#OPENGAZA:
TRAUMA AND HOPE, FIRST HAND

SPEAKING TOUR FEATURING GAZA COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAMME AND PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, ISRAEL.

Last year in July, Rebuilding Alliance joined people worldwide in expressing condolences to Gaza Community Mental Health Programme’s Executive Director Dr. Yasser Jamei over the loss of 28 family members during the Israeli invasion of Gaza.  Other GCMHP staff lost family too.  We held them in our hearts because the GCMHP has worked with Rebuilding Alliance in partnership ever since Dr. Eyad El Sarraj welcomed us in Gaza in 2004.  Our goal, then and now is to listen and find tangible ways to help and support them and all who work to build peace. 

Now, Rebuilding Alliance and the Gaza Mental Health Foundation are honored to bring you a remarkable speaking tour called #Open Gaza — Trauma and Hope, First Hand. Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei will be joined by Ran Goldstein, the Executive Director of representative of Physicians for Human Rights —Israel. 

FOCUS:

Our speakers will describe the dire situation of physical and psychological health in Gaza through a lens of personal experience and their important work to provide health care services and to overcome the significant political barriers they face in Israel, Palestine, and Gaza.  Children are especially impacted, as shown in the staggering numbers of children killed and injured last summer and the extremely high rates of ongoing traumatic stress. The impact of ongoing violence on psychological health is exacerbated by the ongoing blockade, the destruction and defunding of schools, loss of family members and friends, and stalled reconstruction efforts.  We’ll structure each speaking event to also include a few minutes with a Rebuilding Alliance coordinator to help the audience learn a how to contact Congress to press for a tangible and immediate way for Gaza’s children and their families to recover and to also ask them to work on the big policy goal of ending the blockade of Gaza.

TOUR SCHEDULE:

MONDAY, OCT. 12: DR. YASSER ABU JAMEI ARRIVED IN SEATTLE, WA

TUESDAY, OCT. 13 - SEATTLE WA (DR. Abu Jamei ONLY)

  • This evening's Meet and Greet for Waseem Shoulub with Palestine Children's Relief Fund is postponed because the little boy from is fighting infection and is still in the hospital in Spokane. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 14 - SEATTLE WA (DR. Abu Jamei ONLY)

THURSDAY, OCT. 15 - SEATTLE WA (DR. Abu Jamei ONLY)

FRIDAY, OCT. 16 - OLYMPIA WA TO PORTLAND OR (DR. Abu Jamei ONLY)

SATURDAY, OCT. 17 - PORTLAND OR (DR. Abu Jamei ONLY)

SUNDAY, OCT. 18: SANTa Clara, CA - MCA

MONDAY, OCT. 19 - BERKELEY, CA - TBD (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

  • 12:30pm :  Congressional Meeting - Oakland, CA
  • Interview: Electronic Intifada with Nora Barrows Freidman
  • 7:00pm:  Benefit Presentation at the First Presbyterian Church Meeting Room,  2407 Dana St, Berkeley, CA 94704

TUESDAY, OCT. 20 - PALO ALTO, CA - TBD (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

THURSDAY, OCT. 22: BOSTON, MA (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

FRIDAY, OCT. 23: CAMBRIDGE, MA (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

  • 10 AM: This week in Palestine Interview

  • 12:30Meeting with staff at Senators' Offices

  • 3:00 - 4:30pm:   Harvard School of Public Health Workshop

  • 6:45pm:   Brandeis University: Mandel Center for the Humanities,  Room G3,  415 South Street, MS 092, Waltham, MA 02453

SATURDAY, OCT. 24 - BOSTON, MA (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

SUNDAY, OCT. 25 - NORTHAMPTON, MA - TBD (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

  • 1:30 - 3:00pm: Smith College, Northampton, MA - Smith College Conference Center,  Lower Level Lounge 2 (off Green Street)
                                                                                     49 College Lane Northampton, MA 01063

MONDAY, OCT. 26 - NYC -  (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

    7-8pm:  Meeting with Jewish Voice for Peaceat NYU

TUESDAY, OCT. 27 - NYC -   (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

  • 9-10am:   Presentation at the New Israel Fund
  • 11-12:30:  Presentation to the Israel / Palestine Working Group at the Church Center of the UN, 777 UN Plaza
  • 8pm:  Palestinian American Community Center
               388 Lakeview Ave, Clifton, New Jersey 07011

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 28 - NYC / NEW JERSEY -  (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

THURSDAY, OCT. 29 - WASHINGTON, DC -  (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

FRIDAY, OCT. 30:  - BALTIMORE, MD -  (RAN Goldstein AND DR. Abu Jamei)

  • Morning:  Hospital tour and presentation in Baltimore, trauma recovery department
  • 1PM Briefing at the Open Society Foundation
  • 4pm:  Briefing at UNRWA
     

SATURDAY, OCT. 31 - BALTIMORE, MD - (DR. Abu Jamei Only)

  • Evening speaking event in Virginia, TBD

Sunday, Nov. 1 - Virginia (DR. Abu Jamei Only)

  • Morning speaking event in Virginia, TBD

BIOS:

Gaza Community Mental Health Program is the leading Palestinian non-governmental organization providing mental health services to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. GCMHP is committed to aiding women, children, and victims of violence, torture, and human rights violations. GCMHP has dozens of staff, a main facility and research center in Gaza City, and community mental health clinics in Gaza City, Khan Younis, the Deir el-Balah refugee camp, and the Jabalya refugee camp and also established the Rachel Corrie Women’s Empowerment Project as well as crisis intervention programs, a rehabilitation program for drug abusers, a Children’s Project, and a Training and Education Department that offers a postgraduate diploma in Community Mental Health and Human Rights and courses for teachers and nurses. It has given individual psychiatric and family therapy to tens of thousands of people. www.GCMHP.net/en/

Dr. Yasser Abu-Jamei MD, MSc, a psychiatrist, is the Executive Director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.  He was born in 1974 in Saudi Arabia and has lived in Gaza-Palestine since 2000. In 2002 he joined Gaza Community Mental Health Programme as a student in the High Diploma Programme in Community Mental Health. From June 2004 to March 2009, he worked for the Training & Research Department as a Psychiatrist-Clinical Supervisor and from March 2009 he worked as the Director of the Training and Research Department. In January 2014, he became the Executive Director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, and brings a special interest in neuropsychiatry, child and adolescents psychiatry, and advocacy and policy change.  Last year on July 21, 2014 during the bombing of Gaza, twenty-eight members of Dr. Yasser’s extended family were breaking their Ramadan fast with their iftar dinner when their home was hit by an Israeli missile.  All were killed including the nineteen children and three pregnant women.  

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that strives to promote a more fair and inclusive society in which the right to health is applied equally for all. It is PHR-Israel’s view that Israel’s prolonged occupation over Palestinian territory is the basis of human rights violations. For this reason we oppose the occupation and endeavor to put an end to it. PHR-Israel stands at the forefront of the struggle for human rights – the right to health particularly - in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.  www.PHR.org.il

Ran Goldstein is Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Formerly Head of Communication for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories, Senior Strategy and Communications Consultant to various Israeli Civil Society Organizations. Prior to this he worked as a journalist for a number of leading Israeli media outlets. Founder and board member of a newly established Israeli NGO -  “Akevot” – Institute for Israeli –Palestinian conflict research, Goldstein led numerous campaigns on human rights issues in Israel focused on most vulnerable population that live in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.