Say the word peacemaker, and politicians and diplomats come to mind. But peacemakers are also those who work in the trenches, sometimes risking their lives. Here, the stories of three women dedicated to making a difference across the globe.
Befriending the Enemy
Lindsay Miller was in her early twenties when she spent a year in Jerusalem with her husband, Aaron David Miller, then a graduate student. “We had friends from both Jewish and Arab communities,” Miller recalls fondly.
Those friendships fueled Miller’s passion for the Middle East. “I wanted to understand and be involved in all cultures that were a part of Jerusalem,” she says. Nearly two decades later, Miller, now forty-nine, found a job that would allow her to do just that. By then, her husband was negotiating peace agreements in the Middle East for the U.S. State Department, and the family was living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Family friend John Wallach, then a foreign editor for Hearst Newspapers, told Miller that he wanted to start a summer camp for Israeli and Palestinian youth. “I said, ‘Here I am,’ because that’s where my heart was,” she recalls.
Seven years later, the Seeds of Peace International Camp hosts more than four hundred teens each year in three sessions in Otisfield, Maine, and Miller is a vice president of the organization. The camp has expanded to include Egyptians, Jordanians, and Moroccans.
Much of Miller’s work takes place in Washington, D.C., where she has garnered an astonishing level of bipartisan support for the program. Each year, she takes the campers to meet with the president, vice president, secretary of state and members of Congress. She has also brought camp alumni to meetings with Middle East leaders, such as the late King Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Often, the campers tell world leaders that “the impossible has happened—their enemy has become a friend,” says Miller. “The leaders inevitably say how inspired they are by the youth.” Knowing they have the support of world leaders is tremendously important to the teens, who often face hostility or disbelief from friends and family as they try to maintain the cross-border friendships they’ve developed, she says.
Miller says the best part of her job at Seeds of Peace is spending time with the kids at camp. During the first week, some of the kids are so mistrustful of each other that they are afraid to go to sleep. But by the end of the three-and-a-half-week session, the children are friends. “They won’t go home with the same beliefs about what their ‘enemy’ is like because now the enemy has a face,” says Miller.
The teens participate in typical camp activities, such as tennis, swimming and music. They also spend two hours each day debating some of the Middle East’s most bitter conflicts.
Miller’s daughter, Jennifer, a junior at Brown University, spent three summers at Seeds of Peace as both a camper and a counselor. Last summer, she was a counselor in a bunk that held both Arab and Israeli girls. Early in the session, campers learned that the cousin of two Palestinian campers, who had been shot in the spring, had died. The event caused a chill in Jennifer’s bunk that was particularly hurtful to Natalie, an Israeli girl, who wanted to extend her sympathy but could not get Dima, a Palestinian girl, to open up.
One week later, campers learned that a Palestinian woman had been shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. In the dining hall that day, campers stood and expressed their feelings. “With all of the tension, Natalie and Dima realized they couldn’t keep things inside anymore,” recalls Jennifer. “Natalie went up to Dima and gave her a hug. They both stood there hugging and crying. It was incredible.”
Lindsay Miller hopes her work will ultimately change global politics. “We give the kids the tools to stand up for what they believe in,” she says. “In a few years, they will be in positions of real responsibilities, and they’ll be there to make a difference.”
For Miller, this year’s highlight was intramural day, when the kids played against other local camps in a variety of sports. Watching the Seeds of Peace campers conquer their opponents, Miller says, “Everyone was cheering for each other. It was a real team.” Afterward, the Seeds of Peace kids invited their vanquished opponents to join them for a picnic lunch. Says Miller, laughing, “They’re the peacemakers.”