Despite living in an area under constant rocket fire from Gaza, Israeli Roni Keidar helps Palestinians from Gaza get emergency health care in Israel.
Keidar will present “Nurturing Peace on the Gaza Border” on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The free Heartbeat of Israel lecture is sponsored by the Weintraub Israel Center, which is a joint project of the JCC and the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona.
Born in England in 1944, Keidar immigrated to Israel as a child in 1951. She lives at Netiv HaAsara, a moshav founded by families evacuated from the Sinai as a result of the Camp David Accords. The community is located in Tucson’s Partnership2gether TIPS region.
Retired after a varied career as an educator, health secretary and export officer, Keidar says she devotes much of her time to “studying international relations in order to help me understand the impossible situation we are living in and try to create a new reality of peace in the region.” Active in “Other Voice,” a nonpartisan grassroots peace group, her goal is to help people understand “that on the other side of the border there are people hurting just like us and yet also want to have a different life, not opposing our very existence but fighting for an existence of their own, living in security, building and developing a new and prosperous life for themselves.”
Keidar will spend a week in Tucson as a guest of the Weintraub Israel Center. In addition to the Heartbeat of Israel lecture, she will hold a question and answer session on Friday, March 1 following the 7 p.m. Shabbat service at Congregation Chaverim, and will speak at St. Philips in the Hills Episcopal Church, 4440 N. Campbell Ave., on Sunday, March 3 at 12:30 p.m. Keidar also will give the final lecture in the Israel Past and Present adult education series cosponsored by the WIC and Temple Emanu-El, “Building Alternative Bridges for Peace Under Fire,” on Monday, March 4 at 6:30 p.m. (prorated fee, $15), and will present a lunch and learn at the Jewish Federation-Northwest on March 5 at noon.
For more information, contact Jennifer Ferrell at israelcenter@jfsa.org or 577-9393, ext. 133.
