AP: News Brief from the V-Day Visit to Israel and Palestine
12/21/2002
Jane Fonda visited Israelis wounded in suicide bomb attacks and met with Israeli peace activists Thursday.
The 64-year-old actress and activist is on a weeklong trip to the region and plans to attend meetings of Israeli and Palestinian women organized by a global movement to stop violence against women.
The movement, called V-Day, was inspired by the off-Broadway hit "The Vagina Monologues" and its playwright, Eve Ensler, who is also in Israel.
Fonda and Ensler were to speak later Thursday to Jewish and Arab doctors and patients at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital after a performance of selected passages from "Monologues" put on by a group of Israeli women.
Earlier, Fonda, a two-time Oscar winner and fitness guru, visited Israelis recovering from chronic injuries at the hospital's rehabilitation center.
She appeared emotionally moved when she met 23-year-old Sharon Maman, who suffered brain damage after two suicide bombers blew up simultaneously in downtown Jerusalem on Dec. 1, 2001. The young man, who lay flat on his stomach on a hospital bed, only began speaking again three months ago.
On Saturday, Fonda is to visit the West Bank town of Ramallah to see a physical rehabilitation center, a Palestinian refugee camp and Yasser Arafat's headquarters complex, most of which Israeli troops have destroyed.