In 1978, filmmaker Yulie Cohen was wounded in a terrorist attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In a remarkable twist of faith, twenty-three years later Cohen began questioning the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and started to consider helping release the man who almost killed her, Fahad Mihyi.

More than twenty-five years have gone by since my brother turned ultra-orthodox Jew and there is no contact between us. Our Mom and Dad are over seventy-five years old and are about to sell the house we grew up in, and I recently got divorced after twenty years of marriage.

What young woman would leave New York to have her first child in a war zone? Who would choose to give birth in a place where kids get blown up riding on school buses or sitting in cafés? Where thousands of eighteen-years-olds kill or get killed as soldiers? I am that woman. I went home to give birth to my daughters in Israel.