Sue Rhodes could
have spent her life peacefully in the Lake District, where she had owned a craft shop at
the Old Water Mill in Ambleside, but her instinctive sympathy with oppressed people drove
her to join and lead the Christian Peacemaker Team in one of the most dangerous places on
earth, the occupied Palestinian town of Hebron. 
She realised that her position was dangerous and accepted the risk that
she might meet an early death from an army bullet. In fact, she was forced to return home
in late summer, terminally ill with cancer. No doubt the pressure of life in a state of
war and her responsibilities to her team caused her to ignore warnings from her own body,
and she did not seek help before it was too late. “At least this gives me a chance to
see my family again,” she told us philosophically, when she heard the diagnosis, in
Furness General Hospital. Characteristically, she had already turned her mind to
comforting other patients who had also been told that they would not recover. She died in
Boarbank Hall Nursing Home in the early hours of Sunday 30th November, aged 65.
Less than six months ago we published in our July edition the last of
her powerful and moving bulletins from Hebron. Each of her reports brought home to our
readers, in terms that a child could understand, the suffering of people in this
Palestinian town and of “a cycle of violence in which one side is openly heavily
armed and the other side is oppressed, suppressed and humiliated.” She told of a
beautiful little vegetable market where the stalls and the green railings were mangled by
the tanks of an army avenging a terrorist action, and asked, “Where will our hungry
neighbours buy food tomorrow?”
She responded with horror both to the suicide attacks she reported, and
to the terrible revenge taken by the Israeli army, who blew up an entire block of flats
because the grieving family of a bomber lived in one of the apartments.
As the leader in Hebron of the Christian Peacemaker Team she tried to
be “a witness and a presence for the Palestinians and to place ourselves between
people in conflict.” CPT worked closely with Rabbis for Human Rights, whose Director,
Arik Asherman, was called in for questioning by Israeli security services and warned that
rebuilding demolished homes in Jerusalem was illegal. The words of Rabbi Asherman burn
through one of her most recent bulletins:
"The intent is not only to stop activities which can be seen as
'illegal,’ but to also prevent humanitarian activities, such as the work of Tayush to
accompany children to school. Ultimately, it may be that the goal is to prevent any
'seeing eye’ witnessing what is happening in the Occupied Territories,”
(reminding his country that even when we try to do something in secret, God sees and knows
what we are doing.)
To the Palestinian families she befriended she will be remembered as
The Woman Who Heard the Tree Scream. Leader of the PCT in Hebron, Greg Rollins, tells us
that after three Palestinian gunmen shot and killed twelve Israeli soldiers and settler
security men in the Jabel Johar neighbourhood of Hebron, the Israeli government drew up a
plan to destroy many of the Palestinian homes in the area so they could widen the road the
settlers used when walking to Abraham's Tomb. Sue and other CPT volunteers responded by
sleeping in many of the homes that were endangered.
While staying in a house that had already had its kitchen destroyed by
an Israeli bulldozer, she got out of bed and stared out of the window as an Israeli army
bulldozer tore up an old olive tree. As the bulldozer tore the tree's roots from the
earth, Sue heard the tree scream.
When Sue told her hosts what had happened during the night they fell
silent. One of them then told her that when their ancestors had planted that olive tree
years and years ago, they said that if that tree were ever pulled from the earth, it would
scream.
The Palestinian house in Jabel Johar that Sue stayed in still stands.
“I will miss Sue,” Greg writes. “I will miss the
strength, energy and wisdom she brought to CPT. I will miss how she fussed over each and
every one of us as if we were her children. I will miss how she was always giggling. I
will miss the confidence and the casual way in which she did the things that most people
would have thought were odd or even crazy. Things like shaving poodles or campaigning for
the protection of badgers. But most of all I will miss my friend Sue Rhodes. We all will
in CPT because we lost a dear family member.”
It was her very active involvement in the Quaker community in Ambleside
and her experience working as a physiotherapist in Kuwait that made her seek to serve
where she was most needed. Her friend, Kathleen Eggleston, proprietor of the Spindle
Craft, in Drigg, shared her love of crafts and spoke with deep admiration of her decisive
leadership. Before leaving for Hebron Sue had been deeply involved with the Civic Trust in
Ambleside, and had a natural rapport with the student community. As Greg observed, she
campaigned passionately for the protection of badgers.
We owe it to Sue to make sure that her work continues by showing
oppressed people that they are not alone. We write for the people of Egremont, but our
windows are open to the world.
(Inset photograph shows Sue confronting an Israeli tank.
Below, more photographs of Sue at work in Hebron, helping a frightened child down a
ladder, inspecting the ruins of a house destroyed by the occupying forces, aand looking at
the ruins of thevegetable market, mangled by tanks.
Better still you can access a whole gallery of splendid photographs on the CPT website:
www.cpt.org)
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