men all my life and I like them. They remind me of the engineering students I taught; I can relate to them and see the kid inside the uniform. I treat them like grand-children. Most Internationals come and go but I have been around the longest, so I am known. I had the last batch of soldiers co-operating really well. And I can get away with more than others because of my age. I have come between a soldier and an elderly Palestinian man he was about to hit – but I was only able to do this because I liked the soldier as well as the old man.

“You have to use your judgement. It can be dangerous. When I see a group of young fundamentalist men out looking for trouble I watch them like a hawk, and make for a soldier if they approach. One of those groups smashed a bottle into a Swedish girl’s face.”Mary herself has been spat at by settlers, verbally abused and had rocks thrown at her.

Currently in Melbourne, she hopes to return to Hebron in July.“I know what I am doing is just a drop in the bucket,” she admitted, “but I see it as being able, every day, to give some hope to a small group of people.”

But why Hebron, we asked? After all, the world is full of good causes, many of them much closer to home.

For Mary, the answer to that is simple.

“God said to go there,” she replied, “and it feels so right.”