Meet Jason, he joins the Excellence Center from the city of Brisbane, Australia and has been with us around 5 weeks. Jason is 50 years old and has a long professional career with the police force, where he worked many years in the field, but also with training at the academy for police officers and deployment staff.  At the moment he is an academic working on his PhD at the University of Queensland where he is researching police engagement with Muslim communities as to counter and tackle radicalisation and violent extremism, mainly with a focus on building trust between the two groups. At the university he teaches different courses, like policing studies, introduction to criminology, and global studies. At the Excellence Center he has been teaching English.

While in Hebron Jason also wishes to expand his knowledge of Arabic language and culture, but his main purpose stems from a need to understand the local perception of justice. He believes that the only way the police (or law enforcement in general) and the Muslim community can build lasting trusting relationships is by finding moral alignment, especially when it comes to their definition of justice.  He believes that if there is an issue in the world that embodies the disagreement on perceptions of justice, it is the Palestinian conflict, critically significant to muslim communities around the world.

Jason has stayed busy while in Hebron. He has been teaching with the Excellence Center and taking Arabic classes, but every free minute he gets is spent on meeting with the locals. From his neighbors to shop owners, to members of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli soldiers. If there is someone interested in understanding the circumstances and situation around the regional conflict it has been Jason, and rightly so, he has gotten very close to the humanity of the conflict, having touching and enlightening moments with both Palestinians and Israelis.

In addition to all of these reasons, Jason’s has a less known connection to Hebron. He had chosen to not mention this during his stay here, but found out along the way that the people he was getting to know where to be trusted, so he shared his jewish background with them. He’s grandfather from his mother’s side is Jewish, this means that he could legally become an Israeli citizen if he so wished to, but what’s even more interesting is that his ancestors came from Hebron! His grandfather’s last name still exists in the area, with some slight pronunciation and spelling differences, he can trace his family tree to the people of this city.

Regardless of all these reasons, coming to Palestine was no easy decision for Jason, as for many of us it can be an epic decision, not to be taken lightly. Some of us struggled to such degree of obsession, that finding words dramatic enough for the mental process we surpassed is near impossible. Jason, father and husband had to turn to a desperate tactic before finally deciding to come here, by asking God for a sign. He opened his wife’s bible and pointed with a finger randomly at the page… to his surprise, and ours as he shares this story, the line read: “The gathering place is Hebron .. this the land of your flesh and blood.” out of the 42000 verses in the Bible, he got that one, if that’s not a sign then what is!? But now we understand why he calls everyone here brother and sister.