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Father, son hike to Mt. Everest Base Camp in support of Seeds of Peace programs

May 10, 2011 / 1 Comment

LONDON | Nyv (age 12) and his father Ori just spent 18 days in the Himalayas, hiking to the base of Mt. Everest. In doing so, the pair raised over $6,000 for Seeds of Peace.

“We believe that the work that Seeds of Peace is doing and the personal dedication of each Seed and supporter globally will enable us to reach the ultimate goal of making this world a better place,” says Ori.

Ori helped organize McKinsey & Company’s New Partner Orientation week during which Graduate Seeds teamed up with the New Partners. After that experience, “we felt in our family that we want to get more involved in peacemaking and with Seeds of Peace,” says Ori.

Nyv and Ori began their uphill trek to the Everest Base Camp on April 16, hiking by themselves for 10 days without guides, porters or support. “We were hoping to strengthen our relationship, test our mental and physical endurance and make it our own memorable adventure.”

When they reached the Base Camp (17,590 ft.), the pair placed the Seeds of Peace flag alongside the many national symbols at the site.

The next day, they summitted the Kala Pattar peak (18,514 ft.).

Shoot Some Pool, Make Some Peace
The Los Angeles Times

May 16, 1998 / No Comments

BY ANDREW FRIEDMAN | Maybe if presidents and prime ministers shared hotel rooms, shot pool down in the lobby in between negotiating sessions, sneaked into one another’s rooms at night for some rowdy horseplay or sat in the hallways way past bedtime laughing about funny stories from camp last summer—maybe if they really cared about one another—there would be peace in the Middle East.

The 75 Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and American teenagers who convened recently in Villars, Switzerland, to negotiate the final status issues of the Middle East peace process had something going for them that their leaders, who met in London at the same time, didn’t. We had friendship.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton made her now-famous remarks supporting the creation of a Palestinian state, she was talking to us. But as momentous as her statement was, it was not the most significant event to transpire during the course of the Seeds of Peace-Novartis Middle East Youth Summit. The very fact that we could spend eight days together discussing, arguing, talking, cajoling and ultimately defining for ourselves the outlines of what permanent normalcy (“real” peace) might be, was far more revolutionary in its implications than the first lady’s remarks.

We had gathered in Switzerland to attempt to negotiate issues including refugees, Jerusalem and sovereignty—issues still too difficult for our elders to discuss. Each delegate was a graduate of Seeds of Peace, a foundation that brings young Arabs and Israelis and Americans together at a camp in Maine every summer. This first ever youth summit aimed at drafting a general agreement on the final status issues, tested to the maximum the strength of our friendships and the durability of our trust. It was a test of our commitment to one another and to peace. At camp, we had agreed to disagree; here, we needed to compromise and debate until we reached agreement. The summit gave us a rare opportunity to actually influence our leaders, to be a part of history-in-the-making. Yasser Arafat, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Clintons, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Jordan’s King Hussein have agreed to read our agreement. The pride and responsibility that came with this realization set the tone for the entire week of negotiations.

But the summit was not a sugar-coated performance. Some adults worried we’d leave feeling as disillusioned and disappointed with one another as the real negotiators do. None of us, though, was expecting Utopia. Everybody came prepared to deal with real issues and real emotions. If making personal peace was hard, making a peace treaty would be even harder.

In my committee’s discussions about the refugees, we spent the week haggling over proposals, tweaking, arguing some more, until we could finally reach a compromise. One of the last days of the negotiations, I was having a private discussion with the Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians. We were trying to persuade a Palestinian girl to compromise. An Egyptian girl movingly pleaded with her to understand that reality would never be able to live up to her dreams. That is a tragedy, but one we must all accept. The Palestinian girl sat there silently for a little while, then she started crying. Her tears represented a heart-wrenching letting go of her impossible dream in exchange for a less-desirable reality.

When we finally reached an agreement, we all cheered and hugged. I was excited and fearful for my summit peers about what we had accomplished: This truly is their future on the line. They all have a vested interest in the success of the peace process, because if it fails, it will be they who will again be forced into the cycles of hatred and violence. That’s what everybody is afraid of and that’s why we were all there.

So whether the next summit of the “real” leaders is next week or next year, I hope they will look to our example. My advice to President Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu is simple: Next time you meet, why don’t the three of you share a room? You might learn something about one another you didn’t know. You might discover that your assumptions about one another have been wrong all along. You might even make a friend. And you might even decide that your friendship is worth a little compromise.

We did.

The Israel-Hamas war has not quashed their compassion, their empathy, their hope | National Public Radio

Nov 5, 2023 / No Comments

A bullet in his spine, hope in his heart

By Ari Daniel
Yousef Bashir has a permanent physical reminder of the stakes of the long-running conflict between Israel and Gaza — a bullet lodged in his spine.

Bashir grew up in Gaza. In 2000, during the Second Intifada, when he was 11, Israeli soldiers occupied the second and third floors of his family home. As for why they did so, “the short answer is because they could,” Bashir says. The house was isolated from the rest of the neighborhood and it gave the soldiers a lookout that let them “see all the way to the sea.”

The soldiers “demolished our greenhouses,” he says, “and pretty much every night, moved the entire family to sleep in the living room while they controlled the rest of the house.”

Bashir says he had to ask the soldiers for permission to use the bathroom.

In the face of that difficult time, Bashir recalls his father explaining that “we should not allow them to turn us into hateful, vengeful people. I’ve watched my dad insist that the only way forward for both sides is peace. And it isn’t only just because it is the right thing to do, but if we are to move forward and become doctors and engineers and husbands and fathers and productive members of the international community, we must do all we can to preserve our humanity.”

His father drew on the Quran. “Never let hatred for any people lead you to deviate from being just to them,” he quoted in Arabic.

Bashir says his father told him “it is one thing to lose one’s home and one’s land and even a loved one. But it is another thing — the most tragic thing — when one loses their humanity.”

It wasn’t always easy for Bashir to agree with his father. For instance, one summer, the soldiers prevented Bashir and his family from going to the beach, which was 15 minutes away. Bashir snapped. But his father said to him, “imagine you are at the beach, imagine the air, the breeze, the waves, the ocean, the sand, imagine, imagine what would you be doing?” Bashir couldn’t quite put himself on the shore in his mind that day, but ever since he’s practiced his ability to imagine. And it’s helped him imagine a different reality for himself and his people to this day.

Peace and tolerance are the core lessons that Bashir was taught as a boy — “as a person, as a Muslim, as an Arab, as a Palestinian,” he says. “I became peaceful in Gaza. I became peaceful when my house was besieged and when my family was shot at, when my farms were demolished. And I think that is a miracle.”

Without those important lessons, Bashir isn’t sure whether he would have survived his youth. “My dad saved my life,” he says.

Roughly a week after he turned 15 years old, just outside his home, a soldier fired the bullet that embedded itself in the center of Bashir’s back, in his spine. “I was lucky to survive,” he says. “I collapsed to the ground. I was looking to figure out what was happening because I felt no pain. I saw no blood, but I could not speak and I definitely could not feel my legs.”

“I think I was shot only because I was Palestinian,” he reflects.

“Quite frankly,” he admits, “I did want to die because it was not normal for a child to be subjected to that way of living. But at the same time, I’m just 15. Why should I go now?”

Bashir was rushed to a hospital in Tel HaShomer, Israel. Up until that point, he’d only met Israeli settlers and soldiers. But now he was meeting Israeli doctors trying to repair him.

“I don’t think Israel intended to show me their human side,” Bashir says. “But I think some higher power wanted me to see that.” He recalls an Israeli nurse who frequently rushed to his side, explaining to some of the other health workers that he was shot for no justifiable reason. All this made Bashir understand his father’s perspective better.

He also came to recognize that he’s from a very particular part of the world. “I come from the Holy Land,” he says. “The land of Jesus and Muhammad and Moses, the [land of the] Jews, Christians and Muslims.”

Bashir was in a wheelchair for two years, but he did learn to walk again. He still does physical therapy and takes regular shots of cortisone to relieve the pain.

Today, half his lifetime later, 34-year-old Bashir lives in Washington, D.C.. where he’s finishing his Ph.D. in international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. The residual bullet causes him ongoing discomfort — “a 24/7 ordeal for me,” he says. “When I watch movies, when I hang out, when I sleep, when I play, when I do just about anything.”

To Bashir, it’s a constant reminder of the conflict — and why the fighting must stop.

“I am here,” he says. “I still believe. I’m still committed. Despite the pain that I will experience tomorrow, I am convinced that [peace is] the only way forward.”

The present moment, however, is a difficult test of Bashir’s conviction.

“With every image, with every video, with every report I see of innocent Palestinians being killed and targeted,” he says, “I get very close to screaming in my apartment. And breaking.” Bashir’s voice cracks.

And then he remembers his father who insisted on peace.

“It’s bad enough,” says Bashir. “My people lack freedom and a state and so much more. I think to be deprived of [our humanity] is just unacceptable. And so in preserving my humanity, in my mind, I am somehow still giving my people and the world a chance for a better life.”

The right to live in peace and security, Bashir argues, “belongs to the Palestinians just as much as it belongs to the Israelis.”

Read Ari Daniel’s op-ed at National Public Radio ››

Ned Lazarus Diary No. 2
Slate

Nov 6, 2001 / No Comments

We’re harboring a fugitive today. She’s a 17-year-old Palestinian from a small village in the northern West Bank, and she’s got to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language, required for international students to be accepted to American universities) tomorrow if she wants to get out of that little village and do something with her adult life.

Our fugitive is one of those stereotype-smashing hijab girls. We get one or two at Seeds of Peace camp every summer, and each one is unforgettable. They are talented, outgoing, witty, tough, wise, like so many of the kids that make it to our camp—but the hijab girls make an especially deep impression, because they come wrapped in the symbols of our deepest preconceptions. We will get to her story in a second, but first, definition:

HIJAB—the head scarf worn by observant Muslim women. The hijab covers just the hair—it is not a veil. It is the common outdoor gear for Palestinian Muslim women; the oppressive, face-hiding, and full-body-covering burkhas of Talibanistan are happily not in fashion here.

Actually, before I go any further, I’d better present the standard disclaimer, in order that the audience will listen to me and not their own preconceptions. DISCLAIMER: MY BIAS ON THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT—I’ve learned through guiding five years of Arab-Jewish dialogue and observing countless holier-than-thou arguments that if you have an opinion on the “Middle East situation,” you probably won’t read to the end of this paragraph to listen to mine.

You could be pro-Arab or pro-Israeli; as long as you’re passionate about the issue, you probably prefer lecturing to listening, and your first instinct in any discussion is to jump to conclusions about which “side” everybody else is on (I don’t mean to jump to conclusions about you; it’s just what I’m used to every time I try to explain my job). Well, don’t. Hear me out. I’m presenting the conflict through the eyes of teen-agers on both sides trying to live through it, so that’s worth a listen. It’s not what you’re used to. Trust me.

My bias on the conflict is that I’m against it. Having studied it thoroughly and observed it firsthand for five years, I’ve come to the definite conclusion that I am anti-the-conflict. It is a toxic element in our atmosphere. It is hazardous to human beings; it kills and maims hundreds every year, twisting bodies and minds into grotesque shapes that do not resemble the dreams of parents who brought them into the world. It has poisoned the souls of millions of Jews and Arabs and by absorption is steadily poisoning the souls of their great religions.

So I am militantly anti-the-conflict. It’s not just an ideological thing. It’s personal. It’s flesh and blood. This conflict is a clear and present danger to hundreds of incredible young Palestinians and Israelis whom I have been honored to befriend, who have the potential to do wonders in their lifetimes, if they will be allowed to really live. We lost one of our brightest stars, an Arab-Israeli boy named Asel Asleh already, gunned down last October at age 17 (details in upcoming diaries). For now, just bear in mind that I, like too many Palestinians and Israelis, know what it means to see a life stolen by the hatred and violence generated by this conflict.

Asel, of blessed memory, wrote presciently at age 15 to his Arab and Jewish friends on our e-mail listserv, SeedsNet: “There’s two things left to say: Enjoy every minute of this life while you’re still breathing … and second, be somebody, and not just anybody.” Those are guiding principles of our work: to enrich the lives of young people, and inspire them to make a difference in the world.

These are the spirit of Seeds of Peace. The founding principle, as repeated tirelessly by our president and founder John Wallach to every new group of Seeds, is to value equally human lives on both sides and to work to break the cycle of violence that destroys them.

That’s my bias. I am militantly pro the Israeli and Palestinian kids I work with, and militantly anti the threats to their freedom, safety, happiness and existence. That does put me at odds with a lot of elements on both sides, as both sides dedicate a staggering percentage of their national resources to threatening each other’s children.

If you feel your own bias rising as I criticize some Israeli or Arab policy or personage, it’s not because I hate one side and love the other. There’s a lot of people on both sides that I love, and some on both sides that I hate—but it’s not political or ethnic. My standard makes perfect sense in your basic human terms—I love people who bring something good into the lives of my kids, and I want to stop the people who are trying to hurt them.

NO! That’s more than 800 words already … it’s tough to meet this format. Guess I have to end with a preview: Meet stereotype-smashing hijab-wearing peace-making teen-age fugitive in Ned’s “Diary” tomorrow!

Read Ned Lazarus’ diary entry No. 2 at Slate »

Planting global harmony
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)

Jan 28, 2003 / No Comments

BY VERENA DOBNIK | Seventeen-year-old Julia Frazier of Fort Lee has an indelible memory of summer camp: She’s standing on a large seesaw, 10 people balancing at each end, with a glass of water teetering at the fulcrum. The exercise was meant to show the teenagers, who came from around the world, what it takes to negotiate a peace between warring factions. When one person moved, all the others had to quickly shift in response.

“If everyone took even a tiny step, it would upset the balance. We had to choose one person to take that step, support that person, and balance as a team. “Every person matters—big or small,” said Frazier, a high school senior who attends the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

The seesaw test was staged in the woods of Otisfield, Maine, as part of a summer camp run by Seeds of Peace, a private, non-profit organization founded by the late author and journalist John Wallach. Since 1993, Seeds has brought together about 2,000 youths from warring lands—Israelis and Palestinians, Indians and Pakistanis, Cypriot Turks and Greeks, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, tribal members from Afghanistan.

Two events this month reinforce its international reputation: Aaron David Miller, the U.S. State Department’s senior adviser for Arab-Israeli negotiations, was named president of the New York-based organization. “Seeds of Peace reflects the type of effort so desperately needed in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said in announcing Miller’s departure.

Comedian Janeane Garofalo was the host of a benefit auction in Manhattan, where former President Bill Clinton noted that there have been 120 Middle East suicide bombings in the past two years. The Canadian pop band Barenaked Ladies was given the first MTV Seeds of Peace Award.

Seeds members have been touched directly by both war and peace. Asel Asleh, a 17-year-old Palestinian, was wearing a Seeds of Peace T-shirt when killed by Israeli soldiers during a rock-throwing protest in Israel two years ago. Similar shirts were worn by Seeds members invited to the White House in 1993, when Clinton hosted the signing of a Middle East peace accord between Israel’s then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat—a pact that did not endure.

Growing up in Fort Lee, Frazier planned to study marine biology or the environment. But her two weeks at the Seeds camp, as one of four American delegates, changed all that—inspiring her instead to seek out colleges with strong programs in international relations and conflict resolution. “Now I want to do everything in my power to solve problems between people—especially one on one,” she said. “Seeds has changed my idea about college.”

At the Maine camp, between competitive sports, music-making, and arts courses, she learned about centuries-old ethnic hatreds. Frazier was assigned to mediate discussions of the conflict in Cyprus, the Mediterranean island nation where Greeks and Turks coexist in an armed truce that periodically erupts in violence.

“Before the camp session, I knew nothing about that country, except that it was somewhere near Greece. And I thought, how can I possibly contribute anything?” Frazier said. Suddenly, she was living in a Spartan lakeside cabin with Greeks and Turks, one of whom had lost his grandfather in a political revenge killing. During intense face-to-face sessions called “Coexistence,” she listened to Cypriot youths lay out their island’s tortured history since it was granted independence by Britain in 1960: ethnic Greeks and Turks fighting for their respective rights; a CIA-sponsored coup and a 1974 invasion by Turkey; and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from their homes.

“After, they turned to me to ask what I thought. I was able to give them a kind of bird’s-eye view, because I wasn’t partial to either side, and I was sympathetic to what I was hearing—I spoke from the heart,” she said. “I said, ‘You are justified in having your own point of view. But you aren’t going to get anywhere if you’re just trying to prove that you’re right.'”

Frazier sees similar forces at work in social and family issues in her own country. “Conflicts have the same human roots, whether it’s East Coast-West Coast gang rivalry or family problems—everybody wants to be right,” she said.

Wallach, a son of Holocaust survivors, founded Seeds after years as a foreign correspondent covering the strife and failed diplomacy of the Middle East, hoping the camp could help bright young people from the region find the keys to peace. Seeds alumni “go home very, very different from when they arrive. I think they now know the enemy. … The enemy is now human,” Wallach said before his death last July.

Frazier understands that. “Not reacting with anger can be really lonely, but I’ve made the connection to Seeds: How you deal with your personal life determines how you deal with the world.”

One year later, Middle East teens still cling to ideals
The Christian Science Monitor

Aug 14, 2003 / No Comments

OTISFIELD, MAINE | When Saja Abuhigleh returned home to the Palestinian town of Ramallah last year, her friend Donia stopped speaking to her.

The problem: Saja was bursting with enthusiasm for Maine’s Seeds of Peace camp, where she had just spent three weeks, and for her friends there—including Israelis.

“She told me, ‘I can’t believe after everything that happened to your family, you can make friends with them,’ ” Saja recounts sadly.

Adar Ziegel, one of Saja’s Israeli bunkmates last summer, also had her ideals from camp tested. Her friend Tom was riding the No. 37 bus in Haifa in March when a suicide bomber blew it up. Tom and his father were killed, along with 13 others. It was the first time that the violence of her homeland had touched Adar so personally.

Seeds of Peace, a lakeside enclave northwest of Portland, is dedicated to helping teenagers from the Middle East begin to overcome their differences—or at least put a human face on the “enemy.” But it’s one thing to express optimism in the Maine woods; it’s another to test that optimism against the violence and hatred back home.

Last summer, the Monitor followed both Adar and Saja—along with Ariel Tal, an Israeli at camp for his third year, and Sami Habash, a blond, intense Palestinian—through the challenges and triumphs of learning to live with those from the other side. After three weeks of bonding in a safe setting, all four teenagers had felt hopeful, and were determined to keep working for peace at home. They were worried, too, about what would happen once the “bubble” of camp gave way to the harsh realities of checkpoints, tanks, and suicide attacks.

Returning after a year of change

In the end, Saja, Sami, and Adar all returned for a second summer—something only about 10 percent of campers do. (Ariel, after three years at Seeds of Peace, was too old.)

Their reasons varied, from wanting to learn more patience to simply missing friends and the fun of camp. They have no illusions about how much change a few teenagers can effect. But their commitment to peace is a year stronger, and their decision to return, ultimately, an act of hope.

It was a year of changes for all four. Saja put on the hijab, against her family’s wishes. Sami was offered a full scholarship to Brandeis University in Massachusetts, but will follow his mother’s desire that he attend Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ariel finished high school and will be drafted into the Israeli army this fall.

And, for the first time, the violence was made truly personal for Adar. She still remembers every detail of March 5—her birthday. She was at the beach celebrating when a friend called: A bus had exploded right next to the bakery where she and her friends hang out. A flurry of phone calls revealed that most of her friends were fine. Only Tom was missing. It wasn’t until the next morning, as she was putting on her shoes, that Adar heard Tom’s name read over the radio. She fell to the floor crying.

Rather than destroy Adar’s belief in peace, however, Tom’s death strengthened it. One of the first things she did was write a letter to the network of Seeds of Peace alumni, pouring her heart out to people she thought might understand. She was amazed at the responses she got—from good friends and people she’d never met; from Israelis and Palestinians.

“They wrote and called me and supported me in ways I couldn’t have asked for,” Adar remembers.

Three days after the bombing, against the protests of some of her friends in Haifa, Adar went to the Seeds of Peace center in Jerusalem, seeking support but also feeling a renewed sense of purpose.

“Before, it was talking to them, and listening, and understanding … But now I felt that I owe it to someone to actually do it.”

Saja’s year has been calmer. She has emerged as a leader, helping the new campers with their English, and displaying authority as she teaches a group of Palestinians to perform the dabke, a traditional dance, for the talent show. And she wears the hijab—one of the few campers to do so—with a quiet grace. When she returned home to Ramallah last summer, Saja says, her mother hardly recognized her as the same shy girl who had never wanted to leave home alone.

“Last year, I was afraid to pass the checkpoints,” she says, smiling. “But when I came back from camp, I just told my mother, I will go alone through the checkpoints. If you want something from Jerusalem, I will go bring it.”

Her mother wasn’t always thrilled with Saja’s desire to spend time at the Seeds center in Jerusalem, though, and several times asked her to stop going. And neither parent was happy when she had a dream “about God” two months ago and decided to put on the hijab and study the Koran in earnest. Her mother, she says, has been pleading with her to take it off, at least in Maine, but Saja is resolute.

“When a girl puts on the hijab, something changes inside of her,” she explains.

Reconciling peace with military service

While Saja and Adar tried to reconcile life back home with the ideals of camp, Ariel was facing life after Seeds. His commitment to peace had already been tested once, when a friend was killed in a suicide bombing, and Ariel is confident it’s a commitment that will survive the army. That’s not to say the decision was easy.

“On the one hand, I have a great desire to serve my country and do it in the best possible way,” he writes in an e-mail. “On the other hand, after listening to my Arab friends and after being at Seeds I know the suffering of the other side.”

His Arab friends know he’s joining the army, and Ariel says they’re supportive. In the meantime, he has stayed closely connected with the Seeds center in Jerusalem, where he has been learning to facilitate the sensitive coexistence, or “coex,” sessions between Israelis and Palestinians. The work, he says, reinforced for him what he considers the ultimate lesson of Seeds of Peace: listening.

That’s a lesson Sami has taken to heart this summer. Last year, he often engaged in heated debates, and became easily frustrated when, say, an Israeli settler in his coex session relied on “different facts” from his. This year’s “coex” sessions for returning campers are less about politics, though, and more about trust and communication. Surprisingly, Sami likes the change.

“You get to know the personality of someone truthfully,” he says. “This year, I’m trying to listen more than to talk.”

Read Amanda Paulson’s first 2002 Christian Science Monitor story »

Seeds of Peace initiates advanced Palestinian-Israeli coexistence program

Aug 20, 2003 / No Comments

JERUSALEM | Seeds of Peace has launched something at its Jerusalem Center for Coexistence unlike anything ever done before. In fact, what is happening at the Center isn’t happening anywhere else—not at this scale and not with such a variety of groups and projects, in so many locations and with participants from so many places.

Two hundred Israeli and Palestinian Seeds are coming together for weekly meetings throughout 2003 and 2004 as part of the Center’s Advanced Coexistence Program—they are meeting in 12 different groups in four different locations from dozens of cities all over Israel, both sides of Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The projects include:

Dialogue Groups: Groups of 14-20 Israeli and Palestinian Seeds are meeting on a weekly basis. Older, more experienced Seeds are helping to guide the groups as they learn themselves the skills of group-leading and facilitation. The first meetings focused on group and trust building activities, and were followed by intensive dialogue sessions with facilitators. In the second half of the year, groups will plan and implement outreach projects together.

“Coexistence Through the Year” Calendar Project: In this area, people live together but use three different religious calendars (Jewish, Muslim, Christian), two different national calendars (Palestinian, Israeli), and three different school system calendars (Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli, Arab-Israeli). A group of Seeds are designing, producing and distributing a yearly calendar that includes all the holidays and traditions, showing the dates for each one as well as short written explanations and images reflecting the importance of the dates. The calendar will also include the holidays of other religions celebrated in the area, such as Druze religious holidays.

Before producing the calendar, the participants in this project will research in detail the area’s different religions and cultures. They will discuss with each other in depth the significance of the various religious and national holidays. They will write the explanation passages and test them on each other, and work together on translations into Hebrew and Arabic. They will work with local artists to create images on each page that reflect their mutual understandings of the significance of the different religious/cultural/national dates. The calendar will be distributed widely to middle and high school aged Israeli and Palestinian youth in schools, promoting joint understanding of the important religious, national and cultural commemorations on both sides. Copies will be printed and distributed, all tri-lingual in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Mother Tongue Language Courses: Leaders for peace in this area should know how to communicate with each other—in each other’s languages. Mother Tongue participants meet once a week, teaching and learning from each other important conversational skills in Hebrew and Arabic, which will help them bridge cultural gaps as they strive to build a region of greater mutual understanding. They are also being exposed to the other culture through poetry, music, art, proverbs and much more.

Acting Out! Using acting, puppetry, storytelling and music, a group of Israeli and Palestinian Seeds participants are creating a performance which is imbedded with messages they see as important to the mission of Seeds of Peace. The show will be created throughout this year and performed starting next summer for family audiences at the Center for Coexistence, and will tour to Arab and Jewish communities. Before or after watching the show, the children will participate in a “hands-on workshop” in puppetry or acting, led by Seeds participants, where they can express their own creativity.  

Makin’ a Difference (Community Service): Through involvement in community work, Seeds contribute to their communities while simultaneously creating a positive feeling in their communities about Seeds of Peace, and working inside communities to promote the values of Seeds of Peace. Projects have already been implemented with an after-school Center in Jaffa targeting needy Arab and Jewish youth, Ayn al Sultan refugee camp in Jericho, and a group of Russian immigrant teenagers from Neveh Yaacov working with Seeds youth painting houses in the development town of Dimona.  

Sesame Seeds:  In conjunction with Sesame Workshops, which produces Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian TV components of the beloved children’s show Sesame Street, promoting tolerance and cross-cultural understanding, a group of Seeds are designing with educational experts hired by Sesame Workshops a curricula they will bring into the schools, reaching primary school aged youth with those messages and with their own example.  

Media Course/Oral History Project: This course is providing Palestinian and Israeli Seeds skills in writing articles, making commentary, and how to critically interpret and analyze both television and newspaper media. When the course is completed, the participants will be active contributors to the Olive Branch, the Seeds of Peace youth magazine.

The exceptionally talented youth will be encouraged to write for school newspapers and for Israeli and Palestinian press, and begin to build the Seeds of Peace Oral History: We have the ambitious goal of interviewing each and every one of our participants, asking them to talk about themselves, their personal and family history, their community, their views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, how they see the future in five years, and their experiences with Seeds of Peace. The interviewers and videographers will also be Seed participants who have participated in the media course. The Oral History Interviews will be in the Seeds of Peace library. They will be used in school presentations to show stories and perspectives of youth from “the other side.” Since closures and checkpoints often prevent the youth from traveling to each other’s communities directly, they can speak through the video tapes. In this way, Palestinian youth in schools in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza can hear the stories and experiences of Israeli youth, and vice versa. The Oral History library will also be available for students and NGOs doing research projects, and for Seeds participants to stay connected to each other and to their pasts over the years.  

Facilitation Training: Seeds who have completed both an introductory and advanced coexistence program are eligible to enroll in facilitation training. Through observation, role play, discussion of theory and practice, and supervised hands-on experience, Seeds learn skills needed to facilitate meaningful dialogue.

Seeds of Peace alumni rally for October riots victims
The Jerusalem Post

Jan 3, 2008 / No Comments

Demonstration was signal to Arab community of Israel that Jews just as outraged by Mazuz’s decision, one protester said

JERUSALEM | Some 40 people demonstrated in front of the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem on Tuesday, demanding that it reopen the investigation into the October 2000 riots, in which 13 Israeli-Arab civilians were killed by police.

The protest was organized by graduates of the Seeds of Peace movement, which lost one of its members, Asil Asala, in the riots. According to eyewitnesses, Asala, who did not participate in the clashes, had been wearing the movement’s T-shirt when he was chased by police and shot. He was 17 at the time.

Noa Epstein, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—as well as a member of the youth movement during Asala’s year—said the demonstration was a signal to the Arab community of Israel that Jews were just as outraged by Mazuz’s decision.

“It is unthinkable that you have 13 people in their graves, 13 Israeli citizens shot by Israeli police, and no one is held responsible,” Epstein said.

The demonstrators also sent letters to Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, writing that if the victims of the shooting had been Jews, the investigation would not have been closed.

“We are losing the moral ground to claim Israel is a democracy,” they wrote. “We ask the prime minister and the attorney-general, how do you intend to deal with the mounting frustration in the Arab sector? Can’t you see that it’s tearing the country apart?” Epstein said.

She said they had many questions about the investigation of the deaths.

“The officer who most probably shot Asil refused to undergo a polygraph test, so they just let him go,” she said. “We realize that there are many more problems in the investigation, such as the refusal of the families to have the bodies exhumed, but we believe that much more can still be done.”

Mazuz made the decision last week to close the investigation against the policemen involved.

“The incident involved the use of operational judgment in an emergency situation,” Mazuz wrote in his ruling. He also said forensic evidence was legally insufficient to press charges.

Critics pointed out that the criminal investigation had started only after the commission of inquiry submitted its findings—two years after the events.

Read Dimi Reider’s article at The Jerusalem Post »

6 alumni making a difference for refugees

Jun 7, 2019 / No Comments

June is Refugee Awareness Month, a time to shine a spotlight on the thousands of families who flee from violence and unrest each day, and a time to foster empathy and build support for them in the new communities where they arrive.

Many in our community are working year-round to address the migrant crisis in a myriad of ways. Here are six Seeds of Peace alumni who are making a difference for refugees.

 

Salat (Syracuse Seed, 2012)

Salat was born in a refugee camp in Kenya after his parents escaped the Somali civil war, and lived there for 11 years. When he found out the United Nations had selected his family for resettlement in America, he thought he was headed to heaven on earth. But what Salat discovered upon arriving in the States was a country more hostile than he could have imagined.

“I was treated like a criminal based on my skin color,” he said. “I learned to avoid looking like a Muslim whenever there was an attack on American soil. l was made to feel that coming to America as a refugee who seeks asylum is the worst thing you can be.”

That changed when he came to Camp. “In the dialogue hut, I was given the space to unbottle all of the things I had bottled up over the years,” Salat said. “I was made to feel that I was enough, and that my difference was beautiful. It was the happiest three weeks of my life.”

Now, Salat is paying that experience forward. He is a board member of Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment (RISE), a nonprofit that provides recently resettled Americans in Syracuse with the resources they need to become self-sufficient through employment, education, and economic empowerment. And his upcoming documentary, Leaving Home But Left Behind, chronicles his journey back to Kenya to reunite with his mother after 13 years. Through his experience, the film aims to help others understand what it means to be a refugee in America.

Read Salat’s Seed Story in its entirety ››

 

Lilly (GATHER Fellow, 2018)

Lilly’s connection to the plight of refugees was always personal.

“My parents were from Iran, but I grew up in America,” she said. “So I sometimes felt like I was both a part of and apart from two different worlds. The idea of what unites humanity and what makes us different appeals to me.”

Throughout Seeds of Peace’s GATHER Fellowship, Lilly developed an interactive Minecraft story that follows a young Syrian refugee as she tries to make her way to safety. By putting the player in this character’s shoes—the game begins among family and friends trying to live their daily lives in war-torn Aleppo—Lilly hopes to counteract the often-inflammatory rhetoric around refugees in the West with empathy and understanding.

Read more of our conversation with Lilly ››

 

Avigail (Israeli Seed, 2000)

Avigail has been a fierce defender of human rights for years. She channeled her passion for grassroots organizing into a career as a lawyer specializing in labor law—a role which has seen her advocate for vulnerable groups in Israel such as workers, youth, women, Palestinians, and the LGBT community. As the migrant crisis became more severe, she knew it was her duty to get involved.

“Something very essential that I experienced in Seeds of Peace was to be humble in the face of another person’s life and story. To listen very carefully. To see their pain as my pain, their tragedy as my tragedy as a human being,” she told us.

“It reached a point where we said we just could not be silent bystanders.”

Avigail is one of the co-founders of the International School of Peace (ISOP), an educational initiative just a short drive away from the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos. Headline after headline describes the camp as one of the worst places on earth, but for the 400-some students who fill its classes every day, the ISOP is a sanctuary.

There are no external structures on the island dedicated to education for these refugees. But thanks to the ISOP, these students—many of whom have never been to school before—are now receiving one.

Read about our meeting with Avigail at the ISOP ››

 

Anis (GATHER Fellow, 2018)

As a professor of Music and Politics and a member of the French Embassy’s Cultural Attache, Anis has always been fascinated by the intersection between music education and social change. But after face-to-face experiences with refugee children while volunteering in Greece, he realized there was another way he could put his expertise to use—one that could help those who need it most.

“Refugees are fed and accommodated, but what about their aspirations? Few initiatives exist to rebuild self-esteem, encourage social integration, and inspire hope in the future,” Anis said. “Nearly 28,000 refugee children live in Greece today. They deserve a childhood with confidence and the certainty of belonging.”

That’s why Anis co-founded El Sistema Greece, a program offering free music classes and concert performances to children in Greek refugee camps. These programs are also integrated with migrants and Greek citizens to foster social inclusion.

El Sistema Greece began with two dozen children in a single camp outside Athens. Now, the program has over 500 participants in camps across the country.

“On stage,” Anis told us, “everyone is united in a desire to excel, and we see the potential of a person, rather than a threat. These young artists are adding value to the community, not disrupting it … We are creating a community based on solidarity, hard work, and being part of a team.”

Read our alumni profile of Anis ››

 

Pooja (GATHER Fellow, 2018)

Pooja is based in India, and runs her own program targeted to refugee youth. In 2015, she saw an image of a Syrian boy’s body washed ashore in Greece. She expected the disturbing scene to be a galvanizing moment, only to find it met with indifference by those around her. So she decided to take change into her own hands.

That year, she founded Letters of Love, an organization that connects children in refugee camps with pen pals to foster empathy, connection, and emotional support. “The core idea of my work,” she explained, “is to shake the inertia of apathy people have about grave humanitarian issues. To inspire others to help make a difference in this daunting crisis, we must first inspire empathy.”

Since then, Letters of Love has sent over 33,000 letters to Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Yazidi, and Rohingya refugee children, and built a network of over 8,000 student ambassadors working to foster empathy in their schools and communities.

Learn more about Pooja’s work ››

 

Abu Tareq (Palestinian Delegation Leader, 2007)

Abu Tareq views education as a way for people to transform the world around them. Earlier in his career, he was a principal at schools throughout the West Bank. He watched the students around him upend narratives of what their lives should look like.

Now, Abu Tareq operates an education center for children at his home in the al-Arroub refugee camp, where he has emerged as a community leader—and an emissary of peace. His program has run in the winter and summer in al-Arroub for years, providing youth with conflict mediation and communication skills, as well as helping them overcome trauma and develop resilience.

In al-Arroub, having a place for children to go when school is out can be the difference between life and death. “The victims [of the conflict] are mostly kids,” he explained. “They think throwing stones at settlers is a kind of play. But the result can be the loss of their lives, for nothing. It’s a very unuseful way to ask for freedom, for the right to live and travel out of the camp.”

For so many children, Abu Tareq’s program is a respite from the harsh realities of their circumstances. “The students are free to dance, to play, to move freely,” he said. “This is my aim: to provide a little light in such big darkness.”

Hear Abu Tareq’s story on INSPIRED, our audio documentary series:

Do you know of any alumni we didn’t include who deserve a spotlight? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Planting Seeds of Peace in Miami
Miami Herald

Jul 14, 2016 / No Comments

Seeds of Peace bridges cultural divisions between teens from Middle East and U.S. at summer camp in Maine

Miami-raised former counselor organizing first Miami events to support the group

Leaders say Seeds’ efforts more important than ever at time of heightened division in U.S. and beyond

At a time when social division and turmoil are rising in the United States, a summer camp that bridges seemingly intractable divisions between teens of different religions and races has become newly relevant.

Called Seeds of Peace, it is a program in Maine that has brought together young Israelis and Palestinians, as well as teenagers from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, the Balkans and the United States, for 23 years.

This summer, Seeds of Peace is expanding its U.S. program to add teens from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City to those it has long hosted from Maine and upstate New York, aiming to inculcate empathy and understanding as the country struggles with cultural and political discord that seems more bitter than anything seen here in decades.

And this week a young Miamian who reconciled his own divided background by working as a counselor at the camp is organizing the first Seeds of Peace events in Miami.

Misha Mehrel, 26, has put together a stand-up comedy night in Wynwood on July 20 and a walk across the Venetian Causeway on July 23. His hope is to raise awareness of and as much money as possible for a program that he says can be transformative.

“These kids are put into an environment of love, encouragement, challenge that has pushed them to . . . hopefully make decisions to grow and bond instead of to hate,” Mehrel says. “It shows you that if they can do this, I can.”

The family settled in Miami when Mehrel was 3. Several years ago he seemed well on his way to a successful film career in New York, working as an editor and production assistant for the likes of HBO and director Baz Luhrmann, when he found himself longing to do something more substantial and fulfilling. He decided to follow his older sister, who had been a counselor at the Seeds camp.

“Seeds was a way to get out of this image-conscious, career-driven life I was living and doing something that was less about me,” Mehrel says. “But I think I was also attracted to the whole concept because of the division in myself.”

Overcoming division is the mission of Seeds of Peace, which was launched by journalist and writer John Wallach in 1993, bringing 46 teens from Israel, Palestine, Egypt and the United States to Otisfield, Maine. The project got an immediate burst of attention when then-President Bill Clinton invited the first campers to the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, where they posed for photos with Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The program mixes traditional summer camp activities like sailing and soccer with intensive group talk sessions in which the teens work through their differences and anger. They play on Frisbee teams together, and kids from opposite sides of warring adult conflicts help each other through risky trust-building exercises in which an Israeli teen might help his blindfolded Palestinian counterpart climb a rock wall or cross a high wire.

“The idea is to give these kids a chance to make up their own minds, teach them leadership skills and how to be their own person, instead of another cog in the narrative they’ve been fed for years,” Mehrel says.

In 2000, spurred by requests from local education leaders, the camp started a second program for teenagers from Maine, which is overwhelmingly white and Christian, and their counterparts from African, Asian and Muslim refugee families from places like Somalia and Cambodia who were being placed in Maine by a federal government program. Later they added kids from Syracuse, New York, a once predominantly white community with a growing minority and immigrant population.

“There were a lot of tensions with the instant diversity,” says Eric Kapenga, communications director for Seeds of Peace. “It was almost the same program as for students from the Middle East.” There were fraught dialogues about race, religion, gender, sexuality and immigration. One girl from a small town in northern Maine wrote that every time she saw a Muslim girl in a hijab she was afraid, because she only saw violent Muslim terrorists on TV. A Somalian girl who had come to Syracuse at age 12 was traumatized by years of bullying.

Over the past two years, the growth of racial tensions, with the furor over police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement, and an election season marked by angry debates over race, immigration, Muslims, and LGBTQ rights, led Seeds of Peace to expand its American session to teens from larger cities beyond Maine and Syracuse.

“For too long as Americans we’ve said we don’t have conflict here,” says Sarah Brajtbord, who manages Seeds of Peace’s U.S.-based programs. “The reality is we live in communities deeply divided by conflict. . . . We need to be bringing people together and engaging each other.”

“Each camper has their own issues, their own stories, their own experiences. . . . It’s raising those questions, and being able to answer them. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we collectively? How do these different parts of us look when we come together?”

Jennifer Dertouzos, a close friend of Mehrel’s family and a dedicated volunteer for social causes who is co-organizing the Miami Seeds events, says the violent events of this summer such as the massacre in Orlando, the killing of black men by police in Baton Rouge and Minnesota and the sniper attack on police in Dallas have made people sympathetic to their efforts. Trinity Cathedral, located at the foot of the Venetian Causeway, is allowing them to gather in its parking lot for free before Saturday’s walk, and Wynwood Cafe is hosting the comedy night for a minimal fee. Local businesses like Eternity Coffee Roasters, 305 Yoga, iRun and Oh! Granola are providing coupons, free classes and products for walk participants.

“It’s good timing because people want to channel their energy toward peace or the greater good,” Dertouzos says. “It’s of the moment.”

This difficult moment also makes the struggle that Seeds of Peace faces a daunting one. As conflict has grown in the Middle East, the group faces new obstacles in bringing teens from those areas; the Hamas government in Gaza, for instance, does not assist with placing Palestinian campers the way previous administrations did. This summer’s expanded American session is small, with just 27 kids from the larger cities, out of a total of 127. And Mehrel, after spending the past two years in Miami, is taking a teaching job in Connecticut in August, leaving future Miami efforts on the group’s behalf in doubt.

But Brajtbord insists their endeavors are more important than ever.

“Conflict is a moment either for breakdown or breakthrough,” she says. “Now is the time to stop talking about doing things and start trying to do them. . . . It’s only going to get worse as the election unfolds. So why should we not try to do this now?”

And she takes reassurance from the teenage Seeds the camp nourishes each summer.

“They have the courage to do what adults and political leaders are not doing — to engage with one another, confront differences and accept it as a natural part of who we are and what our country is,” Brajtbord says. “That not only gives hope but fuels change.”

Read Jordan Levin’s article at the Miami Herald »