Thirteen Days in Israel — Part IX - Final Installment in this Series

March 17-19 — A three-day workshop with a group of Bedouin women in Ashkelon, Israel.

"What are you so afraid of? I'm facing my fears. If today is your day to die, then so be it." What can you say to that? I started laughing.

Perhaps it's fitting that during the last two days of my trip I experienced firsthand what it feels like to be under mortar attack, because now I have a new understanding of the fear and danger these women live with on a daily basis.

Here's what happened. Rina, a Bedouin woman who had done work with me at Omega, invited me and three women from the Beyond Words organization—Silvi, an Arab Christian, and two Jewish women, Nitsan and Liri—to run a three-day workshop at a kibbutz two miles from the Gaza strip, with all Bedouin women.

Many of the twenty Bedouin women were wearing headscarves. In Bedouin culture the women's husbands are permitted to take multiple wives, and the women are told whom they can marry—and sometimes are forced to marry very young. Their lives are controlled. They don't have money. The tribes stay separate. Women are really not free in their Bedouin culture, and they're oppressed in Israeli society as well. They are getting it from all directions—from their husbands and families, from their tribal culture, and from the government of Israel.

When we got there the first night I was really tired. Silvi hadn't arrived yet, so I asked Liri and Nitsan to take the lead and run the first workshop. They had been Beyond Words leaders for many years, and I quietly observed.

The next day Silvi arrived, along with a Bedouin woman named Amal, who had been nominated for a Nobel Peace prize for her work in the Bedouin community. As I started working with the whole group, I was thrilled to see that the Bedouin women were really ready to get into it. For these women, it was a special treat that someone had come in from the outside to give them something. It was clear that they were going to take advantage of every single second.

They started telling stories that were so unbelievable. One woman said they had tried to marry her off but she'd stood up to them and said no. She wanted to go to school. For punishment, her family had taken her books and burned them. She was ostracized by her tribe. Four years later she met a man whom she felt was her soulmate. His wife had died and he had scars because he had been a skin donor to try in vain to save his wife's life, who was injured in a car wreck but ended up dying. She felt this man's suffering and married him. But her family was still against her and banished her, including her own twin brother. Because she had done what she wanted to do, she had born the punishment for it her whole life. She just couldn't bring herself to submit. After she married this man, he decided to take a second wife. Feeling deeply betrayed, she took her child with her back to her family, but they shut their doors on her and the child. Somehow, she supported herself and her child, and built her own house. Her husband, unhappy with his second marriage, ended up coming back to her. He begged her to take him back. She agreed, but on one condition: that they would live in her house.

Another woman said, "My husband used to beat me, but finally I turned him in and he went to prison. But now he's out of prison and he's beating my children." We got her hitting and saying "NO!" She started telling her husband he can never hit her children again. Her emotions radiated through the room and triggered a lot of pent-up feelings. Another woman started screaming, "Mother, where are you? Why aren't you protecting me?" Many of the women screamed and cried for their mothers. In Bedouin society, oppression is handed down from mothers and perpetuated by them.

The women went home, and the next day gunmen from Gaza started bombing the kibbutz where we were. At first, the shelling sounded far away. Then we heard this bomb explode really close by. We ran inside and tried to get under the bed. Then we saw people running outside, so we ran outside and followed them into a small concrete room that was the bomb shelter. Liri told me that even if a bomb hit on top of us we'd be fine. She was in post-traumatic shock. And I could see that Silvi was really angry. It was chaotic and confusing. Then the bombing stopped.

When we went outside to investigate, the bombing started again, so we ran back into the shelter. Ring ring. It was the Bedouin women calling us on phone. "We want to finish the workshop. We're coming to get you." The woman, who the day before had had the courage to stand up to her husband, arrived in a taxi with two other giant, powerful women, who put their arms around us. She (who remains nameless to protect her identity) looked me in the eyes and said, "What are you so afraid of? I'm facing my fears. If today is your day to die, then so be it. Come on!" What can you say to that? I started laughing. They reminded me of powerful angels coming to take us away.

We went in separate cars to a house that was away from the bombing to finish the workshop. I was in a car with Liri and Silvi, and Silvi was in a rage. "The government leaders use us," she cried. "The Jewish and Arab leaders use the conflict to support their causes, and we've got to take this away from them." She said they use us by getting us scared and angry, which perpetuates their conflict. "We can take it away from them. We can use it differently. The mortars are coming from Gaza, but Israel has so much more firepower to bomb the shit out of the Gaza leaders." She said they would use every opportunity to continue the conflict. "We women have to say no. We have to go to the streets and say no!"

In the backseat on the verge of tears, I was feeling their rage and their fear. I was thinking, how terrible that people around the world are living in these situations and we're in our comfortable privileged lives and not giving it a second thought. That car ride was more intense than the bomb. I felt their rage so fully.

In the end, they were all really happy that I had had this experience. Everyone said, "You need to know what life is like here and need to know what we're living with and what we're dealing with."

When we got all the women together for the final workshop, one of the Bedouin women who had come to get us said when she had hugged Liri in the bomb shelter, she had felt split. I love this woman, she said, but feel for the people of Gaza. She talked about how split her heart feels and how much she wants peace, but how her heart in that moment was with the people of Gaza and the Arabs. Liri was the only Jewish woman in that room. The women were saying all sorts of different things. All Jews aren't like Liri; they're not going to support us. Others were saying, yes, we can do this. Everything on that morning was out in the open.

I said I would never forget those brave Bedouin women coming to get me for the rest of my life.

Nor will I forget these 13 days in Israel, and all the courageous and open-hearted women who taught me and each other so much, women who are mending the rifts between religious and ethnic cultures one heart and soul at a time.