wfn.org | An Episcopal woman's Mideast ministry

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For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

2000-026

One woman's Mideast peace ministry becomes a coast-to-coast initiative

by Kathryn McCormick

     (ENS) As the wife of a U.S. diplomat, Jerri Bird has lived in 
places throughout the Mideast where the tensions of war or near-war
permeated every part of daily life. It was hard to live with. While the 
culture at each post was wonderful to discover and learn about, and 
the people often were fascinating, Bird says she realized that often 
what she and they shared was a common yearning for peace.
     But what started as a yearning has now become a nearly full-time 
crusade to help Americans understand issues surrounding the long 
pursuit of peace in troubled parts of the world. The best understanding, 
she figured, would come from women who could describe their own 
experiences coping with the war actions of men.
     Although she and her husband, Gene, retired several years ago to 
a home in Washington, D.C., she now runs a small organization, 
Partners for Peace, that has sponsored several extensive tours by 
women from Israel--Palestinians and Jews--throughout the United 
States. Not only do the tour members lecture and answer questions 
about their lives in a tension-filled state, Bird makes sure they also 
speak with newspapers, magazines and television and radio stations 
along the way.
A three-woman tour
     Bird, an Episcopalian who admits to being over 70 years old, says
the work is exhausting yet exhilarating. The first tour, "Jerusalem 
Women Speak: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared City," 
was launched in January 1998. It covered 10 cities in 17 days. 
     "These women didn't know each other, and didn't come with 
agendas," Bird recalled. "They talked about their personal experiences 
and their own views." The tour proved so successful--attendance at 
lectures and the combined audiences of the media involved reached a 
total of 220 million people, she said--that two other tours have been 
conducted since then.
     The most recent was last fall, when Allegra Pacheco and Sahar 
Francis, human rights lawyers in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 
discussed the Israeli High Court's acknowledgement that the Israeli 
security force had routinely tortured detainees during interrogations. 
The detainees are persons who are held without charge on suspicion 
of security offenses. The overwhelming majority are Palestinians.
     The court's landmark ruling declared that the use of such force was 
illegal.
     Pacheco, a Jewish American-born graduate of Columbia Law School 
who now holds dual citizenship in Israel and  the U.S., argued the court 
case on behalf of detainees who had been tortured; Francis, a Christian 
Palestinian Israeli, a graduate of Haifa University, has worked extensively 
with the primarily Palestinian detainees and their traumatized families.
     Together they talked about the Israeli court decision and what life is 
like in a volatile part of the world where peace is elusive.
First post in Jerusalem
     Jerri Bird's experience in the Mideast began when she and her husband 
arrived in Jerusalem in 1956. He was a vice-consul in the U.S. Foreign 
Service.
     "I think it's still my favorite post, although it was a very strange existence," 
says Bird, describing how the divided city forced her and her husband to cross 
a line between very different worlds in order to attend parties or to meet friends.
     Subsequent assignments took them and their growing family to Lebanon, 
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India. The couple has four children. When Gene Bird 
retired from the Foreign Service in 1975 the couple returned to the United States--
but not for long, Bird says, recalling that her husband accepted a business 
assignment in Saudi Arabia, so they returned to the Mideast for four more years.
     They were years that she particularly enjoyed, she says. "The kids were 
grown and I found I had some time on my hands." 
     She became increasingly disturbed by what she saw as misinformation that 
distorted Americans' understanding of the Saudis, particularly Saudi women. 
She conducted detailed interviews with 30 to 40 Saudi women, asking them 
about family life, their roles as women in Saudi society, how much independence 
they had, and even about their sex lives. The results are in a manuscript awaiting 
publication.
     "No one has written such a book yet," Bird declares.
     After the assignment in Saudi Arabia, the couple settled in Washington, D.C., 
where they became active in working for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Bird was a 
member of the Diocese of Washington's Peace Commission but left in order to 
pursue what she determined was a more active course toward Mideast peace.
Humble beginning
     Partners for Peace was born at her dining room table, an outgrowth of 
work done by a group that met in the Birds' home and discussed ways to 
develop grassroots contacts.
     "We decided after a while that our effort needed better public relations,"
 Bird says. "Too many people weren't getting our message."
     She hired Peter Wirth, a public relations expert who had worked with 
Witness for Peace. 
     Wirth smiles at the notion of being "hired" for his job at Partners for Peace.
His modest pay comes from the private contributions made to Partners, as 
well as several small grants the group has received in recent years. Bird says
 the group now raises about $70,000 per year--enough for the extensive
traveling involved and to allow it to currently have an intern from the 
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
     With Bird, Wirth has concentrated on taking the tours to places 
where people might not often discuss foreign policy. The most recent 
tour, featuring the human right lawyers, visited many law schools, but also 
included the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and other stops. 
Previous tours have included a number of women's groups--Arab, Jewish 
and Christian--as well as interfaith groups.
     The Birds are members of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington.
     Jerri Bird says that she was born to a family rooted in the United Church 
of Christ, but when she and her husband went overseas, and particularly as
their children were growing, they longed for a way to develop a consistency 
in their church-going. They became Episcopalians during their first time in 
Saudi Arabia.
     Her faith is "just basic" to her life, she says. "I was taught from a very early 
age that I had to give back, I had obligations to the greater society. What I have 
was given to me in trust."
     She is proud that all of her kids seem to have learned this lesson. "They're 
all very concerned human beings," she says.

--Kathryn McCormick is associate director of the Episcopal Church's 
Office of News and Information.