More women leaders needed

Terry Greenblatt recalls waiting in the green room before her first live CNN interview in 2002, trying not to panic.

Her work advocating for women’s rights, peace and justice in Israel had brought her to the highest halls of power, in Europe and the United States. She represented Israeli and Palestinian women leaders who had asked the United Nations Security Council to implement its own resolution, requiring inclusion of women in the Middle East peace process.

“Even when we are women whose very existence and narrative contradicts each other, we will talk – we will not shoot,” she had confidently told the Council. Yet the idea of speaking about the resolution for 20 minutes on national television made her sweat.

She looked at her partner in this cause, a Palestinian activist named Maha Abu-Dayya Shamas, who had appeared with Greenblatt before the U.N. Security Council and was joining her on the live TV interview. Shamas was cool and relaxed. Greenblatt asked her how she could possibly not be nervous.

Maha put it in perspective. Every day in Jerusalem, she said, she wakes up, makes coffee, showers, gets dressed and goes to work, only to be stopped at one to three security checkpoints where, sometimes, 18 year-old boys point Kalashnikov rifles at her head while they check her papers. “There really isn’t a lot in life that throws me,” she told Greenblatt.

Greenblatt was relieved, and she said the pair went on to give a great interview about how they had joined to call for an international, female-led effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“If only there were more women leaders, surely things would change,” she told members of the Boulder Rotary Club in a recent talk.

Last year Greenblatt became CEO and Executive Director of the Boulder-based Urgent Action Fund, which makes rapid response grants to international women’s activist groups.

Her resume is impressive. According to the Fund’s web site, she has served as executive director of Bat Shalom in Jerusalem and as founding Activist in Residence for the Global Fund for Women in San Francisco. She is a Trustee of the Sarvodaya Gandhi International Trust in India and has been a women’s rights and peace and justice activist in Israel for over 20 years. She received Ms. magazine’s Woman of the Year, Colombe D’oro Per La Pace and Dialogue on Diversity Liberty awards, and was one of the 1000 Women for Peace nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Greenblatt said that while she and other women human rights leaders now are being invited in, speaking to world leaders about how to address world conflict nonviolently, the leaders often ignore that message.

"We were not locked out of these rooms anymore," she said. Yet, "While we had made it to the halls of power, something was happening in the corridors of power and we were getting lost."

Greenblatt said she hopes a leader comes along soon to guide Israel and Palestine through a non-violent peace process. “Things can't get worse, and I don’t know why we aren’t trying this,” she said.

Her lifetime of bringing both sides to the peace table and negotiating with world leaders clearly makes her a great fit for her latest endeavor. The Urgent Action Fund, celebrating its tenth anniversary, makes grants that respond to armed conflict or escalating violence, potentially precedent-setting legal cases, and the security needs of women defending human rights.

More information on the organization may be found at www.urgentactionfund.org.

-- reported by Chris Barge




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