Dancing and lunching -- SIDE BY SIDE with your enemy

Wednesday, 13 June 2010

"It is the future of the children that should spur both sides toward peace."

~ Izzeldin Abuelaish

in I SHALL NOT HATE

"How can we have peace if we dont build relationships?"

~ Ikenna Ezeibe - Abuja, Nigeria

in DIALOGUE IN NIGERIA: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.

It's about learning how to dance in the rain!"

~ Anonymous

Music

DANCING IN JAFFA -- http://www.dancinginjaffa.com -- is a film that explores how Israeli Jews and Palestinians, living uneasily side-by-side, learn to trust and dance with one another.
10-year-old students ascend from reluctant participants toward learning to trust and dance in harmony with one another.
     Reflecting real life, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian youth learn to dance, adapt to their partners, handle the challenges of competition, and begin to trust one another.
     At the same time, they successfully cope with daily inter-familial conflicts, mixed religious backgrounds, displacement, gentrification, and their personal allegiances.

Dancing in Jaffa

4 min trailer - January 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEok-5KlAXY

The metaphor of music tells us that "now is a good time to start thinking of the human enterprise as more like a symphony orchestra and less like a perpetual battleground."
     Thus writes Deb Reich, author of NO MORE ENEMIES -- http://www.nomoreenemies.net -- reminding us how much we can accomplish "by letting go of the enemies paradigm and engaging everyone's creative energies ('ours' and 'theirs') to pull together and move us forward."


Enemies

Lee Ziv, young Jewish Israeli thought-leader, seeks to understand this "enemy" idea that separates us on Earth, not only in her region.
     "Why should I have enemy anyway? Does it give me any pleasure?
     She reflects on the thousands of Muslims, Christians, and Jews she knows, with lives full of dramas and traumas.

     "Many people living in this region of the Middle East cannot live without the enemy figure.
     "If they don't have the 'enemy,' they will invent one to feel that there is an opposition, someone to blame and prove that HE is wrong and I am right.
     "But why do we need this enemy?
"Where does this quality come from?
     "Why do we separate ourselves from the other?
     "Does it come from our education, our families, the media?" 
MORE is online at:    

We refuse to be enemies

by Lee Ziv

Published in Other Reality --  02 June 2012

http://magazine.other-reality.org/en/2012/1/31/We-refuse-to-be-enemies.htm

     Lee Ziv concludes:  "I see it as a deep separation from the source we all come from.
     "We we all went through suffering yet carry the same vision and goal of healing and peace."

     "You may want to call me innocent, but this is what I truly believe in.
     "There are no sides, because we are one.
     "I refuse to be an enemy."

     "Enemy is a result of being I instead of WE.
"Every 'enemy' has a story that wants to be heard.
     "Tell your story and learn to listen to others."


Stories

"An enemy is one whose story we have not heard."

~ Ms. Gene Knudsen Hoffman

Elizabeth Lesser describes a simple way to begin the real dialogue of hearing all the stories.
Lesser goes to lunch with people who don't agree with her, and asks good questions to find out what's really in their hearts.
     She reminds us to explore two parts of human nature within us --  "the mystic" and "the warrior" -- that can be harnessed to elevate the way we treat each other.

Take "the Other" to lunch

TedTalk -- Elizabeth Lesser -- 11 min video

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_lesser_take_the_other_to_lunch.html

Finally in print is the definitive model textbook of respecting, learning, and teaching parallel but sometimes-conflicting narratives -- many stories, all one story, our story.
     This ground-breaking "dual narrative" history of Israel and Palestine offers a new paradigm for the teaching of history in conflict and post-conflict situations
Archival background to this heroic book project links from http://traubman.igc.org/textbooknight.htm

SIDE BY SIDE: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine

by Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Eyal Naveh, and PRIME - Peace Research Institute in the Middle East

The New Press, New York, 2012, 416 pages

http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1838

This textbook is a new educational standard for studying and respecting two peoples equally.


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These and hundreds of other success stories are preserved at http://traubman.igc.org/messages.htm