BY DEIRDRE ERIN MURPHY | OTISFIELD More than 170 teenagers from the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere linked arms and sang a song of peace Wednesday for the opening day at Seeds of Peace camp.
Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings together teenagers from regions in conflict, kicked off its 11th season with a flag-raising ceremony. The tradition represents the teenagers’ pledge to embrace other cultures and ethnicities during their three weeks at Pleasant Lake.
The campers’ stay comes against a backdrop of renewed violence in the Middle East despite a Wednesday agreement among Palestinian militant groups to a three-month cease-fire of attacks on Israelis.
Seeds, as the campers are called, are 14- to 16-year-old boys and girls from Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen and the United States. Three different sessions this summer will allow campers to express themselves through structured discussions with fellow campers. During each three-week stay, Seeds from different nations share cabins and play on the same sports teams. They eat and live with people who, at home, are called the enemy.
“It manages to take people who normally wouldn’t have contact and have them sleep in the same bunk together,” said Oren Karniol-Tambour, a second-year camper from Israel.
Campers often apply what they learn to their lives back home. Karniol-Tambour said when he returned to Netanya, Israel, he brought his father, who found it difficult to agree with his new views on peace, to have lunch with a Palestinian friend he made at camp.
“It was very hard for (my father) to hear me say, ‘Now wait a minute, maybe you’re wrong,’ ” he said.
Although much of their time at camp is structured, sometimes the unstructured events leave the most lasting impressions. Karniol-Tambour said last year he learned just as much spending time with his friends as he did at the emotionally charged training sessions. His best friends last year were a Palestinian and an American.
“The first thing we did was talk about girls and music,” he said. “We’re all the same.” Only 15, Karniol-Tambour already knows he wants the conflict between Israel and Palestine to end. He says using violence isn’t the right path to peace.
“What you’re doing, in fact, is counteractive,” he said. “Blood only causes more blood.”
Sometimes it is this violence at home that has a disheartening impact on the camp, Seeds of Peace president Aaron David Miller said.
“The most different thing (about this year’s camp sessions) will be how they react to events going on at home,” Miller said. This year the campers and staff will have to learn “how to balance what is happening over there with the reality of what we are trying to do here.”
The camp is only one part of the organization’s year-long programming throughout the Middle East and in Portland. Other efforts include producing a newspaper, attending seminars and conducting online discussions to promote peace.
“Camp is the departure point and it has to be seen that way. Camp provides the transformation,” Miller said. “We also give them the freedom to speak for themselves.”
For campers, this freedom is precious. “It’s all safe. There’s no violence,” said Sami Habash, a Palestinian attending camp for a second year. “I always want to talk about my point of view with Israelis and now I can,” he said. “The No. 1 thing that made me get into this summer camp is it has the word peace in it.”
Americans at the camp also have the opportunity to learn what their role could be in a worldwide peace process.
“I’m interested in making a peaceful world,” said Abby Becker of Morgantown, W.Va. “I think I’m going to take what I learn from other cultures and ethnicities and teach people in my community that we’re not that different.”
The ambitions of these teenagers on the first day of camp are high, but for right now, they are just eager to go play.
“It’s not only work,” Karniol-Tambour said. “It takes a lot of emotional strength and it drains you, but it’s a lot of fun.”