Visitors to share stories of living in Middle East

What they have seen and experienced comes not from a satellite feed, CNN or a newspaper, but rather from outside their own window.\nThree Israeli graduate students will be visiting IU today and Tuesday to share their personal experiences about the conflict in the Middle East and how they live with a constant threat of terrorism.\nThe "Israel at Heart" program, coordinated by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their office of Academic Affairs in New York, sends the different groups of three students to various college campuses, high schools and other institutions around the United States to share their experiences of daily life in Israel under the current tense conditions.\nWhile at IU, 26-year-olds Avishai Ratsabi, Dani Abelow and Kim Gordon will partake in several events with students and community leaders, including a speech at the Indiana Memorial Union and discussions at the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center, IU's student synagogue.\nAll three students have served as soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces as part of their civil duties. Two remain in the IDF reserve service, and recently participated in Operation Defensive Shield.\nIU students and local Hillel staff members anticipate the students' visit to Indiana, and said the visitors can positively affect the whole IU community. \n"Students here need to learn about the lives of students our age in Israel because they really have many of the same goals we have," said senior Debra Powers, Hillel board president.\n "Everything we see on the news is usually the absolute worst that is going on there -- although the country is shaken, life goes on for these people. And they show us a strong example of individuals living in fear, but synonymously continuing with their lives."\nEach student will shed personal light on their varying experiences, and the effect terrorism and war has had on them.\nRatsabi plans to discuss the ethical and humanitarian issues he confronted during his reserve duty, and what he took from the experiences he had.\nAbelow will talk about the summer camp that he supervised for Israeli teenagers whose parents or siblings were killed by terrorists during the past year, in addition to his experiences while volunteering at a rehabilitation center for Israeli soldiers injured in combat.\nGordon, a choreographer and dancer, represented Israel at the opening of the Millennium Village at Epcot Center in Disney World. She plans to speak about a major incident in her life when a café exploded where her brother was working as a bartender.\nHillel program director David Weisz said the Israeli students information will give IU students the opportunity to see a different perspective than that on the news and TV.\n"(Ratsabi, Abelow, and Gordon) will hopefully provide a reminder to IU students that this is still a personal conflict -- that there are real human beings involved in these situations," Weisz said. "It's a very powerful thing when you see someone your age involved and affected by conflict and terrorism. Essentially, these are people who are trying to do the same things that we're doing -- attend school or find a date, and it's so difficult, because every time they go to a night club they risk having a suicide bomber walk right into the club."\nRabbi Sue Shifron, director of Hillel, said she hopes students will gain a new and more informed perspective of what is going on in the Middle East, and finds that the constant footage of terrorist attacks in Israel (and Palestine) has potentially caused a skewed view for Americans.\n"We really become jaded by (the news), because we see the bombings and attacks constantly on TV, and after awhile we hear it so much that we don't think about it or attempt to understand what it really means," Shifron said. "By listening to these Israeli students, IU and the Bloomington community can understand what life is actually like, and hopefully will see that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstances. And it will definitely allow them to think in a more global perspective"