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Seeds of Peace responds to flawed, inaccurate Ha’aretz column

Sep 17, 2014 / No Comments

The Ha’aretz newspaper published a column by Matthew Kalman on September 15 titled “Will seeds of peace ever bloom.” The piece is very similar to a 2008 San Francisco Chronicle article by Kalman that also juxtaposes statistics from an unpublished 2008 study on various Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding programs with an interview with a Seed.

This is Seeds of Peace’s response to the article. There has been no response from Ha’aretz or Kalman.

Dear Matthew,
I very much appreciate that, like your similar 2008 Chronicle article, you interviewed a Seed. The arguments against the effectiveness of Seeds of Peace’s work, statistical or otherwise, stands out in contrast to the experiences Nitsan and Hiba [the Seeds] relate.

So why the disconnect?

The 2008 Pal Vision survey results, referenced in the 2008 Palestine-Israel Journal and your 2008 article, do not track with any independent studies of Seeds of Peace participants. For example, independent surveys of Seeds indicate that over 70 percent stay in touch through their high school years; Pal Vision reported a drastically lower 9 percent (not that staying in touch is necessarily an indicator of a program’s success).

Because the Pal Vision study was never published, and because we as an organization were not involved with it in any capacity, we have no way of knowing if Seeds were included in the survey. Nor do we have a way of directly addressing the disparities between our figures and Pal Vision’s.

What is clear from the Pal Vision survey is that the vast majority of those surveyed were not Seeds of Peace participants. (In fact, it’s not clear if any Seeds were surveyed.) Pal Vision reported that only 7 percent of those surveyed reported any follow-up to the initial experience.

If Seeds were included in the survey, they would likely make up the entirety of that 7 percent, since nearly all (if not all) Seeds would have reported follow-up activities. That is because we realized very early on in our existence that an initial encounter is not enough, and adapted our model accordingly. Since the mid-1990s, our approach has been to run programs year-round in participants’ home countries, with extremely high participation rates.

I am therefore disappointed to see us grouped with programs whose failed models only provide an initial encounter experience. This ignores the very hard work of our staff who run offices and programs year round in Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, and the validation of their work by University of Chicago researchers. How can anyone compare the effectiveness of a program that brings together Israeli and Palestinian youth for a brief sports match with a program like ours that brings them together for weeks of intense dialogue, and then runs continuous programs for them when they return home?

Speaking of our offices, we closed the Seeds of Peace Center in Jerusalem in late 2006, after the Second Intifada. But we immediately opened offices in Ramallah and Tel Aviv. The reason for the move was entirely due to an interruption in Seeds of Peace’s ability to secure permits for Palestinian Seeds to enter Jerusalem or Israel to meet with their peers for post-Camp programs. (We ran separate programs for Seeds during that time.)

The permit interruption was temporary, and by early 2007 we were again running joint programs, and have been since. At no point was Seeds of Peace’s camper selection process impacted, and we have for the last 22 years hosted a full Palestinian Delegation in Maine.

Finally, the notion that Seeds of Peace Camp staff refuse political expression or activism on the part of participants is unfounded. We go out of our way to select politically-active and aware campers, and encourage them to take action, to become activists. We are exceedingly proud of those many who do become activists; I’d be happy to introduce you to them. And as you reference in the piece, we also provide each camper with daily 110-minute dialogue sessions which are full of political engagement.

Should you in the future wish to write about Seeds of Peace, I’d love to have a chance to point out what we perceive to be inaccuracies for you to consider investigating and correcting. And again, I’d be happy to put you in touch with our staff in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ramallah, as well any number of Israeli and Palestinian Seeds who are leaders in their communities, for a fuller picture of our program’s impact.

Best,
Eric Kapenga
Communications Director | Seeds of Peace

Seeds of Peace Dissolves Friction into Friendship
The Saudi Gazette

Oct 30, 1995 / No Comments

BY BARBARA G.B. FERGUSON | Dressed in their T-shirts and blue jeans, the look just like any other children attending a summer camp but, despite appearances, this unique camp has been created to bring children together than have been taught to call each other “enemy.”

This is the third summer that Seeds of Peace has hosted a group of 130 children from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Israel, and Morocco at Camp Androscoggin in Maine.

The founding principle of Seeds of Peace is simple and remarkable: Offer children of the Middle East—aged 13 to 15—the opportunity to put ancient hatreds behind them, and give them a chance to cultivate new friendships. The founders of Seeds of Peace hope that, as a result, these friendships will become the seeds from which an enduring peace in the region can grow. This year marks the first time that a delegation of Muslim and Serbian children from Bosnia-Herzegovina have been included at the camp.

Seeds of Peace camp, is the only program of its kind designed to transform the treaties signed by political leaders into real peace by grounding it in the hearts and minds of the people.

“Beginning with the next generation is the only way to lay rest to the heritage of hatred and propaganda that each of these peoples have inherited,” says Seeds of Peace founder John Wallach.

“Unfortunately, because real peace has not yet come to the Middle East, this camp in the middle of the Maine woods, is the only place where hundreds of young Arabs and Israelis can get to know one another. It is an oasis of tolerance.”

Wallach, a former foreign editor of Hearst newspapers, says he wanted to do what all the peace treaties could not: bring together young people who have been taught to hate.

“Our aim is to provide each child with the tools of making peace—listening skills, empathy, respect, effective negotiating skills, self-confidence, and hope,” Wallach says. We try to teach youngsters to think of others as individuals and not as members of political, racial, or religious groups. The program fosters education, discussions, and emotional growth through both competitive and cooperative activities—and emphasizes the importance of developing non-violent mechanisms of resolving disputes.”

Wallach says he got the idea for Seeds of Peace following the New York World Trade Center bombing in 1993. “It occurred to me that the only real response to this kind of terror was to begin a program that would get the next generation of Arabs and Israelis together. If peace is going to have any chance,” he says, “it must begin in the hearts of both peoples when they are young.”

While at Camp Androscoggin, the youngsters enjoy a full sports, arts, drama, and computer program. “They don’t even notice they’re playing sports with their enemies,” Wallach says. The children also spent 90 minutes every evening in intense coexistence workshops exploring their innermost feelings and fears about each other.

As can be expected, the task of getting along together is complicated by sharp political, ethnic, cultural and religious differences. Nothing, not even swimming, is simple. Girls and boys, for example, must swim separately in deference to the Muslim children.

But evenings are a different matter, says Wallach. Youngsters from opposing countries tell stories of loved ones who have been killed—while facing the children of the very people their grandparents, parents, the media and their government may consider, their enemy.

“People can’t kill unless their enemy is dehumanized, now the enemy is sitting across from you and they look just like you. Wallach says, explaining that typically, the evening sessions go through three stages: “We’re going to make peace. This is easy.”

“Finding out they don’t like each other very much. “This is the most difficult stage,” says Wallach. “The differences are really deep. They have to make a real personal effort to each out to the other side.” There is a lot of crying, he adds, and each side sees themselves as the only victims.

“Those tears have to flow,” Wallach says, “You have to get out your own tears before you can empathize with the tears of others.”

“Then when you hear them tell the same story about their father or brother, who was killed by your people, you can begin to understand—and achieve the breakthrough so vital in this whole process.” Stage three, recommitment, occurs during the second week, “when they discover they can like and trust each other, find more in common and that they really can be friends.

“This is not a summer cam,” Wallach summarizes. “It’s a very profound experience.”

It is arguable whether bringing 130 young people together in the woods in Maine can eventually improve Mideast stability. But any visitor who witnesses the interaction between these children, feels convinced that change is occurring, and, that genuine friendships—and respect for the other—have formed.

Yet there is no denying the initial fears they feel about each other are real. The first year, a couple of Israeli children were found walking in the woods at 2 a.m. “We’ve never slept in the same room with Palestinians,” they told their counselors. “We are afraid to go to sleep.”

According to the children themselves, they were all afraid of each other when they first arrived to the camp. And yet, after less than three weeks together, all of them speak of the incredible transformations their lives have undertaken as a result of their experiences.

Some of the children are here on scholarships, at a cost of $2,000 per child, raised through private donations. Others, whose parents can afford it, pay for the airfare.

“Each of these youngsters is special and is selected in a highly competitive process,” explains Wallach. After an initial recommendation by their school principal, each boy or girl must respond in English to the essay question: “Why I Want to Make Peace with the Enemy” which is followed by a personal interview.

Each child is interviewed following the essay. Competition is quite intense, with over 1,000 children competing for the 130 places available at the camp.

Scholarships are provided to assure that children from refugee camps and other less fortunate youngsters are included.

The children that are chosen are offered an opportunity of a lifetime—they are flown to New York, then on to Boston for a couple of days where they visited places of interest, including a private session at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, before departing to Maine.

At the conclusion of their summer camp experience, they visited the nation’s capital. This summer the Seeds of Peace children met with Vice President Al Gore at the White House. The youngsters also met with Secretary of State Warren Christopher at the State Department, and were hosted to a Congressional luncheon in the Senate Caucus Room which was chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat, Vermont.

The camp’s director is Tim Wilson, who teaches language, arts and social studies to seventh graders in the inner city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the school year. Wallach says the kids love him, and just as importantly, they respect him.

Wilson laughs when the Gazette asks him how he managed to gain both the admiration and affection of the children. “The kids are like open books for me, but I had to learn how to stand in the middle.”

“I have seen kids with huge schisms in their lives become close friends. I am really proud of what occurred between these kids.”

Wilson says he developed an appreciation for the Middle East when he served in the Peace Corps 30 years ago and had the opportunity to visit Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. The trip, he said, “had a tremendous effect upon me.”

Wilson said that as a result of spending three weeks with the children, “they become an extension of my family—and of our lives.”

The Camp’s counselors and escorts are also a reason for success of Seeds of Peace, Wilson said. The escorts – who are also chosen by each country—accompany each group and serve as their “parents” in the camp. “I found the escorts are tremendous people,” Wilson explained, “Some are like Mother Theresa’s, others keep a slight distance … And a couple have become real friends.”

Reflecting on the camp, Wilson said that some US educators – have only heard about, but not seen, the camp—have been critical of the camp’s methods. Wilson regrets their unwillingness to learn from the camp’s experience. It’s really been difficult at times for me, that we can’t seem to do the same in our own backyard, what these kids are able to accomplish between nations.”

“The camp has changed my life in a lot of ways. The things I’ve seen these kids try to accomplish only makes me wish we could attempt the same objectives here in The States,” Wilson said.

During the luncheon at the Senate Hall, where the Gazette finally caught up with the youngsters, the gallery was packed with Washington’s political leaders: Senators, congressmen, ambassadors and politicians—but the one that most impressed the children was basketball player from the Denver Nuggets, Tickley Loemombo. “You guys represent a great future,” he said during his short speech. The children gave him a standing ovation.

Two children—Laith Arafeh, a Palestinian who lives on the West Bank; and Yehoyada Mandeel, who is known as YoYo and lives in Israel—typify the tragedy of their lives and the success of their Seeds of Peace experience. Laith and YoYo live less than 15 miles apart from each other, but they had to travel thousands of miles to the Seeds of Peace camp to meet and talk, and become friends. This is their third summer together in Maine. They are now both junior counselors and have become fast friends.

Recently, during an official visit to Israel, Warren Christopher, the US Secretary of State, asked to meet Laith and YoYo again. From the balcony of the secretary’s hotel, both children were able to point out their houses in the distance. It has been said that this incident really helped put a human touch on Christopher’s understanding of the Palestinian and Israeli problem.

While they were in Washington this summer, Christopher made sure to invite Laith and YoYo, and all the children in the Seeds of Peace program, to a special reception at the State Department.

The children themselves are best qualified to explain the value of the Seeds of Peace experience: “In the beginning, it wasn’t easy,” says Tamer Nagy, a 15-year-old Egyptian boy who is back for his third summer. “It wasn’t like we said ‘Hi. We’re friends.’ All my life, what I’ve grown up on, (is that) Israel is our enemy. Then we begin to talk.”

Mohammed Abdul Rahman, 15, is also from Cairo. This is the first year he has come to the States and participated in the Seeds of Peace camp. “These were the most wonderful two weeks in all my life,” he told the Gazette during lunch on Capitol Hill. He admitted, however, that the first day he arrived in camp; he wasn’t really mentally prepared for a camp experience and was somewhat “shocked” when he saw the living conditions—bunk beds and “shower facilities that seemed out in the woods.” He shared his cabin with Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, and Israelis. “The first day we were really uneasy, but then we started talking … by the second day we were all friends.”

“We played together, slept and ate together, and even showered together for two weeks, we became more than friends, we became brothers.” Abdul Rahman said.

He explained that the “co-existence meetings”—where the youngsters discuss political issues—were sometimes difficult. “Sometimes there was tension—I remember once I tried to calm my friends down who had disagreed on a subject—but we were able to reason out the issue immediately.”

Mohammad said the most touching incident for him was an incident that took place between a Serb and Bosnian child at camp. “I didn’t know much about this problem. At one point in the discussion a Serbian boy started to discuss his problem, and he told us that he really was a Croatian who had been forced to leave Croatia, and then he started to cry. We were all very moved.”

AlyEl-Alfy, 15, is from Egypt, and this also is his first time at Seeds of Peace Camp and in the United States. He told the Gazette, “Before I came here I thought I would not get along with the Israelis, but after I came to the camp and sat with them, I found they are just people … like me—they just come from another country.”

Aly said that his cabinmates were Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. “Before I came to camp, I didn’t realize what danger many of them have to live with daily, and they explained to me what their lives are like for them, now I really feel—through the sympathy I feel for their situation—that I have to know more than just what the headlines in newspapers tell me. I have to be more receptive … their problems really moved me.”

Aly said that they prayed regularly. They made us go to Friday prayer.” He added that the Christians and Jews also had their services. “I went to a Jewish service and found it very interesting. Every religion has its commonalities,” he said.

When asked if the camp really made a difference in his attitude, he was adamant: “Yes, it really has.” His most special memory? “My short discussion with Laith from Palestine, he told me thing I never know about the Palestinians.”

Aminaben-Kinen, 15, is from Kenitra, Morocco. She told the Gazette she didn’t know anything about Seeds of Peace before coming. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get along with other Arabs,” she said, “because I was brought up in a French speaking family. I knew there would be a language barrier, because I don’t speak Arabic—Classical Arabic—very well. But I found we are all the same.”

“Everyone spoke to each other, sometimes there were shocks and tension, and even crying, but everyone consoled each other,” Amina added. “We all became very close friends.”

“What I learned is that we are all the same. It really marked me.” Amina said that one of the most touching moments of the trip for her was one evening when the children were given the opportunity to sing their national anthems. “The Serbs and Bosnians sang the same national anthem. It was very moving.”

“There was no religious barrier,” she said. “Everybody was tolerant. And if someone felt wounded about what was being said, the counselors were wonderful because they really put in a lot of time and effort to make us feel really comfortable.”

One such counselor is Anil Soni, a sophomore at Harvard. Anil said he also wasn’t quite sure as to what to expect. “I had my hesitations about how effective it could be—there is a fine line between talking about political issues and forming friendships.”

Anil said the formula worked for the youngsters because they played games together. “The common denominator was through sports, and playing games. So when the evening came and they talked about political issues, they found it was hard to hate the person they had been playing with all day long. It was the dynamic that was very effective.”

“I don’t know if the kids realized this or not,” Anil told the Gazette, “but Seeds of Peace is a strategy … They seek to decrease the amount of hatred and prejudice and increase the amount of hope.”

“The strategy in a nutshell,” Anil continued, “is to let them get to know each other, and then sit them down and let them talk. When you listen to your friends you care about what they have to say. First you sympathize with them, then you empathize, and then it all turns to friendship. Empathy is the key to friendship, which in turn is the key to peace.”

President Clinton told the kids, when he met them at the White House last year that: “Leaders make policy, but people make peace.” And that’s the idea behind this whole experience because these will be the people who will have the responsibility of making or breaking peace.

“Our hope was not to give the kids resolutions to their conflicts,” Anil said, reflecting on his role as counselor. Because that would be a deception—we cannot give them any solutions, but we can create an environment in which they learn and listen and empathize with each other. They will return [to their homes] more open-minded. And being open-minded is a quality that is easy to recognize and emulate.”

Daniel Shinar, 14, is an Israeli from Jerusalem. This is his first year in the Seeds of Peace Program and first time to the United States. Daniel told the Gazette that before he came to camp, he didn’t have any Palestinian friends, even though they share the same city. But now, he said, he has close friendships with Palestinians, and he believes they could talk about anything together.

When asked how he thought his Israeli friends would react when he told them he now had Palestinian friends, he said, “Most of my friends won’t understand. But I have some smart friends who will understand. The sooner we make friends with Palestinians the better it will be for us.”

Daniel said the most discussed question was “can we share Jerusalem?” He said the group decided that it was best to leave it as it is now—part for Jews and parts for Muslims and Christians. He said he didn’t agree totally with this, but that, as a result of being at camp, it “changed my mind. We have the same God. There are so many things that we have in common.”

When asked about what had touched him the most during his Seeds of Peace experience, he spoke about a Jordanian friend he had gotten to know. Halfway through the camp stay, his friend had come to him and said he was going to miss him. Daniel said he didn’t understand the point his friend was trying to make, because they still had one more week together in camp. But his Jordanian friend explained he was already missing him because they may never meet again. “We really became good friends,” he said. “I could never have believed that an Arab would say he would miss me, it really touched me very much.”

What About Getting the ‘Leaders’ to Learn
The Forward

Jul 18, 1997 / No Comments

BY DANNY SCHECHTER | We know how to cover war but pay short shrift to the process of peacemaking, or the techniques of conflict resolution. Bang-bang war footage—focusing on what we in the business call “boys with toys”—gets the attention; in contrast, peace initiatives are treated as soft (in the head) and, consequentially, less important. Tough guys ballooned up with bluster are pictured as heroes; peaceniks are sellouts or out of touch. Is it any wonder that the public at large has so little sense about workable alternatives to the continuing confrontations around the world? Perhaps that’s why it was so refreshing for me to have met a colleague who had “been there, done that,” and came out the other end as a reporter determined to do something concrete about peacemaking instead of just cataloging the unending cycles of pain. When John Wallach decided to launch a conflict-resolution, youth-training program that brings teenagers from war zones to a special summer camp in Maine, I immediately thought it would make a great film. Mr. Wallach agreed.

I found myself in my 50s going back to camp to find out if this program was all that it was cracked up to be. He agreed to provide our team with total access, cautioning that, in the end, it would be the kids who would decide whether or not to let the cameras in. We were a strange crew: myself, a Jewish New Yorker with a critical take on Israeli policy; Sam Shinn, a Korean-American cameraman; and Aliet Rogaar, our sound person, a Dutch woman.

It became clear early on that John was as welcoming as he was nervous about our presence. His peace camp functions on the edge of real conflict where internal eruptions are always possible. He knew, as we would soon find out, that the kids come to camp expecting to like each other and quickly find that they don’t. The teenagers who attended the camp were a diverse lot. Palestinians consumed by rage and Israelis paralyzed by fears. There was the grandson of a religious Jewish family who admitted that he was taught to hate Arabs, and spoke of watching his Israeli mother cry as she put on a gas mask to defend against Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles during the Gulf War. Both sides felt guilty for having the opportunity of being there, for having fun. These were all kids who were handling emotions and problems that most adults can barely cope with.

By the end of the two-week session these teenagers learned how to listen and how to learn from each other, to overcome distrust and prejudice. They discovered that they could put aside their “facts” and arguments to build lasting personal relationships.

Like many good works, Seeds of Peace is underfunded because money for war-making is plentiful while peacemaking is still a beggar’s art. It is still refining its approach. Not everything that was tried worked. Not all the kids had the same experience. Some seem to be there more for the sun, the sports and the fun. But others take it seriously as work, even though there was occasionally more preaching than teaching for my taste. The experience for many was transformative. It is important to recognize that the kids have remained friends, and some publish a newspaper called the Olive Branch. How do we get more visibility for projects that work? How can we get the media to start telling more inspirational stories like these? How can we get their “leaders,” who now seem to have abandoned the peace process, to learn from their own children?

Seeds of Peace
Middle East Insight Magazine

Mar 6, 1998 / No Comments

Leading the Leaders

BY MEREDITH KATZ | On September 29, 1996, fighting flared between Israeli and Palestinian soldiers in the wake of Israel’s opening of an exit to an archaeological tunnel near the El Aksa Mosque. But unknown to the youthful troops, another group of Arab and Israeli teenagers—in Jordan and Egypt as well as in Israel and the Palestinian territories—mobilized for battle. Using their computers, fax machines and telephones, these 16-to-18 year-olds sent e-mails and other messages across their borders seeking a way to end the fighting. They shared their fears and offered each other comfort amidst the growing confusion and uncertainty.

Recalled an Israeli youth: “When everything started, I felt very confused. It felt like my mind was divided into two parts. One part felt protected and secure when I saw the soldiers and tanks getting ready to go into the territories. That part of me felt that we should teach the Palestinians a lesson and show them how powerful we are. But there was another part, a part which was created only after our involvement with Seeds of Peace, that felt that what was happening was wrong—that war is wrong. That part knew that there must be another way, a better way. But most of the people don’t have a second part. I pray that Binyamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat have the second part.”

After these words were sent to the growing network of several hundred Seeds of Peace alumni, an idea began to take shape. Why not expand these thoughts and draft a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian-Egyptian statement that could be sent directly to the leaders themselves? After all, at Seeds of Peace—a conflict-resolution program that has brought together more than 600 Arab and Israeli teenagers at a summer camp in Maine—one of the lessons everyone learned was that peace is too precious to be left to the leaders themselves.

As the death toll in the West Bank mounted, a core group worked into the night to draft a joint declaration. By the time it was concluded, President Clinton had called an emergency summit in Washington. Summoned to the White House were Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. “When out youngsters’ joint declaration arrived on our e-mail, we sent it directly to [then-White House official] Jay Footlik,” recalled John Wallach, the award-winning journalist and founder of Seeds of Peace. “We had no idea what happened to it after that.”

Aware that something more was needed to bring the leaders back to the negotiating table, something to repair their shattered trust, President Clinton decided to use the words of these young Arabs and Israelis. At the start of the second day of meetings, Clinton read aloud the words of these teenagers. “We ask you to reach a compromise, a fast solution to save us from the potential disaster,” the declaration read. “We support you and we are behind you for every step of this long and hard path. Be strong and brave for all of us, for only the brave can make real peace.” It was a small stroke perhaps, but an endearing and human one. It was, after all, the trust they had built and the understanding they had reached while living together at camp in the Maine woods that had compelled them to reach out to the political leaders.

No one believes that even the most compassionate words on paper can extinguish the flames of a century-old conflict. But neither should the role of these teenagers be minimized. They have proved, on countless occasions, that they can be a force for change, even with leaders who at times are stymied by a lack of confidence and understanding. In the five years since Seeds of Peace was founded, these youngsters have had the chance to express their desire to President Clinton on two occasions, to Vice President Gore, to former Secretary of State Warren Christopher on three occasions, and—on four separate occasions—to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Since the September 1993 White House signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles—where the first group of 48 Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian graduates were honored guests—Seeds of Peace has produced a cadre of Israeli and Arab teenagers poised to lead their nations toward peace in the twenty-first century.

Bill Clinton has never forgotten the inspiration the first group of youngsters provided on that day he had to persuade Arafat and Rabin to shake hands for the first time. “I met the Seeds of Peace children at the 1993 ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House … these were the children wearing green T-shirts who flanked many of our world leaders and reminded us of the agreement’s true significance to our future,” Clinton recalled. “These young men and women told me that in just a few short weeks, first names replaced ethnic and religious labels, mistrust turned into curiosity; fear gave way to friendship. Seeds of Peace is doing the hard work of building peaceful coexistence—one relationship at a time.

Support in the region itself has been equally encouraging. King Hussein, who hosted a reunion of 300 Seeds of Peace graduates in Jordan in 1996, recently recalled, “I met with Seeds of Peace in Amman about a year ago and I shook hands with all of them. And what struck me was the fact that I could not distinguish an Israeli from a Palestinian from an Egyptian. One of the most encouraging elements of life in recent years is how much we can learn from these children. Give them the chance to remove the barriers that separate them—the walls through which they cannot see each other—give them the opportunity to come together, and they will.”

For Secretary of State Albright, the optimism and achievement of Seeds of Peace graduates in overcoming their peoples’ history of war and suffering are a powerful indication of what is possible in the Middle East. These youngsters’ testaments are a source of inspiration for her to trudge on despite the setbacks and disappointments.

Shortly after delivering her maiden Middle East speech, which contained a paragraph about Seeds of Peace, she met with a group of 165 graduates. One of them, a young Israeli woman named Noa, told Albright that she would never forget being comforted by a Palestinian teenager after the bombing in the Jerusalem’s Mahne Yehuda market that claimed 13 Israeli lives. “A spark was lit inside my heart, a spark that makes me see things in a different light,” Noa told the Secretary. Visibly moved, Albright rose and remarked, “Don’t be surprised if some of those statements show up in my speeches. I think ‘lighting a spark in your heart’ is terrific. And if I may steal that from you, I will.”

Albright then paid the highest tribute to the assembled youth, saying, “I [recently] gave my first speech on the Middle East. And as people … know, it was a pretty tough speech … But I insisted that it have a spark of hope, and that was when I discussed your program, Seeds of Peace—because I believe that what you are doing is so important to what we’re all trying to achieve in the Middle East.”

Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering—a former U.S. ambassador to both Jordan and Israel—has also been profoundly affected by these kids, as he told a gathering at the Wye Plantation Conference Center. “Secretary Albright recently hosted Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Tunisian and Qatari youth participating in the Seeds of Peace summer camp,” Pickering noted. “I don’t think the Secretary will be angry if I say that it was not her eloquent speech at that ceremony that made the greatest impression on me. It was the surprisingly frank admission of a Palestinian girl that, if she had been home at the time of the July 30 bombing in Jerusalem, she would not have cared about it. But, because she had spent time with Israeli young people and heard their perspective—as they had hers—she immediately cried when learning of the bombing. I can use many dry words to say that the parties to the peace process must take each other’s interests and concerns into account if this process is to succeed. But I think that girl’s message said it more eloquently than I ever could.”

Young people traditionally learn key lessons from their elders. But sometimes it is the elders—the negotiators and political leaders—who learn the most important lessons of all from young people.

Wil Smith touched many lives in his many roles as coach, mentor and counselor
Portland Press Herald

Feb 24, 2015 / No Comments

The 2000 Bowdoin College graduate died Sunday from colon cancer, leaving what Sen. Angus King called “a hole in the heart of our community.”

Whether he was coaching young girls to play basketball or counseling teenagers from a war-torn region of the world, Wil Smith was always there when he was needed.

“He had boundless energy and enthusiasm for life,” said Tim Gilbride, the men’s basketball coach at Bowdoin. “And that was contagious to other people. He could get people to do things that they didn’t think they could do.”

Smith died Sunday in Philadelphia after a three-year battle with colon cancer. He was 46 years old. Smith was remembered Monday as a caring man who affected everyone he met.

“He was a giant of a person,” said Tim Foster, dean of students at Bowdoin College, who both counseled Smith as a student and later worked with him. “He was not only a friend, but a teacher to me as well. And that’s what I’m going to hold on to most.”

Maine Sen. Angus King paid tribute to Smith in a statement submitted Monday to the U.S. Congressional Record.

“There is a hole in the heart of our community today,” King wrote. “But while Wil’s loss is felt by countless people, his legacy will be carried on by the thousands who were fortunate enough to know him.”

Smith worked at Bowdoin as associate dean of multicultural student programs and served as head basketball coach at Catherine McAuley High in Portland for four years. Most recently, he was dean of community and multicultural affairs at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts, where he was also the girls’ basketball coach.

Smith was also the associate director of the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield, where he counseled children from often-warring countries from 1999 through last summer.

“He had a gift,” said Tim Wilson, a senior adviser for Seeds of Peace. “He knew how to listen. You have to learn how to sit and listen to whatever people have to say before you interrupt. He did that with the kids, whether they were playing basketball or whatever. He allowed them to say what needed to be said.

“He was just a wonderful human being. And that’s what I am going to miss.”

Gilbride, who coached Smith at Bowdoin and remained a close friend, added, “He really loved kids. And they could see that in him. Kids can tell right away if someone is genuine. He knew, if the kids had someone who could believe in them, they could succeed in ways they never imagined.”

Smith’s philosophy was simple. In a 2007 profile of him on “NBC Nightly News,” he said, “I think more than anything, young people need to know that the people who love them are going to love them no matter what.”

Sports agent Arn Tellem, who is on the Seeds of Peace board of directors, got to know Smith over the past decade. Tellem would bring NBA players to the camp each summer and said Smith earned their respect.

“Wil embodied the spirit of Jackie Robinson’s quote, ‘A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives,’ ” said Tellem in an email. “By this measure, Wil’s life was greatly important. He walked the walk every day of his life. Wil gave back much more than he ever received and made a huge difference in the lives of everyone who came in contact with him.”

Smith never considered anything he did special. “It’s hard for me to see my life’s work as being extraordinary,” he said in a 2007 Press Herald interview.

But Smith was never your typical coach, or college student. His players at McAuley, where he compiled a 54-26 record and won a Western Class A title, remember him as open and caring.

“There are a lot of things about him that I will remember,” said Ashley Cimino, who went on to play at Stanford University. “He was just a very inspirational person. He was a great motivator, he was someone we could always talk to. He was always open to us. And he was a great dancer.”

“We always had dance parties where he would show us his moves,” said Carolyn Freeman, who played three years for Smith at McAuley. “He was just a genuine person. You knew he cared for you as a person.”

A LIFE SHAPED BY CHALLENGES

His life’s story was so captivating that he was featured on “The Today Show” and “Oprah.”

Smith was the first single father to attend and graduate from Bowdoin (class of 2000), according to the school. His daughter Olivia often accompanied him to class, basketball practices and, eventually, his graduation ceremony. According to Bowdoin, Sony Pictures is interested in making a movie about his life.

Smith grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and lost his mother to cancer on his 15th birthday. He was starring in sports at the time, but her death changed that. “My mother was my biggest fan,” he once said. After she died, he wasn’t sure why he should continue to play. He attended Florida A&M University for a year, then dropped out. Eventually he joined the Navy and served in the first Gulf War.

Smith was based at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick when he volunteered to coach middle school football and basketball. Eventually he met Gilbride, who was taken by Smith’s character.

Gilbride convince Smith to apply to Bowdoin. Smith was 27. He was accepted but shortly before he was to begin classes, he was given sole custody of Olivia, then 11 months old.

He was immediately overwhelmed—by the classes, by single-parenthood and by his finances. He often went without eating so he could afford food for Olivia. He had no day care, so he brought her to classes. He lost about 20 pounds.

Eventually, after failing a Latin America Studies class because he couldn’t afford the books, Smith met with Bowdoin officials. They got him an apartment and a meal plan for both him and his daughter. A Bowdoin alum donated $25,000 to cover her child care.

Smith flourished in the classroom and on the basketball court where, Gilbride said, “he was hard-working, very team-oriented. What a surprise there.”

In a 2012 National Public Radio interview with Smith and his daughter, Smith said Olivia’s presence helped him grow. “There were times when the only way I could get through was to come in and look at you when you were sleeping,” he said to her. “And then go back to my studies.”

Foster, who met with Smith on the first day of his job at Bowdoin, said for all his life experiences, Smith never talked about his life.

“He was so completely unassuming and that made him all the more remarkable,” said Foster.

Bowdoin now presents an annual Wil Smith Community Service Award, which honors community work by a student-athlete.

Joe Kilmartin, the athletic director at McAuley, said the school will hold a memorial service for Smith, though the date has not been set.

‘ALWAYS THERE FOR KIDS’

“He was just so open and available to everybody all the time,” said Kilmartin. “He was always there for the kids, and not just McAuley kids. He was there for everybody.”

Kilmartin said Smith also ran a program on ethical leadership at the school for two years. “He was in the school as more than just a basketball coach.”

Those closest to Smith knew his health had taken a turn for the worse in December. Smith missed Wilson’s birthday on Jan. 23.

“He never missed it,” Wilson said. “That’s when I knew something was wrong.”

Bowdoin’s Foster and many members of the Seeds of Peace organization visited Smith in Philadelphia, where he was hospitalized, last week. They were joined by family members, former students and friends.

“If there was an inspiring part, it was seeing all those people there,” said Foster. “There were so many for whom he had been a mentor and role model and coach, and to see them all come together made you realize the number of lives this person touched.”

Read Mike Lowe’s story at the Portland Press Herald ››

Youth Chorus Unites Israelis and Palestinians, at Least for a Few Hours
The New York Times

Jun 27, 2015 / No Comments

JERUSALEM — Avital Maeir-Epstein and Muhammad Murtada Shweiki live about 150 yards apart in Abu Tor, a Jerusalem neighborhood that straddles the pre-1967 armistice line, a mostly invisible but politically charged marker of this city’s Israeli-Palestinian divide.

The teenagers live on opposite sides of that divide, but for a few hours each Monday afternoon, they come together.

Avital, 16, is a soprano and Muhammad, 15, is a tenor/bass in the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, which brings together young Israelis and Palestinians for singing and dialogue sessions run by professional facilitators. Established in 2012, the chorus is one of the few coexistence initiatives to weather the hatred and violence that have erupted on both sides over the past year.

Meeting in one of the rare places here that are considered neutral ground, the imposing Jerusalem International YMCA on King David Street in West Jerusalem, the group does not ignore the politics but creates an alternative environment where young Israelis and Palestinians can discuss their differences while producing music together.

“It was very hard last year during the war,” said Avital, who was dressed casually in shorts and a T-shirt as she sat with other singers. She was referring to Israel’s 50-day offensive against militant groups in the Gaza Strip last summer, when Gaza was under Israeli bombardment and rockets fired from the territory reached the outskirts of Jerusalem. “We were getting different news — ‘Arab’ news and ‘Israeli’ news,” she said. “It was complicated, but we went through it together.”

Muhammad, looking more formal in a white dress shirt, with his hair shaved and sculpted, immediately recalled the “shahid,” or martyr, Muhammad Abu Khdeir in a discussion of the traumatic events of the past year. A 16-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, he was kidnapped, beaten and burned to death by three Israeli Jews in early July after the bodies of three Jewish teenagers who had been kidnapped and killed by Palestinians were found in a shallow grave in the West Bank.

Avital and Muhammad, who had not met before joining the chorus, were speaking at a final rehearsal before the Jerusalem Youth Chorus left for its first tour in the United States. The group has performed over the last two weeks in the Yale International Choral Festival in New Haven and at various other stops, including New York and Washington, and is scheduled to appear in Philadelphia on Sunday.

The Israeli-Palestinian youth chorus was the idea of an American, Micah Hendler, who grew up in Bethesda, Md. Mr. Hendler, 25, attended Seeds of Peace summer camps in Maine with Israeli and Arab youths, studied Arabic and Hebrew, and majored in music and international relations at Yale. He said he came to Jerusalem three years ago to see if the sense of community that evolved in the controlled environment of a summer camp in the United States could be recreated in the gritty reality of Jerusalem.

With the bravado — some might say naïveté — of an outsider, Mr. Hendler went into schools on both sides of the city. Within weeks, 80 youths showed up for auditions, a majority from East Jerusalem, where Mr. Hendler had less competition in the realm of extracurricular activities. He picked 35 teenagers aged 14 to 18. There has been some natural turnover over the years, but about half of the original team is still involved.

“What I saw in starting the chorus was that if you look at things only through a political lens, the situation is pretty hopeless,” Mr. Hendler said. “But if you consider it, people are not only political objects. They have lives; they want to connect.”

“There are ways,” he added, “of getting beyond the intractable structures we have set up for ourselves.”

Mr. Hendler runs rehearsals mostly in English, but also in Hebrew and Arabic. The teenagers translate for one another as necessary.

Political, religious, social and cultural issues add layers of complexity. There is only one Israeli boy in the chorus. Palestinian boys are more naturally attracted to the idea, coming from a tradition of mawwal, an Arabic vocal genre based on poetry. (“We have some excellent female tenors,” Mr. Hendler remarked.) Conversely, Palestinian girls from conservative Muslim families are more likely to go home after school, not get on a bus to the west side of town to sing with Israelis.

Many Palestinian political activists are also increasingly rejecting what they see as unnecessary interactions that could be construed as a normalization of relations with the Israeli occupier. Some 300,000 Palestinians — about a third of Jerusalem’s population — are residents of East Jerusalem, territory that Israel conquered from Jordan in the 1967 war and then annexed in a move that has never been internationally recognized.

Given the sensitivities, several Palestinian boys said they had told only their closest friends about their involvement in the chorus, and Mr. Hendler is careful about where the group performs, avoiding overtly nationalistic events on either side.

Then there are the starkly different musical backgrounds. Parts of the repertoire combine traditions of Western harmony and Arabic rhythms. The chorus performs Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” in the style of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum and has composed an original song that incorporates rap and mawwal. A highlight was the recording of a special version of a Phillip Phillips song, “Home,” with Sam Tsui, a YouTube star who sang with Mr. Hendler in college.

Outside the community they have created, the teenagers keenly feel the turmoil around them. Over the past year, there have been tensions over a contested East Jerusalem holy site, a deadly terrorist attack on a West Jerusalem synagogue, a series of vehicular attacks against Israelis and violent clashes between Palestinians and the police, including in Abu Tor, which is normally peaceful.

“Every single day was different,” said Avital, who lives on a mixed street. “I didn’t know how I felt about it — safe or not safe.”

Amer Abu Arqub, 18, from the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina, said that he had found himself in West Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day, when hard-line Israeli nationalists take to the streets to celebrate the reunification of the city, and that he had been careful to speak in English on his cellphone.

The chorus members have begun to socialize outside of rehearsals, connecting through a WhatsApp group and going to movies or to one another’s homes for birthdays.

But looming in the future are more divisive issues to grapple with. When the Israelis turn 18, for instance, they will be drafted for compulsory military service.

“That’s the plan,” said Aviv Blum, the Israeli bass. Some of the Palestinians “have very defined views” on the issue, he said, adding, “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Read Isabel Kershner’s article at The New York Times ››

Seeds of Peace: The summer of our discontent
Jewish Journal

Jul 6, 2016 / No Comments

At age 15, I had barely interacted with a boy, let alone a Jew.

For a teenager living in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2001, the Middle East was a faraway place of despair and blood, and I knew almost nothing about it. From my father’s BBC fixation, I’d picked up that it was a place where restaurants were sometimes blown up by suicide bombers. At the time, the idea of a war that came to the city streets strapped to the chests of men was terrifying and new.

I was to learn a great deal about the nature of war when my parents allowed me to attend a summer camp called Seeds of Peace in the United States, just a few months before 9/11 transformed the world. Located in Maine, the camp was founded in 1993 by John Wallach — a journalist who had covered the Middle East for decades as foreign editor for Hearst Newspapers and the BBC. His radical idea was to cultivate future leaders from communities divided by conflict, with an initial focus on Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian teenagers. From only 46 campers in its first year, the program has by now grown to 300 teenagers each summer, including an American delegation every year. Headquartered in New York, the program has offices in Kabul, Afghanistan; Amman, Jordan; Mumbai, India; Lahore and Jerusalem, with more than 6,000 alumni who partake in regular local and international follow-up engagements.

In the summer of 2001, I was a member of the first India-Pakistan delegation to attend the camp; a dozen of us came from Lahore and a dozen from Mumbai — that strange city by the Arabian Sea manufacturing the famed ballads of Bollywood. Our two nations have been at de facto war since 1947, when the decolonized Indian subcontinent was divided into two countries: Muslim majority Pakistan and Hindu majority India. Kashmir — the land of valleys — is the bloody legacy of that partition, with both countries laying claim to the northern state, where 12 million people reside.

Despite rigid brainwashing endorsed by our respective education ministries, we quickly grew to be friends with the Indians. We laughed together in Urdu and Hindi, argued about cricket and spent hours debating our history, within days realizing we had been taught different versions of the same events. On the first morning after our arrival, I hung my head upside down from the top bunk to say hello to the enemy below. Her name was Tulsi Mehta, and, 15 years later, ours continues to be a great friendship.

The first time we saw the Israelis and Palestinians at camp, however, they were intimidating. They held onto a breed of anger separate from ours, they knew too much, they talked too much — on both sides they were the unafraid spokespeople for their states. Though they were the same age as the rest of us, nothing about them made them seem like children. Their war made our war seem like a bit of a farce; a sham skirmish fought through propaganda and by soldiers in faraway mountains we had never seen.

In the years immediately after my summer in America, it was difficult to foresee the extent of the violence that would come to Pakistan, a relatively stable state with an enormous security apparatus. Nobody could have imagined that in only 10 years, the country would be left mutilated by suicide attacks, reeling beneath the weight of the U.S.-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, which morphed into domestic terrorism and major military operations in the north. War came marching down our streets, into our playgrounds, schools and bazaars, strapped to the chests of terrible men.

So many years on, what remains of that camp in my memory is a hazy recollection of laughter and bewilderment. There was swimming, rock-climbing, singing and dancing, but also “dialogue sessions,” during which opposing delegations participated in daily three-hour debates. After one, a Palestinian boy ran by our group in tears, then sat on the pier overlooking the lake until the sun nearly set. Two Israeli girls joined him, and I still recall the three small backs bent against the horizon. Sometimes it struck us that we were children hunted and haunted by each other’s people. Most of the time, we forgot.

At that age, we did not comprehend the profound impression the camp would make on our lives, freeing our minds in ways that would affect us as we became adults, parents, professionals and leaders in a world of ever more globalized conflict. I know politicians, writers, activists and soldiers who are Seeds graduates. Many of us have gone on to become journalists, among us Mujib Mashal, now a reporter for The New York Times, who was part of the first Afghan delegation to attend the camp in 2002; and Nergish Sunavala, a reporter for the Times of India, who was at camp with me. I recognize the skinny girl with the gentle voice and bushy hair in the impassioned stories she writes for her country.

Most of the campers who attended Seeds of Peace were chosen by their governments, and we came armed with sacred agendas, in the end surrendering the only truths we knew to the cause of civic discourse. As true of the Palestinian refugees and the Israeli Jews, the Pakistanis and the Indians, Seeds of Peace broke us all. Though it has now been 15 years since I first ate at a table with Jews and Hindus, those lessons guide my hand when I write my stories even today. I have Jewish friends from camp with whom I am still in touch, and knowing them has made it easier for me to challenge the problematic generalizations rampant in Pakistan’s religious and political discourse. Nobody could have anticipated then how much more important this would become for us, that in just a few months, our conflicts would merge and re-create themselves in almost all regions of the earth. This changing world order made the inclusion of a U.S delegation all the more important, with young American campers able to engage without bias in political dialogue with Afghans, Israelis, Jordanians, Palestinians and Pakistanis, to name a few — people they might never otherwise encounter in their lives.

Attacks of terror occur daily around today’s world, like the trio of suicide bombs that went off in Istanbul, in Europe’s third-busiest airport last week, targeting the heart of Turkey’s internationalism. Or, two days later, the horrifying, senseless murder of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel as she slept in her Kiryat Arba bedroom.

The hate, racism, corruption and violence of war is now so pervasive that no place is truly safe from it, except for, perhaps, the minds of children, where different ideas may still flourish like they did in ours.

It was a great gesture of grace for our parents to knowingly expose us, their children, to Seeds of Peace — to a narrative that would challenge theirs. For Palestinian and Israeli families, I imagine this act of letting go must be downright traumatic. Still, it leaves me with great hope in the institution of parenting, and the belief that even in cynical and fearful adult hearts, there exists the awareness that there is a better way to win our wars.

Amal Khan, a journalist from Pakistan where she serves as features editor at The Nation, is currently contributing to the Jewish Journal as part of her fellowship with the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

Read Amal Khan’s story at The Jewish Journal ››

Seeds in the Lead: Making Headlines

Jun 18, 2018 / No Comments

We are proud of our many Seeds who are making their diverse voices and viewpoints heard.

That’s why we’re so pleased to offer a glimpse at their experiences and their work to create change in this series, Seeds in the Lead.

Student Leaders Rising

  • American Seeds have mobilized in the wake of the March for Our Lives movement, making their voices heard in the gun violence debate within the United States. American Seed Bryson and the youth-led activist organization he founded, Coalition Z, was mentioned in a Salon article, as was American Seed Violet.
  • Chicago Seed Journey, whose community health collective UMedics has been in the spotlight since she saved a shooting victim’s life, was recently profiled on Mic and Viceland.
  • American Seeds Abby and Shamma each published articles in The Forward about their frustration with their school’s lack of support for the national school walkout for gun reform.
  • Chicago Seeds organized a dialogue on gun violence at their school open to Seeds across the city, while Seeds from Maine, Syracuse and LA led dialogues on gun violence and led school walkouts.
  • Maine Seed Mazin was interviewed on NBC News about his role representing 450 Sudanese people living with temporary protective status in a lawsuit against the US Government.

Celebrating Our Seeds’ Achievements

  • Israeli Seed Ariel was selected out of 8,000 applicants to present his ideas at the FTSummit, where young leaders and innovators from all over the world gather to discuss the technologies of the future.
  • Indian Seed Teju launched her own design studio in Mumbai; check out the work she did for a Voices of Partition exhibition.
  • Israeli Seed Liat, who represents the Jewish Agency in Northern Virginia, developed a platform to connect bereaved families from Israel and the US to enable a conversation about loss and grief and to foster connection between families facing loss.
  • Egyptian Seed Mariam launched  Beladna (“Our Country”), a board game meant to enrich players’ knowledge of the diverse culture, history, and regions of Egypt.
  • Maine Seed Mohammed was awarded the prestigious Truman Scholarship to pursue Graduate Studies in Public Service. He plans to pursue studies in international relations and law at Bowdoin—where last month he was elected President of their Student Government! Mohammed also published a piece calling for action against Islamophobia.
  • Israeli Seed Eyal travelled to South Africa on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Economy and the Israel Export institute. There, he met with senior executives from local financial, telecom, and healthcare industries to share cybersecurity techniques, to provide greater cooperation and investment in safeguarding technological systems and networks, and to promote peace and understanding.
  • Israeli Seed Inbal was selected as a recipient of a PEO International Peace Scholarship Award for 2018-2019.

Seeds Reads

  • Afghan Seed Mujib has published stories in The New York Times over the last few months, including one documenting a professional wrestler killed in a recent bombing in Kabul, another highlighting the difficult push for education in Afghanistan, a third profiling a refugee, and a story covering the impact of a regional drought. Mujib was also recently interviewed by CNN about his experience as a journalist in Afghanistan.
  • American Seed Rena published a piece on her experiences traveling with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence in Palestine and Israel, including reflections on her time since leaving Camp.
  • Palestinian Seed Yazen published an article on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. He outlines his experience as a student in the United States and the ongoing struggles for justice and equality in both the United States and Palestine.
  • American Seed William, NYC’s Youth Poet Laureate, called for stricter gun laws through spoken word in the wake of ongoing gun violence across the United States. His performance of his work was published on NowThis.
  • American Seed Eli wrote in The Huffington Post about his experience at Camp and being a Seed.
  • Palestinian Seed Mahmoud published an op-ed in Harvard Kennedy School’s Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy advocating for the inclusion of young people in Palestinian politics.
  • Israeli Seed Ilan, who conducts research on digital diplomacy at Oxford University, was featured in an article about his recent speech at the Warwick Congress.
  • Palestinian Seed Dalal wrote a Mother’s Day appeal to Melania and Ivanka Trump in a +972 Magazine article describing how teaching tolerance is becoming more difficult as American policies sow division and violence. She is also heading an exciting new partnership between the University of Montreal and the Arab American University in Palestine. More details to come soon!
  • Israeli Seed Rita co-authored an article on the global rise in urban violence with US Army Major John Spencer for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

So many Seeds around the word are doing amazing work and making an incredible impact. Is there anything or anyone we missed? If you’re working on an amazing project that somehow slipped under our radar, please send it our way or sound off in the comments below—we’d love to hear from you!

Follow the Fellows: A tempest for change

Nov 15, 2019 / No Comments

In every force of nature—a thunderstorm, a blizzard, a wildfire, a tornado—there exists the possibility of destruction, as well as the opportunity for change.

So when an abundance of childhood energy earns you the nickname “The Hurricane,” you can try to suppress that force, or you can channel it for good.

“Maybe I had more energy than people around me knew how to hold. I often felt like my energy was used as a weapon against me, like, ‘hey, calm down, sit down,’ but I don’t see it as a negative thing anymore,” Monica, a 2019 GATHER Fellow, said. “It was just a lack of creativity on other people’s part.”

There is no shortage of creativity in the ways that Monica is using her energy to make change today. As a founder of the nonprofit group Activate Labs, she is essentially using every tool she knows to shift power.

Whereas much of the work done around humanitarian aid or international development focuses on things like food, clothing, jobs, and shelter, Monica’s interests lie in addressing the needs that can’t be seen or touched.

What that looks like in person can vary, but it typically means showing up—always by invitation of local people or organizations—to the frontline of a community impacted by violence, trauma, or conflict. There, the process is guided by design thinking to develop a peacebuilding process that puts the people who would be benefiting from a program or service at the heart of creating and implementing the solution. In short, they’re focused on helping communities take back power over their shared futures.

“Having agency is just as important as giving them technical skills like building capacity. All of that is fine, but the confidence of knowing that you have the power to solve your own problems—to have that control of your world, that vision of your own future—not a lot of people have that, especially people who have experienced violence or oppression,” she said.

“The key to our process is that we consider non-tangible human needs, like belonging or community, nurturing relationships, transcendence, freedom and power in your own world. We believe that when these things are met, then you can actually work in the community to find jobs.”

In some places, this may be in the form of workshops and trainings. Such projects have included transformative leadership training sessions for over a thousand women in Mexico, as well as working with Get Up and Go Colombia—a group that promotes tourism in parts of Colombia that were affected by armed conflict.

For the latter, Activate Labs was contacted to co-design a peace process for a group whose expertise wasn’t in peacebuilding, but that wanted to take a human-first approach to addressing unemployment, a problem that is shared by all those impacted by the country’s civil war. The workshop began by bringing together 45 ex-combatants, as well as those who had trouble finding work because they had been displaced, injured, or in some way affected by violence, and worked toward giving participants the ability to name the problems in their community, and decide what peace tourism and working together could look like.

“There are a lot of solutions to unemployment, but this is a chance to create something together from the beginning—to seek buy in early on and build community,” she said. “People are able to define their own problems and lead their own change, and for peace that makes the most difference because it’s all about shifting power.”

SPACE FOR PEACE

Before peace design takes place, it’s often preceded by another of Activate Lab’s specialities: a peace activation, a peacebuilding response to crisis, violent conflict, or social disruption where the focus is placed on the needs that can’t be seen or touched.

In the past year Activate has led over 20 such peace activations, where they literally take up public, politicized space—such as public plaza in Mexico City, or near one of the largest and most infamous migrant detention centers in Texas—and infuse it with a festival-like atmosphere complete with activities such as karaoke, dancing, face painting, and communal art projects. Some of these locations are places where even the most basic human needs are rarely met, much less the intangible ones.

“In the same way that violence and policies that cause pain aren’t accidents—they’re engineered—we can design peace and bring what’s valuable and important into a public space through a creative and arts-based message,” she said.

She spoke of an event a few months ago, just around the time when the world was learning of the deplorable conditions in the U.S.’s migrant detention centers, when Activate Labs organized a peace activation outside one such detention center in McAllen, Texas. A young boy, maybe 5 or 6 years old, whom she said was among the children who had been separated from their families at the border, stood in line to get pizza at peace activation.

“So the kid finally got his pizza, I’m standing by the banner we brought for an art project, and he literally looks up at it and says ‘whoa.’ He hands me the pizza and just starts coloring,” Monica recalled. “The idea that self expression is not a powerful human need is just foolishness. Creative expression and the chance to see our problems from a different place—that’s something we need, and when we don’t have it, it’s more precious than food.”

AN EARLY CALL TO ACTION

Whereas many of Monica’s friends growing up decorated their walls with pictures of teen dreamboats ripped from the pages of TigerBeat magazine, Monica’s were adorned with pictures of orphans and starving children from the pages of National Geographic.

“I have always known my calling, even when I was 12 years old,” she said. “I didn’t have all the tools for understanding, but I wanted a place for these kids and I wanted to think about them.”

The youngest of 11 children, her family emigrated to Southern California when she was 5, having left their home in Communist Romania where they faced religious persecution. Growing up, she said her father modeled what it meant to live an empathetic life—she vividly remembers one occasion of him serving a fancy meal to roofers who were working on their house—and she said short-term service trips with her church gave her the chance to gain a sort of perspective that many 12-year-olds don’t have the opportunity to experience.

Today, Monica is trying to make the work she does a normative experience for her own two children; she said that her daughter, who is 9, has come to border towns to visit refugees with her many times in her short life.

“She’s been a part of people’s healing because she’s a cute girl and she’s funny, but she ‘gets the memo’ that these are humans,” Monica said. “It’s creating a culture of treating people differently, and it’s very intentional.”

Her work frequently keeps her on the go. She gave this interview during a break at a conference in Cancun, Mexico, and a few days later would be leaving for another in Kenya. She currently has projects running in Central and South America, and over the summer, Monica, her kids and her husband—whom she credits with making possible the global nature of her work—recently left Southern California for Washington, D.C. to be closer to a greater concentration of peacebuilding organizations.

She believes Activate Labs is at a critical juncture—its services are in demand and people are eager to join in on its efforts—but as with many grassroots organizations, how to take the group to the next level isn’t so clear. This is a large part of what brought her to GATHER.

“You can feel it—we need to grow because this kind of empathy and centering around people who are impacted is needed in the world. I know more people want to be a part of it and I need to figure out a way to grow for that reason,” she said. “What GATHER gave me is the inertia to think bigger.”

Among her big concerns is keeping in line with their values as they grow. She spoke of a recent incident where she was contracted to do consulting for a government peacebuilding organization, but the arrangement fell through because of their work with migrant caravans and fears that she might be too liberal of a partner while the Trump administration is in the White House.

And while she pondered whether she should erase all of her social media and references to ending the separation of migrant families, she received wise counsel from a friend:

“He said, ‘You probably won’t get business relationships you want because of who you are, but you’ll get the relationships and opportunities that you need because of who you are,’” she recalled. “That gave me solace.”

Perception is at the heart of so much of the work Monica does, and core to that is taking what could be seen as a hindrance—whether it’s pain of the past, anxiety, or being a hurricane of energy—and channeling it toward the good. When asked what keeps her up at night, she pushed back against the idea that such a level of anxiety was normal or okay, and shifted it to what she saw as a more valid question.

“The real question is what keeps me going, and I’m passionate about shifting power and getting to a place where we can see each other, and how we work in this world is kind and compassionate, and giving and open,” she said. “Anxiety is useless toward the good; it takes on a velocity-filled form and becomes a force of nature. My passion for peace is a force of nature that someone will have to deal with.”

This series highlights our 2019 GATHER Fellows. To learn more about the inspiring social change that Monica and our other Fellows are working towards, check out #FollowtheFellows on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

To the silent majority: Peacebuilding is not a hashtag | The Times of Israel

May 25, 2021 / No Comments

Peace starts by demanding change. It starts with dedication and commitment, with humanizing the other. And it starts 20 years before it is achieved.

By Meredith Rothbart

We like quick fixes. Especially Israelis. Microwaves, Insta pots, wireless credit cards, high-speed this, high-tech that. Even the Tami4 is a bit unnecessary, in my opinion. But I get it, if we can have what we want easily and quickly, then let’s have it and let’s have it now. Why should peace be any different??

There actually is a secret to peacebuilding, even to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The problem is that it is not sexy and definitely not high-tech nor instant.

The secret to peacebuilding is time, effort, and money. It is dedication and commitment.

The secret to peace is attitudinal change at the individual, societal and political level.

It is interfaith dialogue, civic engagement, youth empowerment.

It is nonviolent communication and activism.

It is women leaders.

It is economic development and partnership.

It is justice.

My mentor Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, who helped bring about peace in Ireland, always says, “If you want peace today, you should have started building it 20 years ago. And if you don’t feel like working for peace today, then you better not complain to me in 20 years that the conflict is ongoing and affecting your children.”

After dedicating more than a decade of my life to building deep relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, I know to brace for the comments and eye-rolls during upticks in violence and wars. I wait for the: “Now you see there’s no point, right?” or the “Great, now you’ll quit your job, right?” or my favorite, “Guess the peace business hasn’t been too successful, right?”

But for a variety of reasons, those were not the messages I received this time.

This time, I have been receiving questions instead of comments, such as “What can I do?” and “How can I help?” and “What can I do tonight to lower the flames?”

This time is different. We all keep saying that, but what does it mean for peace?

Was this the painful moment that the silent majority needed in order to open its mouth and demand change? I sure hope so.

To my Israeli friends, family and neighbors who have recently asked what you can do today, tonight, now to stop the violence, my answer is NOTHING.

It is too late. You missed your chance for this round.

There has been a metaphorical gas leak for decades that went ignored. Now that the flames have been reignited, your bucket of water – while appreciated – will do nothing to extinguish or even lower them.

Peacebuilding doesn’t prevent violence but offers a nonviolent constructive outlet in its place. The risk of the silent majority remaining silent is that we tacitly accept violence as the only option. If we stay silent, we enable parts of our majority to justify violence — rather than work against it, rather than changing the reality.

We must decide to stop being a silent majority and start demanding change. We must decide to build a more peaceful reality now.

Loved ones have been killed. Homes have been destroyed. Our cities are scorched.

Peacebuilding is not a hashtag, a picket sign, or a WhatsApp group. Peacebuilding is not a dialogue circle, talking about our feelings and hoping that this will prepare our societies for some magical future political agreement.

Peacebuilding is taking concrete actions to make lives and the daily reality for Israelis and Palestinians better today, defined by a) less hatred, tension, and violence, b) increased quality of life, and c) improved systems for interaction.

Here’s how we start.

Step 1: Educate ourselves.

Read Side by Side for starters (a great introduction to the competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the conflict) and take a browse through Amal-Tikva’s recent report on the State of Cross-Border Peacebuilding Efforts. Follow the mentioned NGOs and think tanks on social media and sign up for their newsletters.

There are books, entire think tanks and institutes dedicated to our conflict. But there’s no need to get overwhelmed. As they say in Arabic, shwya shwya, slowly slowly.

Step 2: Humanize the other.

This is possibly the hardest part and arguably the most important. It is going to hurt. I realize that I am one of very few religious Zionists who has close Palestinian friends that I have known for years. Listening to their personal experiences this time around breaks my heart more than ever.

It hurts listening to friends like Suma from Sheikh Jarrah speak about how difficult it has been as a family of girls to get the smell of sewage water out of their kitchen, their car, their skin and their hair.

It hurts listening to young Mutaz’s humiliation, being stripped to his underwear on the way to school, while the contents of his backpack were dumped into the street.

It hurts listening to Ismat struggle to save enough money to buy a house for his children, just up the street from his family home filled with so-called other “religious Zionists”, who look just like me and my family but are really just unnecessarily mean people who know it is his house. They see him there. They spit and sneer as he walks by.

It hurts listening to Manar, traumatized from sitting in Hamas prison.

It hurts listening to Muhammed, unable to reach his parents in Gaza and fearing the worst.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (zt”l) addressed this very issue in his book Not in My Name: Confronting Religious Violence (which I highly recommend for inspiration):

“We know that Sarah and Isaac are part of the covenant. Hagar and Ishamael are not. But our sympathies are unmistakeably drawn to them in some of the most powerful scenes of pathos in the Bible, Hagar cast out into the desert, the young Ishmael dying of heat and thirst. We saw how Joseph and his brothers had to overcome their mutual estrangement, and we saw how Leah cried out for love and was heard by God. These are extraordinary stories because they force us to enter into the mindset of the characters who are not chosen, who seem to be left out – displaced… They force us into an imaginative act of role reversal. They show us that humanity, light and virtue are not confined to our side. They exist on the other side also. They humanise the Other.”

You can definitely start by chatting with the Palestinian nurse taking your blood or pharmacist filling your prescription. Try joining a one-off protest or dialogue group just to break the ice. But from there continue on to real relationship building.

It is possible. I promise.

Step 3: Donate, join or start an initiative.

There are many projects and NGOs that offer opportunities to meet the Other and engage in real activism. I recommend skimming through Chaim Meshutafim and the Alliance for Middle Peace for some options, or reach out to us at Amal-Tikva and I will personally connect you.

Participating or supporting grassroots and civil society initiatives may feel like a small step, but I urge you to heed the call of Bertie Ahern, former Prime Minister of Ireland who signed the Good Friday Agreement, securing the end to ongoing violent conflict in Northern Ireland.

“While political voices are important and vital in building progress, the voice of the community translated through civil society is paramount. Whether it is Trade Unions, Women’s Groups, Business Organisations, Youth Leaders, Civil Society translating the wishes of the community and the desire for peaceful progress is absolutely essential. In the case of Ireland the role played by civil society was a key component in our efforts to end violence and make a peaceful society.”

Step 4: Demand change.

As you educate yourself, humanize the Other, and actively participate in building a more peaceful reality, you will notice that some elements of this new reality must be taken on at the political and diplomatic levels.

Some areas that need attention were mentioned in Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya’s article here.

When it comes to your own political party, whichever that may be, make sure to check for and demand investment in the recipe for a political reality, defined by less hatred, tension, and violence, b) increased quality of life, and c) improved systems for interaction.

This is relevant regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.

And I know that I mocked your Facebook Frame, hashtag, picket sign and dialogue group above, but the truth is that these elements are extremely valuable. Publicly showing your support for the Other, for peace, equality and justice, regardless of your political views or party affiliation, does truly change the public discourse. This is critical and shows #constructivesolidarity, which is critical for any positive changes to happen.

Step 5: Hope for and believe in peace.

When you need inspiration, listen to the tunes of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, or read the stories from Kids4Peace. Know that you are not alone, that there are thousands of peacemakers growing up in this land, practicing their new skills in active listening and nonviolent communication, ready to take on concrete measurable pieces of this conflict and transform them one by one.

Last, remember that violent “intractable” conflicts have been resolved.

Take Gary’s case for example. In 1987, Ireland saw more conflict-related deaths than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict saw in 2017 (despite Northern Ireland being 1/16th the population).

All relevant political leaders refused to meet under any circumstance, let alone discuss a peace that seemed all but impossible. Via the International Fund for Ireland, the international community invested $44 per person annually on grassroots peacebuilding projects in Northern Ireland. While the Northern Irish peace process has not produced a utopia, it has certainly been one of the more successful peace processes of the last half-century. This is largely because the years prior to the signing of the accord focused on building trust and decreasing fear.

By contrast, an average of $1.50 per person has been spent annually on building peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Until now.

For the first time in history, the US government has committed $250 million to peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians, with matching commitments from other governments in the pipeline, and private philanthropists interested in supporting an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

This isn’t aid for one side or the other. This is an investment in initiatives that bring people together instead of further dividing them.

We can all be a part of this, and we must start now.

Together, we can build and inspire an influential pro-peace constituency, persuade others that peace is possible, and motivate leaders to take steps toward building a more peaceful reality.

If you’re part of the silent majority, this is your call to action.

Meredith immigrated to Jerusalem in 2008 from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Somehow in between studying in a religious Zionist feminist seminary and serving in the IDF, she participated in a leadership program for young Israelis and Palestinians which inspired her career in peacebuilding. Meredith co-founded Amal-Tikva (meaning hope in Arabic and Hebrew), a collaborative initiative where philanthropists, field experts, and organizations come together to support civil society peacebuilding. In the moments when she’s not pursuing peace in the Middle East, you can find Meredith at the playground near her Jerusalem home chasing her adorable kids.

Read Meredith’s op-ed in The Times of Israel ››