BY CHRISTOPHER M. SINGER | DEARBORN Current affairs and history lessons about the Middle East became vividly personal Monday in John Forster’s sociology class at Dearborn Fordson High School.
“I was throwing stones at Israeli soldiers during the intifida (uprising),” said a visiting speaker, Abdasalam Al-Khayyat, a 16-year-old Palestinian high schooler from the West Bank town of Nablus.
He was accompanied by Shani Raz-Silbiger, a 14-year-old Israeli girl from Jerusalem.
As participants in a 5-year-old program called Seeds of Peace they’re wrapping up a week of publicity and fund-raising appearances around Metro Detroit.
The teens were among 160 Middle Eastern youths who attended a three-week summer camp in Maine to learn about each other and attend “coexistence workshops.”
Shani, whose parents are active in Israel’s peace movement, told how she distinguishes between people and actions. “I don’t hate Arabs,” she explained, “but I’m angry (at terrorism).”
While she was in Maine, news arrived of a bombing in Israel, Shani remembered. “We saw Arab delegations crying, too,” she said. “They hugged us and told us ‘We’re sorry.’
“It made me realize I have to work harder to prove those who want peace are the majority.”
For his part, Abdasalam initially feared he’d be branded a traitor by other Palestinians back home for joining the program. He told the Dearborn students he still can’t talk about camp experiences with his father or paternal grandmother. His father’s brother was killed and the family was displaced in 1948 when Israel was formed. At one session in Maine, Abdasalam recalled, an Israeli girl told him that there is no nationality called Palestinian and that “you are like animals.” Abdasalam yelled at her, but then was moved to apologize. “I understood that she is human and she has feelings just like I do,” he explained.
“You can see that peace is not very hard. We breathe the same air, drink from the same water, eat the same food.”
One Fordson student asked if building personal relationships among a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians, as the two visitors have done, can help preserve peace.
“It has to,” Shani replied.