“As an Israeli midwife, I always wanted to talk to Palestinian midwives, to see their experience and exchange stories—that’s how we learn. We are neighbors, and with neighbors, you should talk. It’s unnatural that we don’t talk. So I came to the first meeting of this group. That was five years ago. Now we are more than neighbors. We are friends.”

Gomer, the Israeli coordinator of our sister organization Midwives for Peace, told me this on my recent visit to the West Bank. I was there to celebrate the group’s five year anniversary, a truly remarkable milestone.

Israel and Palestine are at a political standstill. The level of despondency in the region is as strong as I’ve ever seen it. And the lack of confidence in progress is widespread. As you can imagine, under these difficult circumstances, collaboration can seem impossible. Yet the commitment of our sister organization of Israeli and Palestinian midwives remains strong. Through it all, they continue to work together to learn from each other and to safely deliver babies in the West Bank, despite the conflict that surrounds them. What an inspiration!

The anniversary meeting gave the midwives a chance to celebrate, reflect and share their plans for the future. In 2014, the group hopes to send representatives to the International Conference of Midwives in Prague.

And this August, they are planning a group trip to the beach. You might be wondering what a day at the beach has to do with breaking down barriers between Palestinians and Israelis, but consider this: some of the Palestinian midwives are refugees whose families came from coastal villages, yet they themselves have never seen the ocean. As Aisha, the group’s Palestinian coordinator, said to me, “the friendships we are building as midwives, as women, are opening doors in our lives and in our hearts that the conflict had tried to nail shut.”

I’m always so moved to see the collaboration and friendship between our Israeli and Palestinian sisters. Our partnership with Midwives for Peace is something I am proud of every day. I was so grateful to be able to attend their anniversary event, and I look forward to celebrating their next five years.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and like many of you, I will spend it at home with my family. I’m looking forward to the home-made cards and presents from my kids, and maybe the great gift of sleeping in an extra hour. As I enjoy this time, I’ll also be thinking of the Syrian mothers I just met in a refugee camp in Jordan.

Like mothers everywhere, their first priority is to ensure their children’s safety. That’s why many of them fled their homes in the first place. Now, as their families grow destitute as refugees, many mothers feel that the only way they can provide for their teenaged daughters is to marry them off. “I would rather see her married than hungry,” said Leila of her young daughter. “I just pray that this man will be kind to her.”

A young activist in a local Jordanian women’s organization told me, “This was supposed to be a revolution for freedom in Syria. But for the girls there is no freedom. Instead there are men from the Gulf countries lurking around the refugee camp looking for child brides.”

In my work with women around the world, I see mothers face choices like Leila’s every day.

After an earthquake devastated Haiti, millions of families were displaced from their homes. Mothers put up makeshift tents in huge public encampments with no running water, no security, and no lights at night. When an epidemic of rape swept through the camps, mother were their children’s only line of defense. “I stayed awake through the nights,” Louise  told me. “I had to choose between sleeping or keeping watch over my two daughters. I held a broken bottle for protection and positioned it to dig into my arm if I fell asleep.”

The mothers I met in Kenya were also forced to make decisions no parent should have to face. Severe drought over recent years has decimated herding communities in East Africa. As animals died off and water for even basic survival grew scarce, more and more families resorted to trading daughters for dowries, in some cases to ensure the survival of the rest of the family.

War, natural disaster, environmental crisis. No matter the threat to their children, mothers fight back.

In Jordan, Syrian mothers who are refugees are working with local women’s groups to protect the health and well-being of their daughters and provide safety and shelter for their families.

In Haiti, mothers organized community watch groups in the tent camps and reached out to rape survivors with healthcare and counseling through the women’s rights organization, KOFAVIV. A bill they put before the Haitian parliament would create Haiti’s first age of consent and criminalize marital rape for the first time, protecting their daughters now and throughout their futures.

In Kenya, mothers helped create a network of shelters as a place for their daughters to receive an education and enjoy their childhood, protecting them from female genital mutilation and forced early marriages. They call these shelters the Nanyori Network. In Swahili, Nanyori means “You are loved.”

This Mother’s Day, I’ll be thinking of these women, mothers just like me, facing unimaginable hardships. I’ll be thinking of their strength and their dignity, of their dedication and unfailing love. As the poet Alexis De Veaux has written, “Motherhood is more than the biological act of giving birth. It’s an understanding of the needs of the world.” Fighting to meet those needs, all around the globe, is what mothers do.

(This post originally appeared on RH Reality Check.)

I’ve been in refugee camps where people are listless, resigned; where everyone seems suspended in a state of traumatized limbo. But Za’atari camp in the north of Jordan, where tens of thousands of Syrian refugees now reside, is different. Za’atari is seething.

People here give off a manic, restless energy. Some seem ready to snap from the sheer, relentless boredom. There are people who have been here now for more than two years, with literally nothing to do. “It’s like you are living without your life,” was how one young man described being a refugee. He was quiet, with a sad smile. But other men here exude pure anger.

Shortly after we left the camp, Jordanian police fired rounds of tear gas at a crowd of refugees. It’s become a common occurrence, rioting that’s often spontaneous; despair ignited by frustration.

When I visited Za’atari camp, where Syrian refugees have fled by the thousands, I spoke to a woman named Hanan. She said the biggest problem in the camp is the toilets. They are far away from the tents and very dark at night. No woman or girl goes there after nightfall. And in the daytime, the women go in groups for safety. There is no way to lock the door, and they don’t feel safe.

One part of camp has lighting, but it’s only a small part, and the electricity is intermittent. “We need light,” the women told us. “It is too dangerous for us here in the dark.”

The camp is so big that some women have to walk an hour and 15 minutes to reach the area of the camp where there are services — clinics, feeding centers and schools. But services can’t keep pace with the exploding population, so people don’t have access to care or basic supplies.

We talked to Rima who is helping to distribute basic needs like diapers in the camp. She told us how the women help each other, even just by talking together. “This fills a huge need that we have — to share our pain and our strength,” she said. “That’s the support that women give each other here. We have no money, clothes or food to give, but we can give our ear to listen and our shoulder to cry on. I never cry when my children are watching. They have seen enough tears.”

We also talked with some NGO workers who told us that sanitation is a big concern. Because the toilets are so far, many families dig holes by their tents as toilets. In the winter, torrential rain spreads the contents of these toilet pits throughout the camp. Water is easily contaminated. And now that it’s dry, the dust that’s everywhere in the camp carries fecal particles that are also a health hazard, causing respiratory illnesses and other diseases.

Menstrual health and hygiene are also a challenge. Women don’t have access to sanitary napkins and have no appropriate places to change or dispose of their pads.

We did see one happy sight: a group of girls playing soccer and laughing together. “In Syria, we would never have this chance,” they told us. “Girls don’t play soccer at home. Everyone knows it is terrible here, but this is our one good thing.”

Somehow, these women and girls find opportunity in crisis. I’m so glad that through MADRE, and with your support, we can help give them the resources they need.

We’ve heard from many women like Hanan, and we’re determined to act. That’s why we’re bringing solar lanterns to provide light for women and girls at night. You can be part of this effort. Click here to donate.

As I enter Za’atari refugee camp, just over 30 miles south of the Syrian border, it’s like a sprawling city in the desert, all behind barbed wire. Over 100,000 people live here now, after fleeing the violence of Syria’s civil war.

The camp is clearly still under construction, with many new tents and metal caravans waiting for more refugees. It’s a sign that no one believes the war will end soon. In fact, UNICEF estimates that the refugee population in Jordan alone will reach more than 1.2 million by the end of the year. Amina, one of our local partners, is shocked by how much the camp has expanded since her last visit.

Down the main market strip of the camp, people are selling everything: vegetables, chickens, cotton candy, cigarettes, pasta, cooking utensils, cheap plastic toys. The lane is choked with people of all ages, shopping and selling. Little boys, laughing and covered in dust, give each other rides in wheelbarrows. People are picking through a tremendous pile of old, worn shoes for sale. Everything is covered in dust, even the olive trees at the edge of the camp.

Yifat with children living as refugees in Za'atari camp.

The metal caravans, freezing cold in winter and sweltering all summer, are 10 by 16 feet. That’s barely enough room for a family to sleep, and many of the refugee families are large.

The trauma of the war follows women even in the relative safety of Jordan. You can see it most clearly in their eyes: the hollow stares, the sudden tears, the inability to maintain eye contact in conversations. Among the refugees, even those who appear physically unharmed are wounded.

We talked to Meena who came across the border from her home in Homs after Assad’s forces burned down her house and killed her 27-year-old sister. Meena is 39 years old, the mother of 12 children and a grandmother of four. One of her older daughters was married here in the camp. “It is better,” she said, “for protection.” For Meena, married at 15, her daughter’s wedding was a blessing. But other women say that girls in the camp suffer the most.

We spoke with Sabeen, whose 13-year-old daughter was married shortly after arriving in the camp. “We had no money when we arrived in Jordan,” Sabeen told us. “Marriage was the only option to give my daughter protection and security.” Her daughter is now pregnant. Sabeen worries that her young body cannot properly handle the stress of pregnancy. And reproductive health services are scarce in the camp.

Hanan has two children, a boy and a girl. She divorced her husband long ago and came here from Daraa with her children when she heard the army was coming and that they had raped girls in the village nearby. “We left everything and came here, but my only dream is to go home.” She said she will not marry for protection in the camp. She looked away when I asked her why. “There is more than one kind of danger,” she said.

I will be posting more blog entries in the coming days, with information about my visit to Za’atari camp and my conversations with women there.

I know that stories of such hardship can be difficult to hear. We’re doing everything we can to bring vital humanitarian aid. You can be part of this effort. Click here to donate.

From our friends at Jewish Voice for Peace:

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) calls for an immediate cessation of the air strikes and naval bombardment into Gaza and an end to the ongoing siege of Gaza. JVP urges Israel not to exploit its asymmetric power to exacerbate the instability in the region. We urge President Obama to  take a stand against these attacks and to use the power of the United States to insist that Israel pursue all diplomatic measures possible for the sake of life, safety and security on all sides.  JVP also urges the end of  rocket attacks from Gaza into civilian communities in Israel, which we believe is never justifiable, and which only serve to derail efforts for a just resolution to the conflict. Read More.

You can find their actions for Gaza and further resources here.

Yifat spoke with RHRealityCheck about the situation in Haweeja. Read the full article here.

It’s said that wars never end for those whose lives they touch, and it’s true. Take Iraq—a place that surely proves the maxim that war is not healthy for children or other living things.

To wit: Despite the fact that the U.S. war with Iraq came to a close on December 18, 2011, families in numerous Iraqi cities are now living with a dramatic rise in birth defects and cancer from chemical weapons that were detonated near homes, schools, and playgrounds during the nearly seven-year conflict.

The cities of Babil, Basra, Falluja, Haweeja, and Najaf are cases in point. Let’s start with Haweeja, which is 30 miles south of Kirkuk and was home to Forward Operating Base (FOB) McHenry throughout the war. Yifat Susskind is executive director of MADRE, a New York-based international women’s human rights organization. Susskind says that Haweeja’s skyrocketing health problems came to the group’s attention when members of Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)—MADRE’s partner organization in that country—began going house to house to talk about the need to establish a shelter for rape survivors.

“When they arrived, they noticed that almost every family they visited had a child under the age of 10 with stunted or paralyzed limbs, or who had been born without fingers or toes,” Susskind says. “And they found teens who had been toddlers at the time of the U.S. invasion and were now sick with cancer. The OFI activists were shocked and wanted to know what was going on, why this was happening.”

What they uncovered points directly to U.S. culpability. Peace Alliance Winnipeg, for one, reports that beginning in 2004, the United States “tested all types of explosive devices on Iraqis—thermobaric weapons, white phosphorus, depleted uranium.”

The upshot, discussed in The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, has been a monumental increase in cancer, leukemia, malignant brain tumors, and infant mortality. In Falluja alone, The Journal concludes that the rate of life-threatening illnesses and birth defects is “significantly greater than those reported for survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

For regular updates from the front lines of MADRE and OWFI’s fight for justice for families in Haweeja, Join the Haweeja Action Team.

I know you’re not stupid, but the mainstream media seems to think you are.

Why else would Newsweek’s front page feature a picture of an angry man wearing a turban and run the headline, “Muslim Rage”? Why else would TV anchor Joe Scarborough insist, “They hate us because of their religion, they hate us because of their culture”? And why else would thousands of features and op-eds paint a monolithic “Middle East” and a monolithic “Muslims”—“others” who all think and act one way?

A lot is missing from media representations of the global protests that recently captivated the world. And what’s missing should be at the heart of our national discussion of foreign policy.

But rather than engage with complexities, the media, the US presidential campaigns and the candidates have all pushed their own agendas—from higher cable ratings to continued military presence in the Middle East—in ways that distort our perceptions of one another as real human beings.

What’s missing from the foreign policy conversation? A sense of the moment in which these protests occurred and how they were shaped by specific context and history.

In Libya, we were told that the lethal violence at the US embassy was ubiquitous “Muslim rage.”  What happened was actually the result of a moribund religious right desperate to reassert its dwindling influence and armed with weapons courtesy of the US and NATO, not a spontaneous uprising of an angry populace. People also took to the streets to denounce the violence and mourn Ambassador Stevens. But the talk of “Muslim rage” dominated.

In Yemen, protests broke out denouncing the US’ unfettered use of drone warfare and the practice of killing citizens without fair trial–including, in one terrible instance, a 16-year-old. In Egypt, there are accounts that the protests were not “spontaneous” but planned, and that people were paid to attend. None of these complexities were raised in the media’s coverage of the monolithic, angry “other.”

What’s missing from the foreign policy debate? The millions of voices of those around the world who have engaged in progressive, peaceful struggle for years on end.

Most recently, there are the activists in Iraq, often led by women, who have gathered every week for months in a Baghdad square, to voice their demands for democracy and human rights. Or there are the young Sudanese women who staged a walk-out at their university to protest soaring increases in the prices of food and transportation, triggering a national mobilization.

In Iraq and Sudan—and the many other places tagged as violent hotspots by the media—progressive people have always organized for peace, despite repression from their US-backed governments. Yet you’d never know it from the media coverage.

What’s missing from the foreign policy conversation? The vital, substantive debate that can help shape the world we want to live in.

While covering the worldwide protests, the media’s narrow lens showed only a public relations crisis for the US presidential candidates. Missing from the picture was what the candidates’ positions reveal about the foreign policy they would espouse for the next four years—and what it will mean for people worldwide.

We could look at Mr. Romney’s revelation at a recent fundraiser that he does not believe peace between Israel and Palestine is possible, because Palestinians do “not want[…] to see peace anyway.”

We could look at the way President Obama has ratcheted up drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. Four times as many people have been killed by drone attacks in Obama’s first term than in the entire Bush presidency. Certainly, these killings of civilians are a valid reason to protest.

Either of these things should call for substantive discussion. Instead, the media, politicians, and talking heads on cable news create laughably simplistic, divisive “us” and “them” narratives that save us from having to ask hard questions. The answers are, apparently, already obvious.

These narratives have tragic and violent consequences. They create exactly the world Joe Scarborough thinks we live in.

But that simple, polarized world of “us” and “them” isn’t the one we truly occupy, and we know it. We need a real, open conversation to reveal not only the world we live in now, but the world we want to live in tomorrow–and how we are going to get there.

This post originally appeared on Common Dreams.

Last October, the US used drone technology to kill a 16-year-old US citizen named Abdulrahman. He was the son of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, also a US citizen, whose name was on a “kill list” of people with links to the “war on terror” approved for assassination by President Obama. Just weeks before his son’s death, the elder Al-Aulaqi was also killed by a US drone.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have now filed a lawsuit, Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, confronting the targeted killing of three US citizens.

These three are far from the only people who have been killed in drone attacks. In Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, Medea Benjamin (co-founder of CODEPINK and a longtime friend of MADRE) documents the impunity with which hundreds of innocent people have been killed and justified as collateral damage. What’s more, she unveils and denounces the chilling reality that the rush to embrace this technology has created: targets are identified and executed without any trial or legal process.

The protections embodied in the US Constitution are meant to guard citizens against “the deprivation of life without due process of law.” International law also upholds the right to life and protects against extrajudicial killings.

None of these protections stopped the US from assassinating the three people named in the lawsuit.

In 2010, following reports of Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s placement on the government “kill list,” Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s father and Abdulrahman’s grandfather, Dr. Nasser Al-Aulaqi, filed suit against President Barack Obama, then CIA Director Leon Panetta and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “challenging their decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son.” The court dismissed his suit, saying that he did not have the legal standing to challenge the targeting of son. His son and grandson would be killed the next year.

Click here to read more about the lawsuit initiated by the CCR and the ACLU.

Click here to join in an action led by CODEPINK, and send Obama a message: ground the drones and kill the “kill list.”