After Gaza
Many Jews, Palestinians maintain, create relationships
Monday, 06 April 2009
"Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment nothing can fail; without
it, nothing can succeed.
Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes
deeper
than he who enacts statutes or pronounces
decisions.
He makes statutes or decisions possible or
impossible to be executed."
Abraham
Lincoln
After
violence in Gaza and southern Israel, some Palestinians and Jews built new
relationships and strengthened old ones.
They fashioned a new kind of public sentiment - beyond
fear, beyond borders, beyond war.
Some other people found old, worn-out reasons to
withdraw from each other, backwards into their own narratives sometimes even
out of fear of judgment from "their own" clans defying principles of
change and life.
"We cannot make peace with someone whom we
refuse to listen to.. .Seeking recognition of
the truths on each side of a conflict - and
recognizing that all parties to a war are wounded - is another part of the
truth..."
Gene Knudsen Hoffman
from
Compassionate Listening:
An
Exploratory Sourcebook About Conflict Transformation (2008 - 38 pages)
READ the book
at http://newconversations.net/compassion/compassionate_listening.pdf
PURCHASE it at http://compassionatelistening.org/store/books
Here are five
recent examples of people who refuse to become enemies.
= = 1 = =
Mira and Noa: A
Palestinian & Jew sing to the world
"There
Must Be Another Way" continues to be sung together by Jewish Achinoam
(Noa) Nini and Palestinian Mira Awad.
WATCH at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BIsD1P0I9A
They have been accused of being naive,
sympathizers with the "other" side, and unfaithful to their own
peoples.
But the women view their music, presented in a mix of
Hebrew, Arabic and English, as breaking barriers.
HEAR their "Word" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwiDYB0eyRo
as the prepare to perform together at this years Eurovision Song Contest
in Moscow.
= = 2 = =
One Middle East citizen
creates two Web havens
for Palestinians and Jews to meet
"Others are affected by what I am, and say,
and do.
And these others have also their sphere of
influence.
So that a single act of mine may spread in
widening circles through a nation or humanity."
William
Ellery Channing
After the
Gaza violence, Elad Vazana ( Elad@havayati.co.il ) one Israeli citizen created two
Web havens for citizens across borders to begin engaging to cure the
near-absence of Palestinian-Jewish relationships in the Holy Land and worldwide.
"Bridges of Peace Between Gaza and
Israel"
The place for youth from Israel and Gaza
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=57250485988
Already
with 161 participants, The vision is to create a community of youth who will
first communicate then meet face-to-face some day soon.
"Creative ways to build trust & bring
peace between Israelis and Palestinians"
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66559766971
There are
over 248 participants in Elad's second creative initiative to help citizens
finally communicate.
= = 3 = =
Hagar bilingual school
students and parents stay close
Weathering
the Gaza war was Hagar School - http://traubman.igc.org/hagarschool.pdf
- the bilingual Arab-Jewish kindergarten in Be'er Sheva.
Teacher Rada Alubra calls the children to order.
About half of the 25 children are Jewish, while the
others are Arab.
Alubra reads them a story in Arabic, while Jewish
teacher Hanita Hadad interjects periodically in Hebrew.
The classroom is festooned with pictures of animals,
letters of the alphabet and the days of the week, all in both Hebrew and
Arabic.
The Hagar teachers, children, and parents were
exemplary together during the war in Gaza, when missiles regularly struck Be'er
Sheva.
Arab-Jewish kindergarten is bubble among Be'er
Sheva social troubles
Published in Ha'aretz - 04 March 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068528.html
"In
the Negev, Israel's social problems are more extreme, as are relations between
Arabs and Jews," said Yifat Hillel, the director of Hagar.
"The war in Gaza just made the situation
worse."
"But among the parents, we actually felt that we
had to pull together, that we were approaching the edge of a frightening abyss
and that we had to reinforce the secure place we had created for
ourselves," says parent Anis Farhat.
The parents, both Jewish and Arab, seem convinced that
the contact between Arab and Jewish children lets the youngsters oppose
extremism.
One of the Jewish parents, Shlomit Someh-Lehman,
commented, "Before my child is exposed to the winds of racism, he knows
that Arab means Wasim or any other child at the kindergarten, children just
like him."
= = 4 = =
Interfaith engagement in
England
In the
wake of tragedy and hope, British Muslim and Jewish leaders have come together
for interfaith initiatives that are not only important for achieving
communal harmony in the UK, but were designed to inspire Middle Eastern
political leaders to work for lasting peace between Israel and Palestine.
British interfaith initiatives set example for
co-religionists in the Middle East
Common Ground News Service - 24 Feb
2009
http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=24908&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0&isNew=1
During the
Gaza conflict, Britain saw a rise in both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks
on ordinary citizens. There was an arson attack on a London synagogue and the
daughter of a Muslim leader was attacked in Central London and left
unconscious.
Despite this tension, however, there were encouraging
signs.
Dialogue between British Muslims and Jews, which has
too long been stifled by the elephant in the room the Arab-Israeli conflict
actually became more forthright, with greater attempts to harmonise theological
and political positions.
= = 5 = =
Hundreds of Muslims, Jews
join in Arizona
In Tucson,
Arizona, the Annual Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk began as a response to the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.
250 attend 6th Annual Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/frontpage/111724.php
Tucson Citizen - March 08, 2009
Since that day there has been much more dialogue and understanding between Jews and Muslims in Tucson and all over North America.