SA expat helps Arab-Israeli family after daughter’s murder in Australia

TALI FEINBERG

The legacy she left behind was evident last week as former South African Gary Samowitz helped her family to launch a scholarship in her name.

Although Samowitz has lived in Australia for decades, he says his career working in Jewish causes is directly related to his time in Habonim in South Africa. “The values I learnt at Onrus [the Habonim campsite], of leading by example and welcoming the stranger, are the reasons I’m doing this work today.”

Speaking to the SA Jewish Report after an intense week hosting the Maasarwe family in Melbourne, Samowitz said that Maasarwe was a 21-year-old student doing a business degree in Shanghai, China, and was in Australia to complete the exchange element of the programme with La Trobe University in Melbourne. “She was walking back to her accommodation after a night out when she was brutally raped, attacked, and set on fire.”

He said she was about the fifth woman to be raped in Melbourne over the past few years, and although we shouldn’t compare crime levels, South Africans should know that Australia isn’t perfect.

Maasarwe was buried in Israel in her hometown of Baqa al-Gharbiyye. Her killer, Codey Hermann, was identified soon after the attack. Last week, he was sentenced to 36 years in prison. Samowitz had been helping the Maasarwe family to set up a scholarship in Maasarwe’s name, and he organised their trip to Australia to coincide with the sentencing.

“Her father, Saeed, and sister, Noor, came to Melbourne and Sydney to launch several initiatives to remember Aiia. This time was to focus less on how she died, and more on how she lived. I have learnt so much about Aiia and what a remarkable young women she was … full of positivity, happiness, hope, and love. She was a kind, friendly, open-hearted person whose life was stolen from her,” said Samowitz.

“Noor wanted to retrace Aiia’s steps, and visit all the places she had told her sister about when she lived in Melbourne. She would Facetime her sister wherever she was, and now Noor had the chance to visit those places herself. So it was also a time for grieving and getting closure.”

In fact, Noor was on the phone with Aiia when she was attacked, and heard it happening.

Samowitz is passionate about interfaith work, and he gladly took on the role of working with the Arab-Israelis. “Aiia’s family has been in Israel for many generations. It was fascinating to interact with them. It’s been a privilege to be by their side all week as they have mourned Aiia. It’s a real stain on Australian society that so many women don’t feel safe in our public places. The Maasarwe family came to Australia to focus on launching programmes that will bring more light into the world and to honour Aiia’s memory and the values she lived by,” he said.

The family are creating a memorial garden close to where she was murdered, and La Trobe University and the Victorian government have funded a PhD scholarship in her name to study violence against women. Samowitz also helped launch the Aiia Maasarwe Memorial Medical Fellowship to train Palestinian doctors in Israeli hospitals, giving them the skills to save lives and better serve the Palestinian population.

“This will help take the strain off Israeli doctors and will allow Palestinian doctors to upskill themselves and train others. Aiia believed in peace, and this will empower people at grassroots level. Healthcare is one of the only environments in Israel where Jews and Arabs work together and see each other as equals, so this can really make an impact,” he said.

The inaugural fellowship will be awarded to Dr Khadra Salami, a senior paediatrician in haematological-oncology. Salami will undertake a two-year paediatric bone-marrow-transplantation training programme at Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. The aim is to enable complex transplantation surgery to be undertaken at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, where she is based.

Salami joined Samowitz and the Maasarwe family for the week. He found it amazing how they became close friends in spite of their different backgrounds.

Samowitz said that the young woman’s murder had been widely covered in the Australian media, as were the initiatives launched over this past week.

“Her killer is a homeless Aboriginal man who came from a background of neglect, and that needs to be addressed”, he said, while not excusing his horrific actions. “The Aboriginals are very disadvantaged, and I’ve worked with many young people like him.”

Turning back to his own path, Samowitz said he started the organisation Stand Up: Jewish Commitment to a Better World to continue what he learnt at Habonim Dror Southern Africa.

“I never wanted to stop being a madrich. Even after I moved to Australia, I would come to South Africa for Habonim machaneh [camp]. So I founded this organisation that allowed me to work with marginalised members of society. We have about 200 volunteers and 15 staff members. I wanted to encourage Jews to have an impact on the world,” he said. After ten years, he has stepped down from the organisation to make space for new leadership, and is now a freelance consultant on projects like working with the Maasarwe family.

He said he noticed how many of his former countrymen are leading the way in Jewish nongovernmental organisations across the globe, and that many donors to Stand Up were ex-South African Jews. He believes this is because “South Africans have a strong sense of social justice”, and he hopes that we will continue to back causes that have an impact on marginalised people wherever we find them. Meanwhile, he’ll stay in close contact with the Maasarwe family as they mourn their unthinkable loss and creates a meaningful legacy for their daughter and sister.