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An “inspowered” kick-off to the 2019 GATHER Fellowship

Apr 16, 2019 / 1 Comment

What happens when Egyptians, Israelis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Americans (two by way of Romania and Rwanda), a Turk, a Tunisian, a Jordanian, and a Canadian (now living in Mexico) meet up in Sweden?

They coin a new phrase.

The term “inspowered” may have arisen by accident through the kind of exhaustion that comes after a week of intense project and community building, but the Fellows immediately adopted it as their own. Because inspowered (a combination of inspired and empowered) is exactly what they were feeling by the end of their time together.

The 2019 GATHER Fellowship incubator began in Sigtuna, a small, lakeside village an hour’s drive from Stockholm. It was there that the Fellows met and began to learn about each other’s lives and life’s work. Through a needs mapping exercise and a candlelit personal storytelling session, the 16 social innovators began to realize that while leading change can be lonely work, they are not in it alone.

They participated in a storytelling and marketing workshop that prepared them for a speed-dating style pitch session with graduate students from Uppsala University, the Nordic region’s oldest university and one of the finest in the world. The students, who are studying conflict transformation, posed many questions to the Fellows, and were grateful to see real-world manifestations of their studies.

After two days, the Fellows departed Sigtuna for Stockholm, and spent the next morning at Parliament, learning the nuances of Swedish government and meeting with four members of Parliament who graciously answered questions for an hour and a half.

After lunch, they spent time in a co-working space called Norrsken House and discovered that social entrepreneurs are treated like rock-stars in Sweden. At Norssken, the Fellows explored new frameworks for utilizing the engine of business to power social change.

Fellows met in small groups to workshop their projects and support each other, and they also met one-on-one with Seeds of Peace and SE Forum staff who could advise them on specific issues. On the final night, they demonstrated both thoughtfulness and thought leadership as participants in a series of panels: changing societies through storytelling and the arts, creating platforms for systemic change, bridging differences through education and dialogue, and empowering marginalized communities through enterprise.

Saying goodbye was not easy. But the Fellows will meet again—every week in fact—on video check in calls. They will continue to “inspower” each other, and over the course of the fellowship, we will shine a spotlight on each of them and their projects. So stay tuned … you just might become inspowered yourself!

Statement in response to the tragedies that took place on September 11, 2001

Sep 11, 2001 / No Comments

U.S. also should address root causes of terrorism.

BY JOHN WALLACH | The United States needs more than a military response to terrorism. It needs a humane response as well, one that signals that we, as the greatest and richest nation on earth, care about the suffering of the hundreds of millions of less fortunate people throughout the world.

In other words, we must attack not merely the symptoms of terror, the Osama bin Ladens and their terrorist networks, but the root causes that create a climate that is conducive to such despicable acts.

We need to mount a parallel campaign to attack the roots of terror, the hatreds that are lodged within the hearts of millions of people who have been deprived of our wealth and opportunity and are easy prey for regimes that spew vicious anti-American propaganda.

We can and hopefully will rid the world of Osama bin Laden but he is like a multi-headed hydra. Whether we like it or not, and regardless of whether it is true, we are perceived by much of the rest of the world as rich and complacent.

We can no longer afford to be seen as callous and uncaring. We need a concerted, new effort with all the diplomatic and economic means at our disposal to help resolve the disputes in the Middle East and elsewhere that doom hundreds of millions of people to unspeakable poverty.

Unless we mount such a parallel attack, there will be more bin Ladens who will see the United States not as the most beneficent nation on earth but as callous and indifferent to the daily suffering that drive people to terrorism.

I founded Seeds of Peace after the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. I did so because I realized that the aim of all terrorists is to instill fear. Their aim is to immobilize the vast majority of Americans. Of course, they want us to pay a price for, among other things, the billions of dollars in military and financial support we provide to Israel and to moderate Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan.

There was, and continues to be, only one answer – a program that does the opposite; that instead of instilling fear inspires hope by bringing together the next generation of youngsters before they have been poisoned by the prejudices, fears and hatreds that otherwise might culminate in acts of terror. We must mobilize the majority to attack the roots of hatred and violence.

That is what we have tried to accomplish at Seeds of Peace. For the last decade we have brought diverse populations together from regions of conflict. Almost two thousand youngsters – Arabs and Israelis, Moslems and Jews, Bosnians and Serbs, Indians and Pakistanis, Albanians and Serbs from Kosovo, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and Greeks and Turks – have graduated from our unique program in conflict resolution.

They spend several weeks together at our summer camp in Maine, bunking together, eating and playing sports with “the enemy.” Most importantly, they also spend several hours a day engaged in small discussion groups. We call them “coexistence” groups.

In these secure, off-the-record sessions, led by trained facilitators, each of the teenagers has a chance to rail against the “other side,” to shout and scream (or cry) if they like; in short, to unburden themselves of their own sense of victimization. An Indian girl, who emerged from one such meeting with her Pakistani peers exclaimed, “I never knew I was capable of such hatred.”

These group therapy sessions are a kind of “detox” program, allowing the participants’ deep-seated emotions to surface so that they become more aware of them – and can deal with them. Once they have discovered that they, and their people, are not the only victim — that the enemy has also suffered egregious losses – they can begin to acquire the listening and other skills that allow them to start to care about the other side.

I believe this is humanizing a process that is often deliberately dehumanized by governments at war in order to perpetuate the conflict. It is far easier to kill someone in a drab olive uniform or whose face is wrapped in a kaffiah or headscarf than someone whose features we see clearly and sympathetically.

If we are serious about combating terror, we as a nation must get off the sidelines in the Middle East and elsewhere. While there is no direct connection between the terrorism that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the largely indifferent attitude of the Bush administration to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, our seeming unwillingness to get involved unless both sides stop fighting has helped create a vacuum in which terrorism thrives.

It is not coincidental that there was virtually no Palestinian terrorism during the two-and-a-half years that Ehud Barak was prime minister of Israel. I believe that is due to the fact that throughout his tenure, there was ongoing negotiations that culminated in the sadly unsuccessful talks at Camp David and Taba.

Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, had an incentive to clamp down on Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the DFLP and PFLP (the Democratic and Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine) and to prevent these terror groups from creeping out of their bunkers. Arafat sat on them because he believed he had more to gain from the peace talks than from using terror as an instrument against Israel.

When the talks collapsed, there was no longer any reason to discourage these groups; in fact, Arafat probably encouraged them to begin the “Al-Aqsa intifada” against Israel. The American response paralleled the Israeli response: “We will not help you make peace until you two guys stop fighting.”

It seemed to much of the world that we were giving Israel a blank check.

In his public statements, President Bush seemed to be far more sympathetic to Israel. The unilateral U.S. walkout from the Durban anti-racism conference, together with Israel, dangerously reinforced the belief among millions of Palestinians that we didn’t care about their suffering.

Instead of an attitude of “we refuse to help you make peace until you stop fighting,” our response should have been “we will help you stop fighting so that you can make peace.”

It is not too late. In tandem with our military moves to strike at the heart of the terrorist network, President Bush should immediately appoint a high-level envoy to work with both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to defuse the current fighting. George Mitchell and Jim Baker, the former secretary of state, are two who are more than qualified for this role.

A new diplomatic offensive would not be rewarding the terrorists. It would help deprive them of an atmosphere in which such acts thrive – and will continue to do so – until we realize and accept our own responsibilities for attacking the root causes of such violence and hatred.

Grounds for Peace
Guideposts

Sep 7, 2010 / No Comments

It’s the International Day of Peace! Read this inspiring story about a special camp that promotes just that.

BY JOHN WALLACH | There was only one story on the news that February morning in 1993. In our home outside Washington, D.C., my wife, Janet, and I sat staring at the TV screen. A car bomb had exploded beneath the World Trade Center in New York. Commentators speculated that the terrorist act was the work of Muslim extremists.

As a journalist I was used to covering stories like this. Although I wasn’t reporting this one, I couldn’t escape the terrible irony for anyone in the media. A terrorist’s aim is to spread fear; reporting his action means he succeeds. Fear, in turn, leads to hate—which invites terror in response. It was a vicious cycle. I asked myself again as I had so often, Can people ever stop hating?

I remember the first time the question came to me. I was just six years old, lying awake in my bedroom in Scarsdale, New York, wondering at the fates that had let my parents survive and me be born. German Jews, they were taken from their home in Cologne to a death camp. They’d escaped, made their way to Nazi-occupied France, been caught, re-imprisoned, and escaped once again. A daring French priest guided them across the Pyrenees to Spain, from which my parents finally made their way to America and New York. Two years later I was born.

Even at age six I understood how rare our good fortune had been. A million Jewish children, I was told, had been burned in the ovens. What a “million” was I couldn’t have known—only that hate could do unthinkable things.

Can people stop hating? As I got older the question grew more insistent. One of the reasons I became a foreign correspondent was a desire to learn about other people—and help them learn about one another. If we knew one another, would we go on hating?

Janet is also a writer and in 1987 we accepted a reporting assignment in the Middle East. We lived for months with ordinary Palestinian and Israeli families. We shopped with them in the street bazaars, ate with them, played with their kids, went with them to synagogue or mosque, observed their decent, hardworking daily lives. And were struck by how alike they were. How much they had in common…far more than the differences that fatally divided them.

Yet because they never knew one another, zealots could sow fear and hate.

Another thread was woven into the pattern of our lives when Janet and I sent our younger son to a summer camp in Maine. There, Mike was thrown in with boys from different backgrounds. At first there were the usual misunderstandings and frictions among various groups. But the camp experience had a way of erasing these tensions. Bunking, swimming, eating, canoeing together led to bonding across cultures and classes.

All this, I think, was at work in my subconscious when I rose to make a toast at a Washington dinner party honoring Shimon Peres, then Israel’s foreign minister. The Egyptian ambassador and a representative of the PLO attended and I’d been included as part of the press corps. After dinner I stood to salute the peace efforts being explored by both sides. Then, without any intention of doing this, I suddenly heard myself saying, “I’m planning to hold a camp this summer for teenagers from the Middle East. I’d like to invite each of the governments represented here to send us 15 of your brightest youngsters. Perhaps in a casual setting we can sow some small seeds of peace.”

The surprise on the faces before me was nothing compared to my own astonishment at the words that had come out of my mouth. The delegations hastily conferred. No one wanted to appear to be against peace; before I knew it Seeds of Peace was born.

Fearing the governments would back out, I called a press conference the following morning. By afternoon the news was out: Israel, Egypt and the PLO were cooperating on a peace camp!

At first I carried on with my job for the Hearst newspapers. I was staying up nights to work out the endless details of getting the idea off the ground. We contacted Mike’s camp and found that we could book the facilities later that summer after the regular season was over. Of course this took money. We raided our savings, raised funds from family and friends to reserve the camp. The different governments chose the kids who would attend; we asked only that they be top students, proud of their heritage and proficient in English. Future leaders were who we wanted.

The last week of August 1993—six months after the World Trade Center bombing—45 boys arrived at the camp. In the bunkhouses they were assigned cots side by side with those they’d been brought up to regard as mortal enemies.

At first the kids were edgy and the chaperones appointed by each government overprotective. But before long, the youngsters were sharing universal camp experiences, such as lost sneakers, swapped jeans, mixed-up towels, awful camp food. (“American breakfast cereal is much too sweet!”) Bottom line, these were teenagers! Soon they were swapping tapes of favorite pop singers, playing baseball and soccer together, even attending each other’s worship services.

Before my eyes, my old question was being answered. In one small group, in one small place, antagonists were discovering that the enemy has a face.

But I soon learned personally some of the hard steps on the path to peace: the ancient, intractable conflicts of history and culture. Listening—really listening—to the other side turned out to be the toughest, and most important, skill required to build peace. We enlisted conflict-management experts to guide “coexistence classes” that became the heart of the camp program.

Every day the campers met in the big hall for a minimum of two hours, encouraged to confront the volatile issues. Who has a moral right to the land of Palestine? Who should govern Jerusalem? The boys were asked to share personal tragedies too, the death of a family member—perhaps at the hand of relatives of the kid in the next chair. The facilitators laid down only three rules. No violence. No insults. No interrupting. A pencil was passed from hand to hand; only the boy holding the pencil was allowed to speak.

By the end of the two weeks, the kids had formed friendships unimaginable back home. A Hollywood producer heard about the project and offered much-needed funding—if the governments relaxed their boys-only policies to include girls. A little to my surprise, all agreed.

We were off to a promising start. We extended the camp period to three and a half weeks and soon were holding three sessions every summer, hosting close to 200 kids at each one. With the camps taking more and more of my hours and energy, I decided to devote myself full time to Seeds of Peace. It was a scary step, but I’m convinced that God has a plan for every life, and I believed that this was part of his for mine.

In February 1995, I left Hearst. We sold our home and with $50,000 and a staff of four became a year-round nonprofit organization devoted to waging peace. A Palestinian-American friend of mine, George Rebh, designed our camp T-shirt: green and white, with three youngsters holding hands, their shadows forming an olive branch.

How fragile, though, was that little sapling! Bad news from home was sure to provoke episodes like the one that occurred during the fifth year of the camps in 1997. It was July 30, 11 days into this particular session. The kids were having breakfast when one of the Israeli girls received a phone call from home and came back to the dining room in tears. Arab terrorists had set off a bomb in the central vegetable market, the Mahane Yehuda in downtown Jerusalem, causing many deaths and injuries.

Panic swept the Israeli campers, fearful for their families. I asked everyone to assemble in the big hall. Instead of milling about, as they had the day before, the kids huddled in groups, Jews on one side of the room, Arabs on the other.

I told the kids this was a test for us all, exactly the kind of terror Seeds of Peace was formed to combat. “These are the situations,” I said, “when it’s most important that we go on talking to each other. Let’s see if we can make the sound of peace louder than the noise of war.”

Reluctantly at first, they did talk. “I think the Israelis will hate us so much,” said one Palestinian boy, “that they won’t let Jewish kids come here again.”

Back and forth they went. Arab and Jew, each side clearly convinced that the other was the aggressor in the long conflict and itself the victim. But out of the morning’s exchanges slowly emerged the realization that when violence occurs, both sides are victims.

Another Palestinian boy expressed it in a shaky voice: “I am crying because we are human beings and the people we killed were human beings too.”

Tolerance and understanding won out that day. But with every killing back home, the camps threatened to erupt in hostility. Some day, I feared, an eruption would blow the program apart.

By the fall of 1999, we’d sponsored peace camps for seven summers, graduated more than 2,000 youngsters, had an annual budget of three million dollars from private donations and were also holding camps in Europe and Asia to bring together Serbs and Albanians, Indians and Pakistanis, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots. In volatile Jerusalem itself, we’d opened a year-round Seeds of Peace Center, a 5,000-square-foot building dedicated to coexistence.

Then in the summer of 2000, the Maine camp nearly self-destructed.

This time it was an Arab who’d been killed—and he was the cousin of one of our own campers. The Palestinians demanded to hold their own funeral to coincide with the one back home. Such funerals are occasions for emotional anti-Israeli demonstrations. Because free expression of feelings was at the very heart of our program, we had to allow the funeral to take place.

The grieving, angry boys and girls gathered in an old frame building near the dining room. From where I stood outside, gazing at the serene vista of woods and lakeshore, I could hear their sobs, shouts and the sound of pounding drums. At last I was permitted to enter. Some of the kids were in tears, some praying, some calling for revenge on the Israeli campers. Would this be the end of everything?

One boy made sure I was looking, then stripped off his Seeds of Peace T-shirt, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. Other campers followed till half the kids in the hall were grinding their shirts into the pine floorboards.

Can people stop hating? I’d never been less sure than at this explosive moment when everything I’d worked for was being rejected.

Almost without thinking I started to pull my own Seeds of Peace shirt over my head. “You’re right and I’m wrong. If ‘peace’ is just a word on a T-shirt, I don’t want to wear mine either!”

The kids stared. For a long moment the room was silent as one small experiment in peace hung in the balance.

Then the Arab boy whose cousin had been killed picked up his shirt and slipped it on. Another youngster retrieved his. Then another and another, until all had put their shirts back on.

For that one moment, at least, I had the answer to my question.

About John Wallach
In 1993, John Wallach founded Seeds of Peace. Though he has passed away, his dream has expanded to include young leaders from Cyprus, South Asia and the Balkans, as well as the Middle East. Learn more at seedsofpeace.org.

Read John Wallach’s article at Guideposts ››

Seeds of Peace: Children crusade against conflict
New Delhi Television

Jul 21, 2003 / No Comments

BY MAYA MIRCHANDANI | MAINE, UNITED STATES Seeds of Peace International, a non-profit organisation, held a camp at Maine in the United States, for students from different parts of the world that have been affected by conflict in one form or another.

The NGO conducts such camps for children who are often the most invisible faces in areas ridden with conflict and violence.

At the Otisfield camp, there were a few Indians and Pakistanis among the 170 children who attended the camp.

The camp called Seeds of Peace is a rare opportunity for some children to free themselves from the violence that surrounds their life and instead, tell their stories.

Detox programme

Deep in the woods of Maine, Seeds of Peace brings together teenagers from conflict zones. So that the children can literally see the face of their enemy. They call this a “detox programme”. The Seeds of Peace summer camp was started in 1993 mainly for children from Israel and Palestine.

Since then, the programme has been expanded to include children from other Arab countries, Balkans and Afghanistan. The summer camp since last year has also been inviting small contingents of children from India and Pakistan. Out of the 170 kids in the camp, there are 12 each from Mumbai and Lahore.

“We never thought we’d stay in the same bunk, sleep with them. We never thought they’d be so friendly. But we met at Zurich airport and became best friends in five minutes. There were no groups like Indians separate and Pakistanis separate. There were girls separate and boys separate!” said Ira Shukla, a student of Yashodham School, Mumbai.

Coexistence sessions

Apart from the fun and games of summer camp, the children went through daily hour-long coexistence sessions. In such sessions, children, armed with their own narratives, talked about everything from the Partition to Kashmir to religion.

“We went to coexistence sessions and sometimes it became hot. But we talked and became friends and it was only then that it got less intense and we learnt how to respect and trust and communicate with each other,” said Tabish Islam, a student of St Anthony’s College, Lahore.

The Seeds of Peace International camp is located along the shore of a pristine lake in rustic Maine. It has become a place where children, exposed to conflict, forget for a while the hatred that surrounds them back home.

Unique opportunity

For the children, particularly from Pakistan and India, the camp provides a unique opportunity to engage with each other in an atmosphere that allows them to set aside their history books and leave as friends.

“Kids feel a certain amount of power and legitimacy because they feel they come as ambassadors representing their countries,” says Aaron Miller, president, Seeds of Peace International.

“When you listen to their coexistence sessions, you see they are presenting positions of their respective governments or that they have been taught as Indians or Pakistanis and Afghans. What happens during these sessions is that they hear what they have never heard before. The other side’s position,” adds Miller.

It’s a camaraderie that allows kids to join forces in every way from painting mehndi patterns on the each others hands to improvising a dholak from an empty water can as they cheer a volleyball game.

But as they prepare to go back home after a special meeting with President Bush and Congressmen in Washington, they have all been forewarned that the challenge ahead is to hold on to what they have learnt in the past month – even if they face opposition.

Youthful exuberance

“I will tell my people at home that we don’t have to hate Indians. That we should learn from history, not follow it. The Indians I met here opened my mind. If we try and trust each other we can live together in peace,” said Faizan Rasool, a student of St Anthony College, Lahore.

After having had the time of their lives, with their youthful confidence they are determined to at least stay in touch with each other. If for nothing else, to carry on their debates further.

“It’s now up to us to develop the friendship further when we go back and solve the problems which we have not had time to solve in the camp,” said Siddarth Shah, a student of New Era School, Mumbai.

And keeping this promise to themselves and to each other will prove to be the ultimate test of will and of hope for a lasting peace between countries – something that the adult leadership seems unable to create.

Seeds of Peace
Journal of the Society for International Development

Jan 1, 1996 / No Comments

John Wallach reports on the unique ‘Seeds of Peace’ initiative which brings together Arab and Israeli children to build friendship and communication in the place of hate and mistrust

Making peace

‘Before I came here, I felt like I was walking in a dark room, I had opinions without pictures. Seeds of Peace is like a door out of the dark, I’ve learned there are fences of superstition among all of us. We have old opinions of each other and we’re here to destroy those fences. The bravery peace needs is not any less than the bravery war needs.’ (Shouq Tarawneh, Jordanian student aged 15)

The same theme was echoed by Laith Aafeh, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian who noted that ‘making peace is much harder than making war. It takes time. It takes care. It takes patience.”

Laith and Shouq had just spent their summer living, eating and sleeping in wooden bunks with the first Israelis that either of them had ever met. Laith was among the initial group of forty-six Arabs and Israelis who became a footnote to history on September 13 1993 when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yasser Arafat signed, in their presence, the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House. President Clinton told the distinguished audience that included Presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter and former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker: ‘In this entire assembly, no one is more important than the group of Israeli and Arab children who are seated with us today.’

Indeed, these children have succeeded where their elders have failed for generations before them: they spent a month making peace with each other, real peace, at a summer camp in Maine. But the task was not easy for them. It had been an emotional roller coaster that was at times painful but ultimately exhilarating.

The Seeds of Peace programme

Seeds of Peace, now in its fourth year, brings thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old teenagers from opposing sides of the conflict in the Middle East and the Balkans to a summer camp in Maine where they get to know one another in a relaxed and supportive environment. The aim is a simple one: to build friendships between teenagers who have been taught all their lives to hate and distrust one another, and to use these new friendships to foster communication, negotiation and interchange so that they can better understand each other’s perspectives on the important issues that divide them.

Seeds of Peace takes up where governments leave off, attempting to fulfil the hope of peace treaties that are signed but that remain essentially pieces of paper. Seeds of Peace carries out a task that governments are neither equipped for nor very interested in: transforming the hopes for peace into a new reality on the ground among populations that have been taught for decades to distrust and hate on another.

The programme fosters education, discussion and emotional growth through both competitive and co-operative activities and emphasizes the importance of developing non-violent mechanisms of resolving conflict. Int he three years of its operation over three hundred male and female teenagers have come from Israel, Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), Egypt, Jordan, Morocoo, and, for the first time last summer, from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Campers are selected in a competitive process; the only prerequisite is that they must have a working knowledge of English. Initially each candidate is recommended by his or her school and then asked to write an essay on the following subject: ‘Why I Want to Make Peace with the Enemy.’ In Israel, Jordan and Morocco, the essays are judged by the Ministry of Education. In Egypt, Palestine, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are judged by a mixed panel of officials and private citizens.

The final step of the selection process is a personal interview. Candidates are awarded extra points if they demonstrate skill in speaking English. Points are also awarded to children from refugee camps or other underprivileged backgrounds.

The programme begins with a two-day orientation at The John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. There, Dr Leonard Hausman, the director of the Centre for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East, conducts a seminar with the youngsters. Each of them is asked to speak about the ‘bad things that have happened to the good people they know’. One after another, the youngsters tell tales of friends or even relatives who have been killed in the Arab-Israeli or Bosnian conflict. The stories are harrowing, often producing tears among the participants themselves and from the invited audience.

In the evening a cruise takes the youngsters on a three-hour trip around Boston Harbour. Last summer a folk music group entertained on board.

The aim in these first forty-eight hours together is to strike a balance between the serious emotional baggage the youngsters share and the need to let them get acquainted and begin fostering friendships across national lines.

On their third day in the United States, the one hundred and thirty youngsters travel by bus to Camp Androscoggin in the tiny hamlet of Wayne, Maine. On this neutral playing field, thousands of miles from home, Laith and his Palestinian friends, who for years were accustomed to throwing rocks at their Israeli adversaries, are coached in the new skills of throwing an American baseball and football. The stones they used to hurl at home are used here to establish footholds in the steep climbing wall where an Israeli is taught to hold the rope for a Palestinian and vice versa.

Here, on the shores of a freshwater lake, amid sun-filled days and starry nights, they play tennis and soccer together. They paint their own peace posters. They make beaded jewellery and, of course, swim, dive and learn how to water-ski. And as their two weeks draw to an end, all of the campers cheer wildly for their team-mates on ‘colour war’, the two-day camp-wide Olympics that pits a team of Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, Egyptians, Serbians and Bosnians wearing ‘black’ tee-shirts against a similar, mixed group of nationalities wearing ‘red’ tee-shirts. There are no gold, silver or bronze medals for these winners. Instead, the victorious team gets to jump in the lake first. The losers have to wait their turn.

Children realizing their potential

Dr Stanley Walzer, a Professor Emeritus of child psychiatry at Harvard University’s Medical School and former Chief of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Boston, observes that it is important to select mid-adolescent teenagers to participate in this programme because

‘the central theme of adolescence is finding an identity, a sense of self, in relation to the world. Although chronic exposure to war may constitute a significant interference with a child’s social development, his or her adaptive capacities may mute the more pronounced effects of the stresses. The Seeds of Peace Programme builds on the natural resiliency of teenagers to overcome adversity and realize their full developmental potentials.’

Walzer, who is the resident psychiatrist at the Seeds of Peace Camp and can often be seen strolling with his arm around a homesick camper, notes that the athletic programme is important because of the ‘central role of athletics in the adolescent development of both boys and girls.’ He explains:

‘Adolescents are physically active and they frequently find themselves in school and community settings tat place a high value on athletics. Sports are a “language” that they all understand; they offer a sense of the familiar in the new and strange environment of the camping situation. Furthermore, they allow the teenagers to participate as members of a team, or individually, on the basis of interests and abilities rather than on political beliefs or ethnic backgrounds. Highly senior coaches are provided to facilitate the development of skills.’

But these daytime activities, which also include an advanced computer programme designed to teach these youngsters how to stay in touch with each other when they return home, set the stage for daily ‘coexistence sessions’ at night. These are the meat and potatoes of the Seeds of Peace Programme and are deliberately scheduled at a time when the youngsters return exhilarated from a full day of sports but are also relaxed enough to share their innermost feelings with others they previously regarded as adversaries. In their own vernacular, they ‘let it all hang out’, opening up to each other and confronting their own fears and prejudices for the first time in their lives. Campers are assigned to ‘coexistence groups’, which include boys and girls from several delegations and are constant for the duration of the camp. Nine different workshops are offered, each one having a different theme, approach and set of activities. One group may head off into the night for a hike into the woods and then be challenged to find their way back. When they return, they discuss the strategies they used: holding hands, singing, cautioning those behind them of the dangers ahead. Another group may participate in an theatre improvisation exercise in which they are asked to resolve racist tensions that erupt between African-Americans and Caucasians in an American ‘inner city’.

Learning the skills of peace

Conducted under the supervision of professional American, Middle Eastern and Balkan facilitators, the sessions focus on teaching the tools of making peace—listening skills, empathy, respect, effective negotiating skills, self confidence and hope. Listening and reason replace shouting and accusation. Walzer notes:

‘The growth of conflict resolution skills has been impressive in the teenagers who participated in the programme for one or two years and then return as “peer support” or as junior counsellors.’

He tells of a group of fifteen adolescents who spontaneously started to argue under a tree near their cabin about the most explosive issue of all, Jerusalem.

‘The interchange rapidly became loud and accusatory, with several children shouting at the same time. A second-year teenager who emerged as the discussion leader produced a ball-point fountain pen from his pocket and introduced the “rule of the pen”. Only the person holding the pen could talk and the others must listen. When another child wished to talk he or she must have the pen in hand. Although the pen received rough treatment as a result of the children’s eagerness to talk, the technique worked. I might add that they arrived at an interesting agreement on how to solve the problem of Jerusalem.’

Explains Executive Director Barbara Gottschalk:

‘The goal of “winning” is usually seen as the main objective in conflicts between people. Yet, what that means is usually subjective and short-sighted. At Seeds of Peace we change the objective from “winning” to “being understood and understanding the other’s point of view”. This short-term objective change makes all the difference in the way people deal with conflict. Each participant has to present his or her side in a non-threatening and forthright was so that the other side can listen non-defensively. The “winners” are those who have made their points understandable to the other side and have been able to understand the arguments presented by the opposing side. The goal is to end with both sides being “winners”. It is the combination of the “team-building” athletic activities, the arts, communal living and the coexistence programmes, all conducted in an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding, that ultimately permits the children to bond and become “seeds of peace”.’

Returning home

The real test, of course, occurs when they return home to their friends and family. The ultimate success of Seeds of Peace depends on how committed these youngsters remain to an agenda that is far more difficult to implement in the slowly changing yet continuing hostile environment at home. Yeyoyoda ‘Yoyo’ Mande’el, an Israeli, recalls that whenever Laith, his new Palestinian friend, visits his Jerusalem home, Yoyo’s father says ‘hello’ but nothing more. ‘My father fought in the 1948 war and in 1956 and 1959. He has no reason to trust them,’ he explains. Laith feels hurt by the silence, particularly since his own father often welcomes Yoyo to their East Jerusalem home, but says softly, “I can understand it’.

Leen El-Wari, a Palestinian girl, says her friends were simply incredulous when she told them about the co-existence sessions. ‘They asked, “What? You sat with Israelis? How did you talk to them and stay in the camp with them?”, Leen says she laughed and told them:

‘My idea before the trip was not to hate someone before knowing them. The Israelis are very nice and friendly people. It isn’t difficult. Just forget for a moment that they are your enemies, and you will be friendly with them.’

Leen admits however that she changed few minds. ‘We talked and talked but I couldn’t change any of their ideas. They need to meet Israeli children and talk with them to understand my point of view.’

Ra’yd Aby Ayyash, a Jordanian boy, agrees that ‘telling people about the camp is not always easy. Some do not want to listen, and for other it is impossible to even talk with a Jew. But I can understand them,’ he says, because

‘that is the way they were raised, and they did not have the chance I had. Still, many listen. Especially my good friends do. They know that judging a person based on nationality or religion is prejudice. Others do not. But I will never give up the mission that my heart found best to follow.’

Pioneers for peace

Perhaps the most important lessons that Seeds of Peace has taught everyone, children and adults alike, is never to underestimate what a human being, regardless of his or her age, is capable of. When the delegations arrive, I tell them on their first day in the country hat each of them is like Charles Lindbergh or Amelia Earhart. They are pioneers on a course that few have been privileged to travel before: the first of their generation who have been given the opportunity to make peace with those their parents, school systems, media and societies have condemned as ‘enemies’. I also tell each of them that I expect that among the more than three hundred Seeds of Peace graduates are the future presidents and prime ministers of the Middle East and the Balkans.

So far, they have vindicated my dreams. In February 1994, when more than two dozen Arabs were brutally murdered by a Jewish fanatic while they were praying in the mosque at Hebron, our youngsters drafted a two-page letter to both Rabin and Arafat calling on them to redouble their peace efforts and never give in to terrorism of any kind. A few weeks later, a group of Israeli youngsters invited Ruba, a Palestinian girl from Jericho, to visit Ein Kerem, a suburb of Jerusalem, so she could see the house where her father was born. He had not been allowed to return since leaving in 1948 and thus had never had the opportunity to show Ruba the town and home where he spent his own childhood. The Israelis took Ruba and a few of her friends to visit Ein Kerem and amid a few tears and much laughter went back to one of the Israeli’s homes for dinner.

Peace between peoples

But my favourite story is the one about another Israeli who was invited by his Palestinian friend to see Jericho, the first area in the West Bank from which Israeli troops withdrew and turned over to the Palestinian Authority. The father of the Palestinian, who was driving the two of them through Jericho, was stopped by the Palestinian police. They were suspicious that an Israeli might be up to something. Rolling down the window, the father told the policemen not to worry. ‘I’m just showing Jericho to my two sons,’ he said.

The Bible says that ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them.’ Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all: after all these years, the emotional and moral power of children can still be harnessed to point the way for adults. In September 1994, Tamer Nagy, an Egyptian member of the original group of forty-six youngsters who has returned for the last two years as ‘peer support’ and as a junior counsellor, presented President Clinton with a memento on behalf of all the youngsters who have graduated from Seeds of Peace. He told the President eloquently, “peace between people is more important than peace between governments.’ It was a line that both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore subsequently incorporated into their own speeches.

On a recent trip to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Warren Christopher even took time out of his busy schedule to meet with Laith and Yoyo. When the second Israeli-Palestinian accord was signed in the East Room of the White House in September 1995, Christopher remembered that encounter. ‘Three months ago in Jerusalem and again three weeks ago in Washington, I met with Israeli and Arab children who spent the summer together in a programme called Seeds of Peace,’ he said, as Arafat and Rabin were about to sign the new agreement. Behind them stood Jordan’s King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President Clinton. ‘By developing new friendships, they are demolishing old prejudices,’ Christopher told them. ‘By reaching across communities, they are resolving a conflict that for too long has divided their peoples. It is their spirit that brings us here today. Their lives. Their dreams. Their future. Let us not betray them.’

Remarks of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to Seeds of Peace

Aug 14, 2001 / No Comments

Thank you very much, John. It was wonderful to be serenaded by these great kids. I want you all to know that you sound an awful lot better than I did when I sang in Asia last month …

Welcome The Department of State. I want to congratulate all 160 campers—Palestinians, Jordanians, Israelis, Israeli Arabs, Egyptians, Tunisians, Qataris, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Macedonians, Kosovars, and Yugoslavians. And my thanks also to the other VIPs here—the assembled Ambassadors, colleagues, friends of Seeds of Peace, Bobbie, Tim and Lindsay.

What is happening now in the Middle East makes what you are doing all the more important. Since its inception, you and your predecessors in Seeds have helped us understand that peace is possible. If only we can end the violence. If only we can break down the barriers of hatred and distrust.

In your anthem you just sand: “We stand hand-in-hand as we watch the bricks fall. We’ve learned from the past and fear not what’s ahead.”

That’s very good. I like that. And I commend you for your courage and for daring to believe that, no matter how bad at times things can get, a bright future still is possible.

The horrors of this past week only serve to remind us why peace is so urgent. Your lives and the lives of your generation are far too precious to be wasted on perpetuating hate and endless conflict.

Seeds of Peace not only inspires hope—Seeds of Peace creates hope. You are among the best and brightest of your generation. You have dedicated yourselves to work for peace. To speak for peace even when the voices of hate and violence and vengeance shout all around you.

Your experiences in Seeds give real content to what peace between peoples can really mean in practice. Seeds has equipped you with the skills and tools to listen not preach, to teach not lecture. Most important of all, it has shown you how to share what you have felt and learned with others.

Looking at all of you, it is easier for me and others of my generation to envision a Cyprus, a Middle East, and a Balkans free of conflict. To envision that a web of personal and economic ties will one day replace mistrust and misunderstanding. To envision a time where friendships such as those you have made as Seeds are the norm and not the exception. Where young people of different ethnic backgrounds can grow up to be good neighbors.

Like each of you, Asel Asleh was a Seeds of Peace. He lost his life last October, but he remains an enduring symbol of Hope. He embodied the Seeds’ ideals of promoting understanding and peaceful coexistence. Asel was a sensitive, caring, articulate young leader fighting the legacy of hatred to build a brighter future for Arabs and Israelis alike.

Tragically, he did not live to see the future he dreamed of, but each and every one of you must carry on for him, inspired by his memory, so that you will help create the future he wanted so much to be a part of.

Like all of you, President Bush believes, and I believe, that Asel Asleh’s vision is attainable. Not just a wonderful dream. And like you, we will keep working hard at peace.

President Bush and I, and all the people in this room who are dedicated to the principles of Seeds, will continue to do everything we can to ensure that your future will be different. That your world will be better. That your lives will be free of fear and full of opportunity.

Seeds is making a difference—one day at a time, one person at a time, one mind at a time, one heart at a time. You are terrific and I want to thank each and every on of you for what you are doing. I am honored to be a part of your outstanding program.

And now, I will be glad to answer some questions. And if I don’t get the time to answer every one now, I know that Aaron Miller will be on hand to field some more later in the program.

Sowing seeds of peace in nice kids
The Day (Connecticut)

Aug 25, 2002 / No Comments

We on the shores have torn down walls;
We stand hand in hand as we watch the bricks fall.
We’ve learned from the past and fear not what’s ahead;
I now I’ll not walk alone, but with a friend instead.
– from “I am a Seed of Peace”

I first learned about Seeds of Peace in articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and on the television show “60 Minutes.” The more I heard about this world-wide organization, the more curious I became. I was fascinated with the idea of bringing children together from warring cultures and then “replanting” them in their societies to try to grow peace. I had to see for myself, so in July my husband and I visited the camp.

Each summer, hundreds of teenagers spend a month at a summer camp in Maine, living side-by-side with people they have been led to by their upbringing to hate. Founded in 1993 by the late author and journalist John Wallach, Seeds of Peace now is recognized as the leading international conflict resolution program for youth. From 46 Israeli, Palestinian, and Egyptian teenagers in 1993, the organization now conducts extensive year-round coexistence programs and has more than 2,000 graduates representing 22 nations.

Growing up, I always had been drawn to people of different ethnic backgrounds. I loved learning about world affairs, social problems and civic virtue. In the 1960s I was caught up in the struggle of civil rights. I remember my husband and I going to Boston to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. The world was changing, and I believed becoming a better place. Seeds of Peace appealed to my sense of optimism. Being a Jew, I was also attracted by the hope it raised for the possibility of peace in the Middle East.

The very site evokes the sentiment of peace. It is situated in a pine forest on beautiful Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Me. The wind whistles through the trees. The air is filled with the aroma of pine needles. There, these children of distant wars engage in soccer, canoeing, swimming, sailing, cricket, basketball, tennis and arts. This year, the campers created a float for the local July 4 parade.

Yaakov Sadan, 17, is an Israeli Jew. Dark-haired and handsome, he was spending his third year at the camp and this year returned as a counselor.

Yassin Fayed Ghoz, 15, from Cairo, Egypt told me his dad runs a business back home. He is fascinated by computer science. He said the camp has opened his eyes. He has learned that each camper is a human being and has similar feelings. He said, “Sometimes people see peace with their own eyes, but do not admit it.” In speaking of the Mideast war he said he supports “the truth.” He was hesitant to speak further.

Sara Abuhijleh is a 16-year old Palestinian from Jerusalem. She told me her favorite subject is history and she is in the 11th grade. She has four sisters and her father is a professor in Birzeit. She emphasized, “My family wants peace. It is the governments who want war, not the people.” She was delightful to talk with, and at the end of the day hugged me and said, “You remind me of my grandmother.” I was touched.

For two hours I sat in on a session on coexistence. Emotions were so strong the room was electrified when they talked about conflicts and politics in their own countries. One Palestinian stated it was not right that they do no have a state of their own. He was angry. His eyes blazed and he confronted his Jewish friend who sat next to him. His Jewish friend stood up and shouted, “Your country has to learn to be responsible and have a credible leader. Arafat is not trustworthy.”

Another said, “You and I are human beings. We and our families have to learn to live side by side.”

Yet another said, “Israeli troops are everywhere. I don’t want to feel safe by having 20 Israeli soldiers around me. I want to feel safe in a free atmosphere.”

An Egyptian boy stated, “Intifada happens in many countries when that country has been oppressed—even in the U.S.” He was referring to civil rights.

At the conclusion of the session, one Palestinian girl said, “I learned new things. I had a chance to listen to the other side.”

From a Jewish boy from Tel Aviv: “We understand each other better. Arguments came up, but we still respected each other.” The two counselors who led this session felt many good things had come about from all the emotion and opinions expressed. At the end of the session individuals teamed up into couples, each couple deciding to swim together or take part in another activity.

One of the most vivid memories of my visit is when the entire group of campers sat in a huge circle, arms around each other, all wearing green Seeds of Peace T-shirts, and sang the signature song of the camp. Its refrain was:

I am a Seed of Peace, a Seed of Peace, a Seed of Peace
I am a Seed, a Seed of Peace,
I am a Seed, I am a Seed of Peace.
Peace, peace, peace, peace

The question arises: Once these “Seeds” return to their own countries and eventually are called to serve in the Army, will they be the same? Will they be the same Edi or Tzachi that all the campers knew at summer camp? That is an answer that only time can provide. But until then, I have the deepest faith in these kids. Asel Asleh was a strong Palestinian and a friend to dozens of Israelis. He was a proud Muslim who learned at Christian schools and visited Jewish friends on their holidays. He worked for peace, and stood for his rights without hurting anyone. He was a Seed who was so loved at camp.

Sadly, he returned to Israel in 2000 and was one of those killed. He wrote while at camp, “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Until we meet in the field, my friend, take care.”

At the end of the day I felt wonderful. I had grown and learned so much. I continue to believe in Israel and all it stands for. I also believe the Palestinians should have a homeland they can call their own. I urge anyone who has the chance to visit Seeds of Peace. As United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “There can be no more important initiative than bringing together young people who have seen the ravages of war to learn the art of peace. Seeds of Peace certainly is an example of the world the United Nations is actively working for.”

Claudia Shapiro lives in Waterford.

A tale of three cities: Burlington and her sisters, Bethlehem and Arad | Vermont Public

Jan 25, 2024 / No Comments

Burlington has sister cities all over the world. We explore Burlington’s relationship with two of its sisters: Bethlehem, in the West Bank, and Arad, in Israel.

Seeds of Peace

Talia Manning: I was really excited.

Josh Crane: This is Talia Manning. She grew up in Essex, Vermont. And she remembers the moment she was invited to attend a summer camp called Seeds of Peace.

Talia Manning: I was really excited to be asked to participate and to learn that Americans, you know, could be involved in that way.

Josh Crane: Seeds of Peace is an international nonprofit based in the United States. It was founded around bringing American kids together with kids from the Middle East at summer camp, so they could better understand the Israel-Palestine conflict, and each other. It was established in the ’90s, around the same time as the Burlington-Bethlehem-Arad sister city relationship. And both programs share a similar ethos: emphasizing person-to-person connection, and trying to move beyond the geographical and political boundaries that separate people.

That’s why in the late ’90s, Mousa Ishaq and other leaders of the sister city program wanted to sponsor a Vermonter to attend camp at Seeds of Peace. Talia, then age 15, was an obvious fit.

She’s Jewish, and her family has roots in the Middle East. It started with her great-grandfather, who was living in Germany in the 1930s.

Talia Manning: And the night that Hitler was elected, he said, “This is not going to be good, we need to leave.” And so they left Germany that night.

Josh Crane: After leaving Germany, Talia’s great-grandfather moved to Jerusalem. This was the 1930s, before Israel was created and when the city was still under British mandate. Even so, Talia says she’s always felt a connection to Israel, and what it represents for the Jewish people.

Talia Manning: And so for my family, Israel was the safe place that he was able to go and that he found refuge and was able to grow up.

Josh Crane: Talia learned about Seeds of Peace in social studies class in middle school. And the idea of meeting kids from the Middle East at summer camp — it was exciting. So, her rabbi recommended her for the program, and in 1999, she packed her bags for a special session of Seeds of Peace highlighting sister city relationships.

Talia met kids from Burlington’s sister cities in Bethlehem and Arad, specifically. Like Hilly Hirt.

Hilly Hirt: Usually Seeds of Peace didn’t come to the periphery. It would take people from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, you know, main cities.

Josh Crane: Hilly grew up in Arad. She says it was a tight-knit, progressive community when she was growing up. Lots of artists, like Bethlehem and Burlington. And she says it was not a common location for Seeds of Peace to find campers. It was beautiful — views of the Dead Sea, nice sunsets — but also, kinda out of the way, and very much the desert.

Hilly Hirt: And at night, porcupines, like the huge ones, just cross your, you know, kind of like your garden and it’s full of scorpions that bite you in the tush.

Josh Crane: While attending Seeds of Peace, Hilly met Talia.

Hilly Hirt: She was such an extrovert. You see her and you definitely automatically want to be her friend.

Talia Manning: This is a picture of Hilly. Hilly played piano. Well, here she is in black and white with with the song that she wrote.

Josh Crane: Seeds of Peace had all the normal summer camp activities: sing-alongs, campfires, talent shows. And there was also programming more specific to the Seeds of Peace model. Cultural shows, where campers got to present something important to their heritage. Which, for Talia …

Talia Manning: This is me, I dressed up in overalls and cow flannels to represent Vermont.

Josh Crane: Talia brought a few photo albums to our interview. And she’s pointing to a photo of herself on a stage in full “Vermont” regalia, holding a sign.

Talia Manning: The sign says, “Vermont, the Green Mountain State and home of Ben and Jerry.”

Josh Crane: In addition to these cultural displays, campers also participated in two hours of “coexistence sessions” each day. During this time, they would gather in small groups to discuss the state of the conflict, sharing their experiences and their family histories.

Talia says it worked, and that the difference in campers’ comfort level at the beginning versus the end of the summer was palpable.

Talia Manning: On the first day, people would say they were afraid to go to sleep, because they were worried that the enemy was sleeping right in the bed next to them, and what would they do to them that day?

By the end, we, you know, we had the strength and bond of anyone who has attended summer camp and just, you know, falls in love with their bunk mates and their, their friends there.

Josh Crane: Hilly Hirt, from Arad, remembers her time at camp like this:

Hilly Hirt: For the first week, I probably cried that I wanted home. And then by the second week, all I was thinking was crying that I didn’t want to go home.

The older you get, the more of the complexities you understand. But the simple truth of “We’re people who want to get along” stays as the base value of any complexity that comes along.

Like, I think everything that I believe today, all my understandings, the values, are due to the fact that as a child, a 12-year-old kid, I was like, “Hey, I have a crush on this Jordanian Arab named Eyad. And he’s gorgeous and sweet and a person.” And, forever, every Jordanian will be somebody who wants peace for me.

Josh Crane: One of the people Talia remembers most from her camp experience was a boy named Asel Asleh.

Talia Manning: We referred to him as the boy with the 1,000-watt smile, because he was always beaming. He just had a joy and a character. And in this photo here, he’s leading, like, one of the chants.

Josh Crane: Talia’s pointing to a photo of Asel in full camp mode — mouth open, leading some sort of song as his fellow campers swarm around him. They stayed in touch even after Talia returned to Vermont and Asel returned to Israel.

Talia Manning: And he actually was my first instant message on AOL. It was just so cool to be able to talk with him, you know, across the world, just spontaneously like that.

Josh Crane: They talked a lot about identity: Talia, a Jewish-American; Asel, an Arab-Israeli — ethnically Palestinian, but a citizen of Israel.

Talia Manning: And he talked a lot about how he felt like he didn’t fit anywhere. Because he was a proud Palestinian. He also felt a strong connection to Israel, which was his home.

Josh Crane: Around this time, Talia also started participating more actively in the Burlington, Bethlehem and Arad Sister City Program. She helped Mousa and other program leaders make a push for Bethlehem and Arad to formalize a sister city pact with each other. To that point, both cities only had direct agreements with Burlington.

Talia Manning: This is the speech that I gave—

Josh Crane: As we talk, she points to a copy of a speech she made in 1999, in Burlington. It’s a joint statement from Talia, a camper from Bethlehem and Hilly, the camper from Arad.

Talia Manning: “We hope that the direct contact between the mayors and eventually the citizens of our sister cities — Bethlehem, Arad and Burlington — will have the same wonderful results that we experienced at camp.”

Josh Crane: The direct agreement between Bethlehem and Arad never came to pass. As best anyone can remember, politics got in the way. But, Talia remained involved by attending meetings for the sister city program.

Talia Manning: I think we had monthly meetings at the Burlington police station.

Josh Crane: In the backdrop of those conversations, as well as the conversations Talia and Asel were having over AOL Instant Messenger, tensions in the Middle East were starting to rise again. The year 2000 marked the beginning of the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

And then she got a call from a Seeds of Peace friend who lived in that area.

Talia Manning: And, um, he just, you know, he just said, “Asel is dead.”

Josh Crane: Asel was killed by Israeli police.

Talia Manning: When he was killed, he was wearing his Seeds of Peace t-shirt. And the reporting is that he was there observing the protest in his town. And that he was chased and beaten and shot at point-blank range in the neck by the Israeli police, who were there responding to the protest.

Josh Crane: Asel was one of 13 Arab citizens of Israel killed at that protest.

Josh Crane: How did you react?

Talia Manning: Um, I think I was in shock for a little while. I remember just kind of getting off the phone. I was up in my room, I went downstairs. And I told my mom, and my mom started crying. And I remember that sort of — it scared me, because she doesn’t normally cry. She’s not a crier.

I think for a while I questioned a lot of my love of Israel, and my support of Israel, because it had been Israeli police officers who brutally killed my friend. And the death of Asel was a catalyst for me to becoming more of an activist and more outspoken.

Josh Crane: Talia says that camp alumni rallied together in the years after Asel’s death. They even protested Israel’s Ministry of Justice after it announced that none of the police officers involved in the fatal shootings of Asel or the 12 other Palestinian citizens of Israel would face criminal indictment.

Talia’s been holding onto these experiences since Oct. 7, and the beginning of the latest Israel-Hamas war. Though she says the bonds of summer camp, and their shared experiences, haven’t been enough recently to hold the Seeds of Peace community together.

Talia Manning: And in this latest outbreak, that has also been really hard to watch. I think everyone is being pushed to take a side and I feel like you are either expected to stand with Israel or to free Palestine. And I have trouble with that limited view.

Josh Crane: She says that even some of the group chats and other lines of communication with her fellow Seeds of Peace alumni have felt challenging and unproductive. Some have been put on hiatus entirely.

So, in thinking about our guiding question with this episode: What relationships are possible right now?

Well, Talia and Hilly attended Seeds of Peace in the ’90s. It was a time of optimism and momentum for building consensus, and finding peace in the Middle East. That’s certainly something Hilly felt coming out of camp.

Hilly Hirt: I remember coming out and saying, “This is going to be my future career. Like, this is what I’m going to do. I am going to be in the peace-making business forever.”

Josh Crane: Hilly hasn’t lived in Arad, or been involved with Seeds of Peace, for a long time. She’s still grateful for the role camp had in her life for the three summers she attended.

But these days, she says it’s much harder to be optimistic.

Hilly Hirt: I’d say the situation today is the opposite. On all sides. You talk to Jordanians, and you talk to Egyptians and to Palestinians. There is a — what’s the word for “kituv” in English? A polarization.

Josh Crane: And so, do those same programs that were created in this moment that felt completely different, do they still seem useful to you now?

Hilly Hirt: Um, that’s kind of like asking Xerox if their camera is still relevant in the digital age. The answer is yes. But, but it’s, it’s really contingent on how innovative you are.

Josh Crane: She says she needed more support from Seeds of Peace in the years after she was a camper, like when she started her mandatory military service.

Hilly Hirt: When it comes to continuing the connection with Palestinians and the Arab world when I’m a grown-up, with what happens when we’re at war, when what happens when there is conflict … and I felt that when things got tough, they weren’t there enough for me.

Josh Crane: Talia goes back to Asel, and one of his favorite passages, in times like these. It’s from the 13th century poet Rumi, and it goes like this:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn’t make any sense.”

Talia Manning: And so Asel always said, “I’ll meet you there in that field.”

Listen to Josh Crane’s interview atVermont Public ››

Seeds of Peace offers course in Dialogue Facilitation and Conflict Transformation

Sep 3, 2011 / No Comments

JERUSALEM | Seeds of Peace is offering its third year-long intensive training course in dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation, designed to provide professional peace-building skills and opportunities, for a select group of 20 Israelis and Palestinians beginning this fall.

Despite its significant value and need, peace-building is still a nascent professional field in Israel and Palestine. The Seeds of Peace course is designed as a meaningful introduction to dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation that can serve as a foundation for professional work in the field.  Within five years, Seeds of Peace aims to have trained more than 150 Israelis and Palestinians that can form the base of a growing industry of conflict resolution professionals.

The course meets twice monthly in Jerusalem, over a period of nine months from October 2011 to July 2012. While participants gain a theoretical understanding of dialogue facilitation and conflict transformation, the Seeds of Peace course is unique in its emphasis on experiential learning and practice. Israeli and Palestinian participants go through their own dialogue experience, and facilitate dialogue within their group, in order to confront and contend with their own personal and political perspectives. Through the training process, the group forms interpersonal relationships and a deeper understanding of ‘the other side’ that, combined with practical skills-training, enables them to be exceptionally effective peace-building professionals.

Course participants are required to provide 40 hours of dialogue facilitation for local Seeds of Peace programs as part of their field experience. At the end of the nine months, a select group of the most talented facilitators will have the opportunity to lead dialogue sessions at the Seeds of Peace Camp.

Seed Stories: Advancing horizontally and saving the world

Mar 26, 2019 / No Comments

Right as I was finishing university, the global economic crisis of 2009 was in full blow. I applied for various jobs, from post-graduate university teaching positions to translating technical and/or scientific articles.

I was even waitressing early morning shifts in a local bar in Zagreb, Croatia. However, all were either substitute or short-term positions. So gradually, I started applying for jobs on an international level.

I got an internship at Energy Changes, a consulting company based in Vienna, Austria. Since I graduated from Faculty of Natural Sciences with majors in physics and chemistry, the field of energy efficiency and clean development, which was the main focus of the company, seemed like a fit. During that time, the company was divided into two branches: Global and Regional (Austria-Hungary). I was interning for the Global office and, some of my duties included monitoring international tendering processes, entering projects into the database, and preparing senior consultants for onsite work. I really thought we were helping to save the world.

Everything would be fine, and I would probably still be working, maybe not in that company, but in the field, if it weren’t for two crucial things:

1. By following the tendering, I soon came to realize that some financiers were offering support more in favor of traditional solutions, rather than to clean development and energy efficiency projects. Oh, and by the way: through tendering one can get a grasp of how the monetary support is divided and organized throughout the world, and it’s not a nice picture for someone as idealistic as I was at the time.

2. The final blow was the implosion of The Kyoto Agreement, which expired by the end of 2012. Despite the Doha Amendment, signed by 2013, the international CDM-stock market (clean development mechanism) imploded, and small consulting companies struggled to even survive. The company where I worked, for example, was reduced to Regional level in just six months.

I have to say I was left disappointed, but that grew to disgust after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. It was shocking to see how global memory lasts for five years at the most. Personally, it felt like someone just reset the board for new players of this grown-up Monopoly game. Maybe I’m a bit harsh, because no one can take away the self-sustainable water cleaning systems set up in central Africa, or the photovoltaic advancements made in Dubai projects, but it all kind of discouraged me from pursuing a career in that field.

Soon after, I got a teaching job in one of the most respected high schools in Zagreb. At first, I thought this would be an in-between job until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I am happy to say that I am still working there and I love it. I teach high school physics and chemistry in Croatian, but also in a German-Croatian bilingual program, to 14-18 year olds. In contrast to consulting, I find working with teenagers more rewarding.

I feel like some effects of my work are immediate and instantly recognizable (like the “aha moment” you get after simplifying a problem), and some become evident a few years after students graduate. I have a sense of pride when I get my students to think critically and express their confusion or dislike of something, but are still able to maintain a good discussion, and respect for others participating. What is also endearing is to hear from students how you helped them to choose a certain path in life.

Being a teacher in this day and age, even in an underdeveloped Croatia, offers so much more than regurgitating the same material for different classes. Now, we can develop and participate in a lot of international student exchange and cooperation projects. My experience in consulting really comes in handy as it relates to proposal preparations, asking for financial support, and evaluation. By letting students participate in such tasks, it can help them get an insight of how the bureaucratic side of successful projects works. Some end up choosing that as a career path, others are at least made aware of the process.

By interacting with young adults just as they set off in the world, it’s interesting to see how much and how little things change from one generation to another. I am hopeful I have reached at least some of my students, and that they will affect others and further expand the network. By doing so I’ve begun to regard teaching as one of the most important and rewarding career paths offered.

I really do think that the experience at Seeds of Peace showed me how productive a group can be once trust is established, as well as some tools of mediating that I started unconsciously using while conducting my classes. Being a Seed also determined what I value in life. Being able to communicate the importance of mutual understanding and respect in conflict resolution, and ultimately achieving and maintaining peaceful coexistence, keeps me going. I may never see that dream come true, but having met so many wonderful people from so many different cultures and conflicts, I believe it is possible. It just demands perseverance and determination.

So instead of working in consulting and traveling the world while simultaneously saving it, I now have a job where I can do exactly that and so much more. Instead of advancing vertically through society, I am now advancing horizontally, by creating student/teacher networks, similar to Seeds of Peace, for quick and reliable exchange of information.