Forum highlights grassroots efforts to end worldwide conflict

There is no war in Scottsdale, Hannah Assadi acknowledges. Yet the 17-year-old senior at Desert Mountain High School is working hard for peace.

Two years ago, Hannah was searching for an organization that could channel her interest in promoting peace around the world and especially 8,000 miles from home in the Middle East. Through a news report on the network CNN, she learned of Seeds of Peace, a 10-year-old nonpolitical, nonprofit organization that brings together teens from regions of conflict to meet on a foundation of friendship and understanding.

With the backing of her school administration, Hannah founded the Arizona Teen Chapter of Seeds of Peace, which raises money to send young people to an annual summer camp in Maine. It is just one of three active teen chapters in the country, along with chapters in Orlando and Detroit.

What can teenagers do that presidents and the leaders of Israeli and Arab nations have failed to do?

“We’re the future,” Hannah says simply. “You start with small steps. One person can make a difference. We see it throughout history. The reality is there will be peace.”

Journalist John Wallach, whose parents survived the Holocaust, created Seeds of Peace in 1993 following the first attack on the World Trade Center. The first camp met in Otisfield, Maine, that summer, attended by 46 Egyptian, Palestinian and Israeli teens. Today, 500 young people attend camp each year, and they now come from four conflict regions: the Mideast, India and Pakistan, the Balkans and Cyprus.

Seeds of Peace receives no funding from governments in conflict regions so that it can remain neutral. The organization is supported by individuals, foundations and corporations and receives some funding from the United States government.

For many of the teens, camp is the first time they come face to face with people they have known only as their enemy, or “the other side.” At night they are literally sleeping with the enemy as Israelis bunk with Egyptians, Indians with Pakistanis. Some campers arrive wary and in fear of the negative images they’ve been raised with. Some don’t sleep the first night.

Three and a half weeks later, many leave camp again tearful – but now crying for the friendships they’ve made and for the stereotypes they’ve dismantled.

When Malvina Goldfeld, now 21, attended her first camp in 1995, the girl from Ashdod, Israel, met Arab children for the first time. When camp ended, she was touched by the intimacies that had formed and for the uncertainty of which path she and each of her new friends would take.

Goldfeld recently completed her country’s mandatory two years of military service, spending two years in the Israeli Air Force. She believes that because of her Seeds of Peace experience, she served with an outlook oriented toward peace.

“The image people have of the other side is through the media,” Goldfeld says at a Nov. 8 Seeds of Peace Forum at Desert Mountain High School, arranged by Hannah Assadi and her mother, Susan Assadi.

At Seeds of Peace camp, teenagers can share typical teen concerns, but they can also freely discuss politics in a safe atmosphere where all views are respected. Beliefs are bound to change.

“All these things you’re sure were true are shattered,” says Goldfeld, now a sophomore at Princeton University studying international relations.

Every participant leaves changed in some way, says her friend and colleague, Adham Rishmawi, 21, born in Bethlehem in Palestine. Rishmawi, a junior at Columbia University in New York City majoring in biomedical engineering, attended camp in 1997 and 1998. Like Goldfeld, Rishmawi was visiting the Valley to address young people and adults at the Seeds of Peace Forum.

Growing up during the first Palestinian Intifada, he says his parents taught him the ways of tolerance, that while the government of Israel might be the enemy, there were good hearts among the Israeli people themselves. It was not until Rishmawi arrived at the camp in Maine that he discovered for himself how true that was.

“They put us on an equal setting that’s neutral (at camp),” he says. “Everyone speaks English. It’s a requirement. It’s important to realize we are technically the same. We look the same. We come from the same area. You realize they’re people like you.”

Bridge building does not end when camp closes, he says. Camp is just the beginning. Teens fan out in their home countries and bring the message of coexistence through diplomacy, Rishmawi and Goldfeld tell their audience.

“We have to be wise how we talk about Seeds of Peace at home,” Rishmawi says. Others “haven’t experienced coexistence. It’s a slow educational process.”

Goldfeld says her return from camp was met with mixed responses. Some of her friends consider her naive to believe peace is attainable.

Peace is attainable, says George Atallah, senior development associate for Seeds of Peace at the organization’s New York headquarters.

“There’s no option,” he says. “I refuse to consider what the alternative is.”

Atallah, who left a job with the investment firm of Goldman Sachs to work for Seeds of Peace, tells the Scottsdale audience the peace organization wants to offer a road map for how people so far from conflict can have an impact. Just 10 years into Seeds of Peace, its fruits are already being harvested as teens grow up and teach the lessons they learned at camp.

The hope is that enemies become friends, he says. “If somebody is my friend, I will not raise up a violent hand against him or her.”

Seeds of Peace offers no solutions. It simply provides a forum where one side can meet another on common ground. Camp offers its participants freedom of expression, freedom of association and the freedom to dialogue, Atallah says.

“It’s not ‘Kumbaya’ in the woods,” he says with a laugh. “It’s hard work.”

Camp is also fun. Participants share sports, music and drama. They play together and eat together, linked by the generosity of American teens attending the sessions.

In Washington, D.C., Seeds of Peace enjoys bipartisan support. Board members include Presidents George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton. It has been endorsed by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Vice President Al Gore.

U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-5th District) spoke at the Desert Mountain event, telling his audience “I rejoice we live in a free society.” He commended Seeds of Peace for promoting tolerance and said that applies as well to our everyday dealings with siblings, parents, classmates, spouses and coworkers.

And, he notes, “Peace starts not with the absence of conflict but with the presence of God.”

Hannah Assadi is by nature a peacemaker and bridge builder. Her mother is Jewish and her father Palestinian. But all Arizona teens can play a role in the peace process. They can spread the word; they can talk to parents and friends about tolerance and work to break down their own prejudices, she explains.

Finally, she says, “Believe and have faith.”

Details about Seeds of Peace are available at the Web site, www.seedsofpeace.org. The site contains information about attending summer camp and how to contribute to the organization.

Read Barbara Hilton’s article at the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix »