On Oct. 6, 2023, Alex Awad took a group from a Methodist Church in Coburg on a trip to the Holy Land, visiting Bethlehem and surrounding areas. The group heard a talk by Sami Awad, Alex’s nephew and a nonviolent peacemaker in Bethlehem, not knowing that they would be hearing bombs as Hamas began its attacks on Israel the next day.
Awad tells Eugene Weekly he was shocked that Hamas was able to cross the Israeli border that is known for a “strong security system not even a mouse can cross.” He says, “Immediately, the shock went into a deep worry that the people of Gaza are going to pay a very heavy price.”
He called his family in Gaza to urge them to leave; however, they could not leave for a year and lost their homes and properties, as did many others in Gaza. “Israeli policy has always been collective punishment,” he says.
Awad was born in the U.S. to Palestinian refugee parents, then grew up in Bethlehem after his family returned to the West Bank. He founded Holy Land Trust in 1995 to advocate nonviolent resistance to the occupation of Palestine. Currently, he is the co-director of Nonviolence International, where he focuses on understanding the root causes of violence and on trauma resilience through leadership, training and educational programs.
“It’s not about the information, it’s about the action,” Awad says.
August 17 through 19, Awad will give talks in Eugene and Lane County sharing what he sees in Palestine from his own experience living there. He says it is crucial for Americans to keep pressuring local politicians and their representatives.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 61,158 Palestinians have died as a result of the war and there have been 151,442 reported injuries as of August 6. On top of the war, Palestinians face food insecurity and lack of access to safe and healthy resources and housing.
More and more people have been standing up against the war and the U.S.’s involvement in Gaza in terms of supporting Israel through military aid. Karen McCowan is a member of People for Peace and Justice in Palestine, a local grassroots group of Christians, Jews, Muslims and other identities. The group formed about three months ago as the damage and destruction in Gaza has continued.
McCowan says some people in the U.S. have a superficial understanding of what’s happening in Gaza and what the U.S. is and should be doing.
McCowan also went on the trip with Alex Awad to Bethlehem in 2023, and during Sami Awad’s speech in Palestine, she recalls him saying, “We have to hear each other’s trauma.”
Even before the war started on Oct. 7, McCowan and her group saw how Palestinians lived as “second-class citizens” under occupation by Israel. She says cars with white Palestinian licence plates could not drive on certain roads.
Alex Awad is Palestinian, born in Jerusalem in 1946, and he lost his father when a sniper killed him in front of the house during the first major Arab-Israeli war in 1948.
Alex and his family lost their home and became refugees. “We had to run away from our house to another place,” he says.
Alex and his siblings studied in Europe and around the world; he was in Switzerland in 1967 when the Six-Day War happened. He wanted to go back home, but the Israeli government did not allow Palestinians who left the country to get back in, which happened to thousands of other Palestinians.
“I wanted to go back home, but I could not go home,” he says. He then applied to a college in the U.S. and was thankful for the opportunity to come to America to continue his education. Hoping to be closer to his home in Palestine, Alex and his wife served at Bethlehem Bible College in East Jerusalem as missionaries of the United Methodist Church.
After retirement, Alex and his wife moved to Eugene about 10 years ago. Living in the U.S., he says he sees false media representations of what’s really happening in Gaza and the people there. “The way the media report was totally different,” he says. He always loves to share his experiences. “I try to help people understand the reality of what’s happening in my country,” he says. He hopes that many Eugeneans will come hear Sami Awad speak.
“He is a man of peace, a man who dedicated his life to nonviolence,” Alex says of his nephew.