Students Visit L.A. to Promote Peace Process

In the most direct fashion he could, Palestinian Raid abu Hummos, 17, showed a gathering of Angelenos why Sunday’s bombing of a Jerusalem bus did not shake his desire for peace with Israel.

As he tearfully condemned the bombing, the 11th-grader from Ramallah, in the West Bank, climbed onto a chair in a Brentwood living room and dropped his trousers, revealing the scars of multiple wounds from Israeli soldiers’ plastic bullets. “This is the intifada,” he said, referring to the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Raid then raised his right arm, pulled back the sleeve of his sweatshirt and uncovered a hand scarred to immobility when a Molotov cocktail he was about to throw blew up, shot by the Israeli soldier he had hoped to hit with it. He was 13 when it happened.

“My whole life was basketball, but I can’t play now because I can’t open my hand. But I have learned to forgive,” Raid told the group of 100 assembled for what was to have been an afternoon of singing and dancing as a fund-raiser for the nonpartisan group Peace Now at the home of Betty and Stanley Sheinbaum.

Raid is one of six Israeli and Palestinian youths touring the U.S. to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. With the future of the process strained by Sunday’s bombing by the militant Islamic group Hamas, the high school and college students said they remain committed to peace.

Another of them is Chen Raz, 25.

“My cousin died in the last [Feb. 25] explosion, and my family heard about this bombing on their way to visit the grave,” the Israeli army veteran said. “They are still supportive of what I am doing and the peace process. If they can forgive, we should all be able to.”

The students are among 5,000 Israeli and Palestinian youths who have been meeting regularly since 1991 for political discussions and social activities.

The bombing, said Israeli Adi Dror, 16, reminded her of the elusiveness of peace despite the friendships she has made with Palestinians. “I believe very, very strongly that what our group is doing is the right thing. But what we have managed to build is very fragile and easily broken.”