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A new generation of Israelis are uniting to demand change

Aug 8, 2020 / No Comments

A new generation of Israelis is now protesting against authoritarian rule. Do they stand a chance?

Israel had never been a perfect democracy. To be honest, it was never even a good one.

Despite everything, there used to be some minimal leadership accountability, some written and unwritten rules of public service, and some class. In the Netanyahu years, however, the rules seemed to change. Israel is no longer a republic; Israel is Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is Israel. As those who oppose him proclaim, he has used every single questionable method, along with mass public gaslighting and psychological manipulations, to deeply engrave this perception and gain increasing power over the years.

With time, Netanyahu was able to eliminate almost every threat to his rule, crushing opponents; silencing critics, and increasingly deepening his control of the media, the Knesset, law enforcement and civil agencies. From schoolteachers, to political leaders, from journalists to judges, those who oppose him are threatened, attacked, marked as traitors or self-hating anti-Semites, and removed from positions of influence. It sometime seems like the entire country is working for Bibi Netanyahu and his followers, known as “Bibists.”

Taking “divide and conquer” one step further, Netanyahu’s method works around the ancient Hebrew word “Shissuy” (שיסוי): Divide, conquer, and convince all parties involved to hate and attack each other.

“But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” (Exodus 1:12)

The COVID-19 crisis, unprecedented unemployment and poverty rates, years of political turmoil and three general elections, along with the Netanyahu trials coming soon, have created a unique opportunity for those who seek change.

An entire generation, my generation, that grew up almost entirely under Netanyahu’s regime, is waking up. There seems to be a sudden realization that the country we thought we had does not exist. It’s a generation that grew up with no hope and no future and has absolutely zero faith in the path this country is headed.

Since the coronavirus crisis started, several protest movements began gaining power and public sympathies, separately, at first. The demonstrations in Tel-Aviv against the proposed West Bank annexation plan grew more significant than expected: A new movement of unemployed and collapsing business owners began growing, and demonstrations against Netanyahu, personally, focusing on his abusive political behavior, his violent propaganda, and incitement, and his corruption allegations, spread wider and wider across the country.

And after an anti-corruption protester who was quite old, peaceful and polite, a war veteran, and a Holocaust researcher was attacked and arrested by police officers in Jerusalem six weeks ago, the protests began to focus on Jerusalem—more precisely, outside of Netanyahu’s residence, on Balfour Street.

Panicking from the rising criticism and the threat to his governance, Netanyahu made a possibly fatal mistake: using the police, the military, and gangs of violent, organized Jewish supremacist “Bibists,” he began terrorizing protesters in the streets. Methods that were usually used against Palestinians, anti-occupation activists, anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, and against Black Ethiopian Jews, are now being used against all protesters. The white, secular Jewish sector that traditionally ignored the violence directed towards marginalized communities cannot ignore it any more. Netanyahu meant to scare the new, naïve protesters away, but instead, united them.

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6)

After being divided for too many years and now facing a common oppressor, all protests seem to be merging: “Crime Minister” protesters, anti-Occupation activists, together with all groups of political opposition to the government, Palestinian Citizens of Israel political movements, LGBTQ organizations, feminist organizations, climate change activists, peace organizations—and most importantly—an unprecedented amount of people who are not directly affiliated with any specific political organization, who had never protested before, and feel like they have got nothing to lose.

This is the “Siege on Balfour,” a non-violent revolution of love, art, music, solidarity, and new hope. No longer a narrow protest for or against something too specific. This is a wake-up call, and this could be the beginning of intersectional resistance—a rise against oppression of all kinds. It’s a movement with no particular leaders and without any organized set of demands. No speeches are being held, and no stage elevates one person above others. People are standing together with a beautiful mix of chants: “Bread, Freedom, Dignity,” “Justice for Eyad,” “End the Occupation,” “It will not be over until he quits.”

As this movement grows bigger and becomes much more intersectional than we have ever seen before, it seems like more and more Seeds and their families are joining. As a Seed who grew up on the values of solidarity, partnership, and taking courageous steps to bring change, those demonstrations are setting a new example of the Camp motto, “the way life could be.” I have never seen such a movement before in my life, bringing so many people together despite the differences, uniting for such a fundamental change, and standing in solidarity with one another.

With combined powers, does this generation have a chance to change things? Or is it, perhaps, one last pathetic attempt to save our souls? There are many questions as to how Netanyahu will respond to these calls for change and the current moment—and whether the unity of this moment is durable enough to remake and rebuild a country.

Only time will tell, but for the first time in a decade: Netanyahu looks nervous.

What can you, non-Israelis, do to support? Spread the word. Show support to your regime-opposing friends. Balfour protests are now happening four times a week: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Watch the online broadcasts and share the images of police violence. Stand with your Israeli and Palestinian friends and help them demand this fundamental change for all. Educate yourself and those around you. And pray for us, please.

And then, hopefully, after the dust settles, help us rebuild, rise from the ashes, and create a safe space for all. Change takes all of us.

Jonathan is a 2011 Israeli Seed.

Photo credits (from top): Sharon Avraham and Olivier Fitoussi (Flash90)

Indian children return with warmth for Pakistan
The International News (Pakistan)

Aug 18, 2003 / No Comments

LAHORE | Indian children belonging to the Seeds of Peace family returned home on Saturday by Dosti Bus with tons of warmth, hospitality and sweet memories. There were 21 boys and girls aged between 15-17 with two delegation leaders, Monica Wahi and Feruzun Mehta from India.

The US representative of Seeds of Peace organisation, Marieke van Woerkom, accompanied Indian children along with two Harvard University students, Anila (Pakistani) and Meenakshi (Indian). All the children hailed from Mumbai’s middle and upper society. They travelled by air to New Delhi from where they came to Lahore by Dosti Bus.

Seeds of Peace (SOP) is an American NGO which facilitates friendships among children of conflicting nations of the world. The idea of SOP was envisioned by John Wallach, a journalist who was moved by Mideast violence. The great luminary of world peace died of cancer in July 2002 among his worldwide family of Seeds of Peace children. He founded Seeds of Peace in 1993 and kept organising their get-together sessions in the idyllic haunts of Otisfield, Maine. In each session, he invited about 360 children in batches from rival nations including Pakistan and India.

Seeds of Peace is now being run by Aaron Miller, a friend of John Wallach, who shared his vision also.

The event of Indian children visiting Lahore was a low-key, off-media affair mainly because of security reasons and fear of ticklish questions of newsmen. All Indian children lived here with families of host children, the first ever free-will interaction between Indian Hindu families and Pakistani Muslim families after Partition. In that respect, it meant much more than sheer lip service to the cause of peace.

Asked what they enjoyed most in Pakistan, Indian children just had one word, “Hospitality” on their lips.

In the absence of any government level efforts, the children became true harbingers of peace, love and fraternity. The Indian children brought dainty gifts of choice and letters from their parents for host families. Indian parents used “Asalam-o-Alaikum” and “Insha Allah” in their letters for the first peace harvest after more than half a century.

Enthusiastic host children also pooled in funds for making organised visits to some of the best places of the city. In a chartered bus, they were taken to Government College University, Gurdawara adjacent to Badshahi Mosque, Gymkhana Club, Lahore Fort and Minar-e-Pakistan. They were feted at Village Restaurant, Cafe Zouk and Cocoo’s Cafe. Host families also served special dinners for the guests, keeping in view that many were pure vegetarians or half vegetarians.

Apart from hospitality, they said foods of Lahore were the most enjoyable part of their trip. Host boys took care of boy guests and host girls looked after Indian girls. They played together, ate together and lived together despite limited availability of time as a first experience of its kind.

The children had already been together in the SOP camps in the US, knew each other well and had been keeping their friendship alive on Internet. In their casual chats, India and Pakistan children discussed many of the big issues including Kashmir without getting embroiled, sending a silent message to their national leaders to emulate them.

Seeds of Peace had requested both Governor, Punjab Lt. Gen. Khalid Maqbool and Chief Minister, Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, for a photo session with SOP children. Ironically, however, both of them failed to respond.

Indian children were interesting observers as well. On August 14 they went round the town. They noted that Pakistanis celebrate Independence Day with a greater joy and spirit.

Meet Saumya: Doing the most good with 3,900 weekends

Oct 31, 2021 / No Comments

How much good can one person do, how much love can one person spread, in the course of a lifetime? Saumya, a 2018 Indian Seed, is well on her way to finding out.

The 17-year-old said she calculated some time ago that she probably has around 3,900 weekends left on earth. The realization was a motivator, but also put much into perspective: What did she want to do with this precious time?

In many ways, she’s already done more than most. In the eighth grade she attended the Seeds of Peace Interfaith Camp in India, a choice that set her on a path to attending Camp in Maine in 2018, becoming a dialogue facilitator, and using a few of her favorite tools—particularly dialogue, art, dancing, and a lot of love—to becoming a champion of female empowerment and youth education.

“Through dialogue with Seeds of Peace, I began to see small things in the ways that women were treated, whether they had professional lives or worked from home. Seeing the hypocrisy inspired me to do something, and I started by going back to my roots.”

Thus was born Project Sachetna (birth or renewal in Hindi), a weeklong, in-person program that Saumya and her sister Sanmyukta (2019 Indian Seed) founded in 2018 for girls in the rural community where her father grew up. Using primarily dialogue and arts and crafts, they sought to bring a message of empowerment to girls who were only a few years younger than them.

“Most of the kids go to school for the free lunch, and most of the girls get married after 10th grade,” Saumya said. “There’s not much a future for them if they want something else, but we wanted to show them they did have a choice, and that their voices mattered.”

The program was scheduled for a week during the students’ vacation, and Saumya was told not to expect much in terms of attendance.

“The first few days started with around 20 girls, but the numbers kept increasing. They were showing up an hour early, and before long, boys began coming as well, intrigued by what the girls were learning. By the end of the week, the number had more than doubled,” Saumya said.

She has since been selected for a number of prestigious fellowships that allow youth to explore and express ideas around intersections of topics like feminism, equality, and leadership. Most recently, she was invited by Teach for India to participate in a project examining the repercussions of the pandemic on education in India. Organizing community dialogues, creating toolkits that countered misinformation, and even speaking on national television, she advocated for the millions of students—some 60 percent of children—without internet access who were suffering from a lack of education during the pandemic.

“These are not just statistics, there are actually humans behind them,” she told a newscaster. “If we can put resources into reopening restaurants and reopening bars, why are we not putting the same resources into re-opening our schools?”

While Saumya is motivated to make the most of her time on earth, she said her focus is on empowering others to make changes in their own lives and communities.

“I want to do remarkable work that sustains my soul, but it’s not about fame or money,” she said, “If I’m able to help out even one person, I’ll feel like this is a life well lived.”

7 educators leading change in the classroom and beyond

Oct 5, 2019 / No Comments

For more than 20 years, educators have played a vital role in supporting Seeds of Peace’s efforts to cultivate new generations of young leaders.

From Los Angeles to Lahore, they multiply our impact in traditional classroom settings and beyond: Supporting our alumni in their own projects to lead change at home, utilizing the skills and tools they learned from Seeds of Peace in educational initiatives within their communities, and even starting schools and programs that focus on underserved populations.

October 5 is World Teachers’ Day, and in honor of this internationally recognized UNESCO holiday, we invite you to learn more about some of the dedicated educators who have contributed to and benefited from Seeds of Peace programming, including as GATHER Fellows and Delegation Leaders (educators and community leaders who travel with a delegation of Seeds to Camp and participate in educational workshops).

Here are a few of their stories:

Mehwish, 2015 Pakistani Delegation Leader, 2019 GATHER Fellow: Based in Lahore, Mehwish works with vulnerable communities, especially youth: educating them on their rights, empowering them to make good choices, and engaging them in the civil process so that they might be voices of change. Read about how she helps others find their voice through education.

Anis, 2018 GATHER Fellow: His experience volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece inspired Anis to create El Sistema Greece, a project that uses music education as a tool to bring opportunity and humanity to refugee children. The NGO’s mission is to transform conflict through music, friendship, and mutual human support. Find out how Anis’s group uses art and music as tools for consolation, regeneration, empowerment, and education for children in the camps.

Pious, 2008 Educator, 2016 GATHER Fellow: Originally from Ghana, Pious moved to Maine in 2002 and has been working with marginalized youth ever since. As a Youth and Community Engagement Specialist at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine and a City Council Member of Portland, Maine, he has spent the better part of his career focused on engaging youth and creating dialogue across cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic and faith-based groups. Hear Pious talk about his life and work as the first Muslim member of Portland’s City Council in Episode 1 of the Inspired podcast.

Molly, Delegation Leader, 2018 GATHER Fellow: After spending two formative summers at Camp as a Delegation Leader (2011 and 2018), Molly started to wonder what would happen if school felt more like a camp—a place that prioritizes good human development, building meaningful relationships, and that believes young people are capable of doing big things while they are still young. Find out how she’s been working to bring some of her most meaningful Camp experiences into the classroom.

Ahmed, 2004 Pakistani Seed, 2018 GATHER Fellow: What he lacked in funding, Ahmed more than made up for with determination when he set out to break the cycle of poverty for children in Pakistan. The method: Providing free, quality education to young girls who almost certainly would not have had otherwise had the opportunity. Step into the school that Ahmed founded in Lahore in Episode 3 of the Inspired podcast.

Hanoch, 2015 GATHER Fellow: Using everyday objects, Hanoch creates colorful collage portraits that spark the imagination and stimulate new ways to look at the world beyond the status quo. As a Fellow, he worked to create an arts education curriculum and teacher training course based on his artistic method that helps participants explore themes like composed identity, history, dreams, community, and the “other.” Read more about his work.

Marios, 1998 Cypriot Seed, 2018 GATHER Fellow: As a teacher, Marios found that one effective way to promote peace and detoxify relations between Turkish and Greek Cypriots was by building empathy between children. Motivated by the heartbreaking effects he was seeing that stereotypes and othering have on his young students, he set out to counter messages of intolerance with with ones of intercultural respect. Learn more about the children’s book series that he created.

Find out more about programs and resources that Seeds of Peace offers for educators, and discover more inspiring stories about educators who are supporting young changemakers in classrooms and communities around the world.

What We’re Reading: Imagine the future

Oct 16, 2019 / No Comments

Bookstores, movie theaters, and streaming services are full of them—works of fiction that offer visions of bleak, hopeless dystopian futures.

As a society, we’ve become pretty good at imagining the worst outcomes, but shouldn’t we be giving at least as much ink and headspace to the kind of worlds in which we actually desire to live?

That’s precisely what we ask campers to do: Imagine the future that you want, and the roles that we can each have in helping to build that kind of world. For this edition of What We’re Reading, we’re highlighting books, articles, and podcasts that help us see the way life could be, offer strategies to make and embrace change, or that help us see the systems, structures, and behaviors that prevent us from creating the worlds in which we all have a real chance at happily ever after.

Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy, by Chris Crass
Chris Crass offers learned lessons, and often deeply personal and vulnerable reflections, from organizers and activists working to challenge systems of oppression, in the spirit of lifting up questions that can help to feed vision, analysis, and strategy for creating systems of liberation. He draws on bell hooks’ concept of collective liberation, which recognizes the ways that systems of domination are interconnected and affect us all (differently and disproportionately), with specific attention to how to “help align people with privilege to oppressed peoples’ struggles united by an overall vision of a free society.” Reading personal essays and interviews of the journeys, awakenings, and struggles that others are going through allowed me to deepen my own thinking about my role and path in this work, and fed my understanding of the broader challenges, complexities, messiness, and possibilities involved in building movements for justice. As Crass makes clear, the goal is not perfection, but rather collective learning, organizing, accountability, and liberation. — Eva Armour, Director of Impact

On Being: “Called and Conflicted” (Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash)
In this episode of the award-winning podcast “On Being,” host Krista Tippett discusses spiritul border-crossing and social creativity with two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love—Shane Claiborne, an Evangelical activist and author, and Omar Saif Ghobash, a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of “Letters to a Young Muslim.” Alternately light hearted, searching, and deeply meaningful, this high-level conversation between two great thinkers from different faiths and different nationalities wonderfully models the sorts of encounters we are aiming to foster every day at Seeds of Peace. — Jonah Fisher, GATHER Director

Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown
Adrienne Maree Brown is an activist who really shifts the conversation on how change happens—within communities, movements, and as a planet. Her book clearly shows that what we do “at the small scale is how we are at the large scale,” and this sets to tone for all of our systems and structures. This is seen in nature as well as how local change connects to global change. — Kiran Thadhani, Director of Global Programs

The Power, by Naomi Alderman
In this book, teenage girls all over the world begin waking up to find they have immense physical power, and with barely a touch, can destroy people and small armies. The author explores what happens when the power dynamic shifts … and it’s not pretty. But what this author also does is explore the very notion of power itself, and by vividly showing a world in which girls and women can use their physical strength to overpower men, we see just how imbalanced and dangerous the world is in which we currently live, and the brutality women have endured since the dawn of time. — Deb Levy, Director of Communications

Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have, by Tatiana Schlossberg
Books about the environment—at least the ones based on science—can be scary, and while this one has plenty of statistics that could leave one trembling in the corner, to do so would be missing the point. Along with a surprising dose of humor, Schlossberg, a former science reporter for The New York Times, gives an eye-opening account of the daily choices we make that have lasting environmental impact. Yes, it was alarming to learn that particles from the athleisure wear that I treasure today could one day end up on the beach alongside my great, great grandchildren, but it’s also empowering to know that it’s not inevitable. There are better choices for the way that we shop, work, eat, and travel, and we can choose to do things differently. — Lori Holcomb-Holland, Communications & Development Manager

What would you add to this list? Have any recommendations for future editions of What We’re Reading? Let us know in the comments below, or send your picks to lori@seedsofpeace.org.

Seeds of Peace launches #ChangeTakesAllofUs

Jul 20, 2020 / No Comments

NEW YORK | Change comes in many packages: It’s an Afghan teacher using education to upend generational cycles of poverty, a young Black woman organizing for racial justice in the whitest state in America, and a Palestinian doctor fighting to ensure that all patients receive equal care.

This week, we are bringing you the voices of a unique tapestry of changemakers through #ChangeTakesAllofUs, a social media campaign featuring Seeds, Fellows, Educators, and staff members as they re-imagine approaches to the world’s most pressing issues.

These are voices not just from dreamers, but from doers: people who are working in the fields of health care, education, social justice, law, politics, journalism, the arts, and NGOs to build more free and inclusive systems in their corners of the world. History shows us that social change happens when leaders with various strategies and values work across all sectors of societies to challenge, reimagine, and rebuild current systems.

Across political, economic, generational, and cultural divides, the voices we’ll share will demonstrate that #ChangeTakesAllofUs, and that it also takes you.

Throughout this campaign we’ll offer opportunities to sign up for virtual discussions with our alumni, engage with changemakers, share your story, and learn about ways you can support or join Seeds of Peace programs.

View the #ChangeTakesAllofUs campaign

Health care first responders | Education | Refugees & Migrants | Pandemic Community Responders

 

Seeds visit President Clinton in the Oval Office

May 23, 2000 / No Comments
President Clinton receives the Seeds of Peace Award, Oval Office. Pictured with the President are Manal Abbas, Dalia Ali, Jamil Zraiqat, Avagail Shaham, and Jawad Issa.

President Clinton receives the Seeds of Peace Award, Oval Office. Pictured with the President are Manal Abbas, Dalia Ali, Jamil Zraiqat, Avagail Shaham, and Jawad Issa.

WASHINGTON, DC | Visiting President Clinton in the Oval Office of the White House, May 23, 2000, was a thrill for all of the Seeds who were there—Jawad, Dalia, Jamil, Avigail and Manal. Each of them had a chance to tell the President personal stories about their lives, especially about how Seeds of Peace has affected their lives. Jawad and Manal are Palestinians from Gaza and Nablus. Avigail is from Israel. And Jamil is from Jordan.

Afterward, the President responded by talking about the relationship between national identity and maintaining traditional enemies. He said that it was no accident that both President Sadat and Prime Minister Rabin were killed by their fellow countrymen. Sometimes giving up an enemy for peace feels like a threat to identity and it becomes intolerable for some members of society. He also talked about Nelson Mandela, who said that if he continued to hate his jailers even after he had been released from his lengthy stay in prison, it would be as if he was still not free.

President Clinton said that the freedom gained from a successful peace agreement must be utilized for constructive rebuilding and not spent on continued hatred between former parties in conflict.

Mrs. Jihan Sadat, wife of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat; Bebe Neuwirth, representing Broadway stars who support Seeds of Peace; Sandy Berger, US National Security Advisor; John and Janet Wallach, Lindsay Miller, Bobbie Gottschalk, Meredith Katz and Michael Wallach were also in attendance.

Peace on Cyprus could start in Maine
The Greek American Magazine

Apr 25, 1998 / No Comments

BY GEORGE SARRINIKOLAOU | NEW YORK Having taken on the task of “Preparing Tomorrow’s Leaders,” a private, not-for-profit organization in the United States is preparing to offer its services for the first time to 40 Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot teenagers later this summer.

Founded in 1993, the organization, Seeds of Peace, brings together teenagers from conflict-ridden areas, such as the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia, at a summer camp in Otisfield, Maine. The camp, described in the organization’s literature as a total coexistence experience, tries to get kids to “develop listening/negotiation skills, empathy, respect, confidence and hope.” Representatives from the organization said their goal is to dispel hatred and stereotypes among kids and develop a sense of trust from which peace can emerge. The teenagers from Cyprus, ages 13-16, are scheduled to spend two weeks at the camp beginning July 2, 1998.

Although Seeds of Peace has depended on private support for its programs, the camp for Cypriot teenagers has drawn strong US government backing. Vice President Al Gore first suggested the idea for such a camp at a meeting with the then Greek Minister of Education George Papandreou, at a meeting in the White House three years ago. Mr. Papandreou, who ended up sending his son to the summer camp in 1995, began promoting the program among Greeks. But Seeds of Peace did not become widely known in Cyprus until the spring of 1997, when John Wallach, the founder of Seeds of Peace, spoke about the organization during a television interview that aired throughout the Middle East. The broadcast aired on WorldNet, a network funded by the US Information Agency, an arm of the State Department.

Mr. Wallach said that, after his interview, it was the American ambassador to Cyprus, Kenneth C. Brill, who proposed to the Cyprus Fulbright Commission that it fund a Seeds of Peace camp for Cypriot teenagers. Despite the role that various US officials played in making camp for Cypriot teenagers a reality, there is only a “marginal amount of involvement” by the US government in the actual running of the camp, said Christine Covey, vice president of Seeds of Peace. When her organization submitted the proposal for this camp, said Ms. Covey, the program was described as it would be, free of official interference. “We wouldn’t run it any other way,” Ms. Covey said.

But in the highly polarized conflict on Cyprus, the United States is not a disinterested player. The United States has been actively involved in mediating between the Greek and Turkish communities and has proposed ways to resolve the Cyprus problem. Seeds of Peace is honoring the US official currently heading those efforts, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, at a fundraising event on April 26. Not unlike the Seeds of Peace approach, the United States has been trying to get both sides in Cyprus to get over past differences and focus on a peaceful future.

“We don’t tell children what the history is or what they should believe,” said Ms. Covey. Children come to the program, she explained, with different perceptions of reality. The camp tires to find the small space where those two perceptions overlap and tries to build on that common ground.

“We don’t get into the politics,” said Mr. Wallach. “We try to give them some tools, so that when they get older they can resolve conflict without resorting to violence.”

Those tools emerge, said Seeds of Peace representatives, during shared living and eating, sports and performance activities at the camp. For the kids, those activities, Ms. Covey explained, “humanize” their perceived adversaries. Each day ends with a so called “coexistence meeting,” run by professional facilitators, during which participants discuss the issues that separate them back home. The camp culminates with the “Color Games,” a kind of mini-Olympics made up of two mixed teams. By the end of the competition, explained Ms. Covey, kids come to identify not with their ethnic group but with their team’s color.

Seeds of Peace tries to sustain the progress made at camp by establishing programs in the areas where the teenagers live. The organization has not yet determined how it will follow up on this summer’s camp. But in the case of Arab and Israeli teenagers, Seeds of Peace has helped establish an email network among camp participants and has helped organize a high school newspaper that is jointly published by Israeli and Palestinian students. We are “not turning them into peaceniks, but developing a culture of peace,” said Ms. Covey.

Gottschalk to receive Lehrman-Pikser Award for outstanding service

Oct 10, 1997 / No Comments

WASHINGTON | Two deserving members of the Washington Jewish community—Seeds of Peace Executive Director Barbara (Bobbie) Gottschalk, LCSW-C, ACSW, and Ben Williamowsky, DDS—will receive the Jac J. Lehrman-George M. Pikser Award for outstanding professional or volunteer social service.

The awards will be presented Thursday, November 20, at the 1997 Jewish Social Service Agency (JSSA) Annual Meeting at Washington Hebrew Congregation.

In her 13 years on the JSSA staff, Bobbie Gottschalk was instrumental in developing a wide range of programs for individuals with disabilities. She considers that accomplishment as “doing the impossible” in an era when such programs were just beginning to emerge.

Now she’s again doing the impossible at Seeds of Peace—bringing together Arab and Israeli teenagers together at a Maine camp where they share their lives for four summer weeks. As JSSA’s Special Services director, Gottschalk created, developed and managed counseling, case management, and advocacy programs for individuals with disabilities and their families.

“When I first started at JSSA there was nowhere for families to turn,” she said. “Society didn’t expect people with disabilities to lead normal lives. When we first started offering services, people came pouring out of the woodwork. We had opened a Pandora’s box that needed to be opened.”

Gottschalk also helped establish JSSA’s innovative and widely acclaimed counseling program for deaf and hard of hearing individuals, and was instrumental in the successful effort to make JSSA offices barrier-free. During her tenure, a JSSA Special Service Subcommittee investigated the need for group homes for adults with disabilities, eventually developing the now-independent Jewish Foundation for Group Homes. She also helped develop a dance troupe that includes deaf and hard of hearing members under the auspices of the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts.

Gottschalk was invited by journalist John Wallach, founder of Seeds of Peace, to become the organization’s first executive director. Dedicated to teaching Arab and Israeli teenagers to forge the personal friendships that are the building blocks for peace, Seeds of Peace achieves its goal by bringing Arab and Israeli 14-year-olds—175 of them this past summer—to camp, where they share every aspect of life, from sleeping and eating together to playing sports to learning conflict resolution.

The five-year-old organization has graduated more than 600 teens from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, and the United States—as well as Bosnia and Serbia. “When they come to us, the kids believe their enemies are not to be trusted, that they’re dirty cheaters out to get them,” Gottschalk said. “Then they come to camp and experience the opposite. They sleep in a cabin together, eat together, play together, brush their teeth together—and nothing bad happens. So then they have to adjust their thinking, because what they believed just doesn’t fit anymore.”

Central to the success of the four-week program is its neutral, supportive environment, and coexistence workshops, in which professional American, Arab and Israeli facilitators teach listening and negotiation skills, leading to empathy, respect, confidence and hope.

Back in the Middle East, the camp graduates participate in art weekends in neutral communities, creating “Building Blocks for Peace” sculptures out of building materials; participate in coexistence workshops, reunions and conferences; make presentations and initiate projects at their schools to help dispel the misconceptions of their peers; and, in Arab-Israeli pairs, write articles for their eight-page newsletter, “The Olive Branch,” published four times a year.

In March, Gottschalk received the Medal of Honor from Jordan’s King Hussein. Gottschalk describes herself as an “expert audience, because I love watching people make progress, and I’ll do anything to foster it. At JSSA, we helped people achieve as close to a normal life as possible, and that is an extremely satisfying experience.”

At Seeds of Peace, Gottschalk is reprising her role, “but on a larger scope. I’ve moved from my neighborhood to another part of the world to be an expert audience—to laugh and cry and respond—and to watch the important progress taking place. What is more important than bringing Egyptians, Palestinians and Israelis together 24 hours a day?”

Gottschalk has fostered progress in her local community as well. She served on the Montgomery County Commission on People with Disabilities, and on the boards of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington and UJA Federation, chairing UJAF’s 1993 Super Sunday fundraising effort. She is a board member and past president of the Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts and is a founding board member, past secretary, and current advisory board member of the Jewish Foundation for Group Homes.

According to Gottschalk, the Seeds of Peace participants best describe its benefits. “An Egyptian boy said that Seeds of Peace is the place where you find out what kind of character you really have,” she said. “And a Jordanian girl said that to make peace, you first have to go to war with yourself, and this the place you can do that safely.”

On a Day for Making Peace, Politicians Regained Luster
The Boston Globe

Sep 14, 1993 / No Comments

BY MICHAEL KRANISH | WASHINGTON A Secret Service agent raced into the White House’s Palm Room just before yesterday’s signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. “Make a little hole!” the agent shouted as he parted the crowd in the room. “It’s the president!”

Suddenly, a tanned, smiling George Bush raced by on his way to meet with President Clinton. “Ex!” Bush corrected the agent. “Ex! Ex!”

Nearby, on the North Portico of the White House, Yasser Arafat was arriving. Until four days ago, US officials weren’t allowed to talk to the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, much less receive him as an honored guest.

Now, they merely noted that he wasn’t wearing his trademark pistol and welcomed him to the White House, where the former guerrilla leader signed the guest book.

It was that kind of extraordinary day in Washington yesterday, a day when former campaign foes could meet and praise each other, when ancient enemies could shake hands and make peace with each other. It was a day when it really seemed, in this era of antipolitics, that politicians could make a difference after all.

When Clinton walked onto the South Lawn side-by-side with Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, many in the crowd of 3,000 politicians, diplomats, and Middle East activists gasped. For many minutes, the crowd noticed that Arafat and Rabin were not looking at each other and had not shaken hands. The tension mounted: Would they shake hands?

When Clinton finally appeared to nudge Rabin to shake Arafat’s outstretched hand, the crowd spontaneously said, “Ooohh!” when Arafat and Rabin clasped hands, many in the crowd stood and applauded. Some appeared to be crying.

Leonard Zakim, the Boston director of the New England Anti-Defamation League, watched trancelike as the scene unfolded, not quite believing it was happening after all these years. It was, Zakim said, a day of “somber exuberance,” a celebration of the moment and a cause for concern about what lay ahead.

“This is really an earthquake in the region,” he said. “The aftershocks, like the murder of Israelis in Gaza yesterday, are going to be serious.”

The ceremony was also one hot ticket.

“It was like getting a ticket to Bruce Springsteen,” Zakim said, clearly thrilled to be there.

The politicians who signed the peace accord on this sun-scorched day were the stars of the show. They stood behind an ornate desk that had been used in the signing of the 1978 Camp David accord, the old enemies Arafat and Rabin promising peace even as extremists on both sides vowed to undo the agreement. Arafat, wearing thick glasses, a traditional keffiyeh headdress and olive military suit, waved and smiled exuberantly wherever he went. On Sunday night, Bush—who in 1990 broke off a dialogue with the PLO over a terrorist attack—flew in from his summer home in Kennebunkport and met privately with the PLO chairman for an hour.

Yesterday morning, Arafat met with Bush’s secretary of state, James A. Baker 3d. Arafat also met privately with former President Jimmy Carter, who also attended yesterday’s ceremony.

Bush and Carter planned to attend a dinner with Clinton last night and then stay overnight in their old home, the White House, so that they could be present today at a ceremony kicking off a campaign to sell the North American Free Trade Agreement to Congress.

At the end of a day of ceremonies that were witnessed by millions on television around the world, Arafat planned to appear on the Larry King show, eating into the long-scheduled air time of the US Gulf War commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

It was Arafat’s decision to side with Iraq that led the Persian Gulf states to cut off financial aid to the PLO, and that helped spur Arafat’s decision to sign the agreement with Israel yesterday.

While the Clinton administration had little to do with the secret Norway negotiations that led to the accord, the president was eager to make the most of the movement. Clinton gave what many believed was his best speech since he took office, tapping his campaign theme of hop without sounding corny and trumpeting what he called “one of history’s defining dramas.”

Overseeing it all was a man known in the White House as the Rabbi.

Steve Rabinowitz, who got the nickname during the campaign, remembers hearing about the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Camp David peace agreement when he was going to Hebrew school and attending his bar mitzvah. Now, as the White House director of production, Rabinowitz had set up everything from the placement of Arafat and Rabin on stage to the numbers of seats on the lawn. He gave instructions in Hebrew and English, attending to every detail like a doting parent.

“I have always looked forward to the time when something like this could happen,” Rabinowitz said. “It is an extraordinary thing, and to be a part of it is pretty unbelievable.”

Perhaps the most eloquent statement came from a group of Israeli and Palestinian children that Clinton had invited. The children had just finished attending a “Seeds of Peace” camp in Otisfield, Maine.

“Before I came to camp, I thought they were very bad,” a 15-year-old Palestinian named Fadi said of the Israelis. “Now I feel happy that I have friendships with them. And today I shook hands with Clinton, Arafat, Bush. It is good.”

But things are not yet good enough. Even after the signing of yesterday’s agreement, for which he had a choice seat, Fadi did not want his last name used. He was still unsure whether the killing would really stop now in the Holy Land, and he feared retaliation back home for having spent a peaceful summer in Maine with Jewish children.