Listen in to this intimate conversation with Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, who shares her reflections on peace and justice in the Middle East six years into the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born in 1971 to a Jewish-American mother and a Muslim-Iraqi father. She spent her early childhood in Iraq, which was then ruled by Saddam Hussein. In 1977, Wasfi and her family returned to the United States. Dr. Wasfi graduated from Swarthmore College in 1993 with a B.A. in Biology; she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1997. In early 2004, Wasfi went Iraq to see her family in Basrah and Baghdad after years of separation. She journeyed to Iraq again for three months in 2006. Based on her experiences, she is speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi people.

“I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my mother’s side — Ashkenazi Jews who fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss. It is for them that we say ‘Never again.’ I speak to you today on behalf of relatives on my father’s side who are not living, but dying, under the occupation of this administration’s deadly foray in Iraq.” — Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, testimony at the Congressional Forum on Iraq, April 27, 2006

This event was sponsored by Chicago DCA Theater, Theatre Mir and The Public Square.

Recorded Wednesday, April 01, 2009 at Chicago Cultural Center.