Bay Area Palestinians, Jews in Dialogue Celebrate
Season of Light said the press
release.
Three days earlier, U.S. Congresswoman Lynn
Woolsey had declared here in California:
"Must," she said. Treaties
alone -- cold pieces of paper -- are not enough.
Peace is about people and requires human
connections..
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it another way:
King and Woolsey -- man and woman, citizen and
lawmaker -- in their diversity help us better understand the imperative of
human relationships -- compassionate listening, communicating, being together,
seeing the results -- creativity!
And over 100 years ago, American
Ralph Waldo Emerson also prescribed how to fashion a new future:
On Sunday evening, December 7, 2003 in California,
170 local Arabs, Jews, and supportive others followed a new trail to
the first All Bay Area Palestinian-Jewish Dialogue Season of Light Gathering.
Clearing the way to the future, the path was
created by a handful of women and men in the 2-year-old Jewish-Palestinian
Living Room Dialogue Group of Silicon Valley.
The Invitation is on the Web at http://traubman.igc.org/light.htm
.
The Press Release they used is at http://traubman.igc.org/press.htm
.
The American Palestinians
and Jews - women, men and youth - gathered at round tables to share Dialogue
and their best potluck desserts. The mounted
cards at each table recommended:
Introductions (40 minutes)
Get acquainted. Hear from each other, one at a time.
Share the time equally. Use your best listening skills.
Where are you from, including your roots? Where do you live now?
What is your interest or personal experience with Dialogue, and in
meeting the other?
Together at their tables,
the attendees collectively signed a letter to United States, Palestinian,
and Israeli heads of state urging a new quality of listening, and treating
both peoples equally. The message recommends active support for concrete,
congruent proposals now before the public the Roadmap, and the
recently-heralded Beilin-Abed Rabbo Geneva Accord and Nusseibeh-Ayalon Statement
of Principles initiated by creative Israeli and Palestinian citizens
outside of government. The letter can be seen at:
With assured passion, Muna Aghawani, from Ramallah,
and Melodye Feldman, Denver, elaborated how people can change from
"enemies" to partners based on personal experiences largely from the
10-year-old Building Bridges for Peace summer program for Israeli and
Palestinian teen girls, described at:
The landmark evening closed in a
partially-darkened room with a candlelight ceremony around a globe of Earth,
expressions of individual hope, and the inspirational music of Raffi - Salaam
Shalom.
People were in no hurry to leave.
New relationships were born, old ones sustained
and deepened.
That
night, we were living in "the country of the heart" -- of the future.
The path was fresh, but we were on solid ground --
promised land.
We intend to pass on the light of that evening -- the
magic of the night.
Listening does magic, you know.
--L&L
Local dialogues keep hope
alive amid Mideast strife, headlined the subsequent editorial of j.
the Jewish news weekly of northern California for Friday, December 12,
2003, on the Web at:
https://www.jweekly.com/2003/12/11/local-dialogues-keep-hope-alive-amid-mideast-strife/
The editor concluded about the Season of Light
gathering:
"It is a glimpse of how things can be when we
stop seeing the conflict as us and them, and begin to see it as two peoples
with two conflicting versions of history.
"Sunday night was truly a glimpse of how it could
be in ha-olam haba, in the world to come.
"The leaders may not be able to sit at the same
table right now, but civilians apparently can.
"Perhaps, in time, more people will meet
and their leaders will have no choice but to follow."