Seminar 'dialogue on pain' opens path to understanding
By Orly Halpern
On the second day of a three-day Holocaust seminar at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot's Center for Humanistic Studies this week, the Jewish participants were asked to play Arabs. The teenagers, from the Galilee area, were told to act out a scene in which they were Arab youths chosen to prepare Israeli Independence Day activities for their highschool.
Encircled by their fellow Arab and Druze seminar participants, the teens gathered in a smaller circle. Mohammed, the group clown, sat with them smugly until Orly Gal, the facilitator, finally noticed and, to the laughter of everyone else, kicked him out to the larger circle.
"Ranin" (Keren): "I say, let's do a ceremony for the Nakba [the Palestinian `catastrophe,' when the State of Israel was created]."
"Faris" (Alon): "Let's do both [Independence Day and the Nakba]. We don't want them to kick us out of school."
Suddenly, all the Arab youth are listening attentively. Even noisy Mohammed is watching the group in the center of the room silently.
"Nidaa" (Shelly): "Forget it. No way. This isn't our country, this is the state of the Jews. Didn't you listen to the words of the national anthem? And, the flag! Forget it. I'm not taking part."
The rest of the "Arab" students show they are clearly not interested in organizing the celebrations but, in the end, agree to do a ceremony for both Israeli Independence Day and the Palestinian Nakba.
"Faris" (Alon): "We have no choice."
Gal, the facilitator, turns to the real Arabs in the room and asks, "so, how were they?" Applause and smiles break out all over and one Arab youth yells out: "Great, they were just great."
The 16- to 18-year-olds, 63 teenagers from the north of Israel were participating in a summer seminar promoting dialogue between Jews, Arabs and Druze by teaching the Holocaust from a universal, humanistic point of view. Raya Kalisman, director of the center, based the program on "Bringing the Lessons Home," a project of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum (NHMM) in Washington, D.C., which aims to create better understanding between Afro-Americans and Asian immigrants. Kalisman works in close co-operation with the NHMM.
Kalisman, a history teacher, spent a year on sabbatical in Washington in 1994, where she "learned there are totally different ways to teach the Shoah than the ways that were taught here. Here, we always teach it from a Jewish ethnocentric viewpoint."
In 1995, Bill Parsons, who was at the time the head of the department of education of the NHMM and is presently its CEO, offered Kalisman to "copy" the project for use in a Jewish school where she taught in Israel.
"But I wanted to do the project between Jews and Arabs. Until then," she recalled, "the Holocaust was completely taboo to talk about in Jewish-Arab dialogue groups. I said we need to discuss it, because from the Shoah, we can understand the meaning of being a human being, and the importance of human rights and democracy, which is supposed to guard them and teach people not to be bystanders when minorities are hurt or when they see a violation of human rights."
The Center for Humanistic Studies was set up at the "Kibbutz of the Ghetto Fighters" where a Holocaust Museum already existed. The Abraham Fund (TAF), an American not-for-profit organization that promotes coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, became its first and most prominent sponsor, underwriting some one-third of the center's activities. This year alone, TAF donated almost $1 million to cover various local grass-roots projects.
In addition, the center receives funding from two private New York sources - Robert de Rothschild, and Henry and Edith Everret - as well as from Israel's Matan Fund. Several municipalities and community centers fund the transportation of the participants to and from the center each day with an accompanying teacher. The center's staff also trains young Arabs and Jews to become instructors themselves.
"Whether we want it to be or not, the Shoah is connected very intimately with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because Palestinians see themselves as victims. We can argue and we can say it's not true, but that's how they feel," explained Kalisman, who has a son serving as an officer in the Paratroops.
"Because our youth come with their own collective memories to the dialogue, we can't ignore it and, morally, we must listen to the pain of the other. We believe this dialogue on pain opens the path to life together in the same area with more understanding."
Kalisman expressed some fear of talking publicly about the center's activities: "These days, it is somehow unacceptable to hear the pain of the other. What can we do that the boy from the village next to my community is considered my enemy and visa versa." She added facetiously: "We're supposed to be fighting each, other not listening to each other."
Meanwhile, it is the turn of the Arabs and Druze teens to play Jews in the seminar class.
"You are Jewish students from Jerusalem who are supposed to be meeting a group of Arab students for the final program you have worked on together for the semester. A suicide bomber blows up a bus and kills two kids from your school, who were also supposed to participate in the event. Should you go and meet the Arab students?" asks Gal.
"Gili" (Muna): "I'm going."
"Ruti" (Marwa): "What? Do you want them to kill you?!?"
"Nissim" (Wulla): "They're bloodthirsty. If they're Palestinians, they probably support those attacks."
"Merav" (Rajaa): "Is someone going to check for weapons?"
"Nissim": "All the Arabs are the same. Like Rabbi Ovadia Yosef says, they're snakes."
At this point, everyone laughs. But the Jewish teens are listening closely.
"Dana" (Nahil): "We should go. They won't do anything to us and we want to have peace. We know them anyway."
"Nissim": "Forget it. They gave us two intifadas. They're a stupid people."
Everyone laughs. At the end of the role-play, there is a light, almost festive mood in the room. It seemed that by playing out the fears and extremist attitudes of the other side, the teenagers had risen above them.
"Because our youth come with their own collective memories to the dialogue," said Kalisman, "we can't ignore it and, morally, we must listen to the pain of the other. We believe this dialogue on pain opens the path to life together in the same area - with more understanding.
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