Speaker: Palestinian children victims in unjust war

When it comes to her feelings about Israel, Barbara Lubin has gone full circle. The 67-year-old activist told a crowd at Bigfork United Methodist Church on Thursday night that she was raised in a conservative, Zionist Jewish household in Philadelphia, but a trip to the Middle East when she was in her 40s changed all that.

"To live it through Palestinian eyes totally turned it around," she said.

Lubin was in the Flathead giving talks about her work at the invitation of the Community Forum on Middle East Solutions, a local group. Thursday night's Bigfork presentation with the music of Jack Gladstone to kick things off, capped a day of three talks in Kalispell at Flathead High School and Flathead Valley Community College.

Lubin founded the Middle East Children's Alliance in 1988 and has since delivered $12 million in toys, medicine and other aid for Palestinian children displaced or injured in the conflict between Israel and Gaza.

Though Lubin acknowledged that she is liberal even in her famously left hometown of Berkeley, Calif., she said her organization has long been apolitical, preferring to focus only on aid rather than policy.

"You're not hurting the Jewish people by helping Palestinian children," she said.

Lubin's last trip to the Holy Land was in January, during Israel's retaliatory bombing of Gaza after Palestinian militants sent rockets into Israeli settlements just across the border. That trip was to deliver about $1 million in aid, including an ambulance for medics in Gaza.

"We were bombed on the Egyptian side and on the Gaza side," Lubin said. "It was horrifying."

So too were some of the photos Lubin showed in her presentation, depicting Palestinians injured during the bombing being loaded into or taken from ambulances and hospitals.

Lubin likened the situation in Gaza to the Apartheid in South Africa that lasted until 1994. Though initially people took a defeatist attitude, Lubin said eventually the world rallied to condemn the practice and it was put to an end. That change, she said, is starting to happen on behalf of the Palestinians.

"We have to treat this in the same way we treated South Africa," she said. "If I came here 10 years ago, there would be three people in this church. It is changing."

After Lubin's presentation the Community Forum group held a bazaar, with food ranging from baklava to baba ganoush and products produced in Gaza like olive oil.

During Lubin's stay in the Flathead, the Community Forum raised about $2,200 for her MECA.