Anika in Italy!: Shalom from Israel

This past week has been one of the most amazing weeks of my life. Along with about 120 young people ages 17-22 from 22 different countries, I traveled to Israel for the Rotary/LEAD leaders to peace conference. What a powerful experience! The first day I flew into Tel Aviv and was picked up by a host family, where I (and two other young people) stayed for one night. They were so welcoming and had signs and balloons taped to the front door to greet us! The next day they drove us to the Neve Shalom peace village, a community of Jews and Arabs who live together, where we stayed for the rest of the conference. We saw many different parts of Israel (the dead sea, Jerusalem, the Negav desert, Tel Aviv), and had discussions and heard lectures about multifaith/ multiculturalism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and peace.
The conference was incredible for many reasons, but the new friends I made were a huge highlight. I got to know so many interesting people! Our discussions and activities were held in small groups of 12 people that we kept for the whole week, so our group became really close. Our group was diverse, too, as we had four Israelis, a German, a Canadian, two Italians, a girl from Belgium, a guy from Poland, a girl from France, and me as the only American. We all had lots in common and had lots of great discussions about peace in all its forms- peace with yourself, with people from your community, and with people different from yourself. We talked about our cultures, how to be a good leader, and about what we can do to bring about peace in our communities. We talked about how difficult it is to hear about violence and suffering in the world, but feel like we can't do anything to change it. Sometimes it feels like everything is decided by the government, so there really isn't anything we as young people can do to bring peace, but one of the big points that we brought up was that peace doesn't start with politicians. It starts with the common people. The conference was in an ideal location to discuss this because we applied it especially to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Neve Shalom peace village was the perfect example. We listened to an Arab woman who had grown up at the Neve Shalom village speak about the history/significance of the village, and it was so interesting. We ended up getting into a discussion about the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The village was started in the 70s when a Jewish man- who had converted to Christianity, becoming a monk- wanted to start a community where Jews and Palestinians lived peacefully together. The monestary where he lived gave him their blessing to start a village, and gave him a piece of land on a hill to make it work. In the beginning, the place only housed workshops and projects. These projects were designed to give opportunities to Jews and Arabs to meet and converse with each other. Gradually, a few families moved to the village permanently, and the community was started. Today, there are 60 families living at Neve Shalom, exactly 30 of them Jewish and exactly 30 of them Arab. This equilibrium is an important aspect of how the village functions. Both Arabic and Hebrew are spoken, and even if some of the Jewish adults have trouble learning Arabic, all the children are bilingual. The woman was talking about how even though both Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages in Israel, Arabic isn’t obligatory at school, so most Jews don’t even speak Arabic at all, they only speak Hebrew. This creates a language barrier between the Jews and the Arabs living in Israel (which is made up of 76% Jews and 24% Arabs). She says it is absolutely crucial for all Israelis to speak Arabic as well as Hebrew so that the two groups can begin to form relationships with each other. The current situation for Arab Israelis as well as Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank is very difficult, because they feel that they don’t belong anywhere. Their ancestors had to leave Israel in 1948 when the state of Israel was created, so they aren’t really wanted in Israel, but they have no other home as there is no Palestinian state. An Arab girl at the conference spoke about how conflicted she feels about her identity as an Arab Israeli. There is a huge separation between the communities of Arabic-speaking people and Hebrew-speaking people in Israel, and the language barrier separates them more than anything now. The big problem is getting the two groups to meet, because there is such a history of conflict between the two groups. The Palestinians are angry about being forcibly removed from their homes in 1948 when the State of Israel was started, but now that their homeland has changed to a Jewish state they don’t feel like they belong back there anymore either. The woman we were talking to says that as an Arab living in Israel, the only place she feels safe to express herself and her opinions is at Neve Shalom, where she grew up.

At Neve Shalom (the name means "peace oasis"), the families live together and undergo projects to promote meetings between Arabs and Jews. For example, each year the community hosts groups of Arab children ages 8-10 from Palestinian Refugee camps to come stay at Neve Shalom for a week. Even though it is extremely difficult and even dangerous to find permits for the children to enter Israel, they do it. The officials who handle the permit process are very cold and only talk about the children using their identification numbers instead of their names. Although the kids are terrified when being transported across the border, the woman told us how amazing it is to watch the Palestinian children interacting and playing with the Neve Shalom children (who also spoke Arabic, being bilingual from living in the Neve Shalom village).

I was so impressed about how the village works to create healthy relationships between the Jews and the Arabs, and especially how they are starting with children to teach tolerance to the new generation. It isn't always easy, as the residents of Neve Shalom say, but they have found peace in the midst of one of the greatest global conflicts. Their goal to spread peace between the common people instead of starting with the governments was so inspiring.

We had many other great experiences outside of Neve Shalom as well! In our travels around Israel, my favorite place was the dead sea. It is so salty that getting the water in your eyes could cause you to go blind, and drinking only a quarter cup of it causes you to die (your body drowns in the salt). Despite these things, I LOVED how much you float in the water! You can lay on your back on the surface of the water and just float there, totally relaxed. There is no need to tread water because you stay afloat- you couldn't sink to the bottom if you wanted to. Nearby there was a mineral mud pit, so we all covered ourselves in mud and let it dry in the sun, since it's supposed to be really good for your skin. Afterwards we rinsed off in the sea. The surrounding desert scenery was beautiful! The Israelis thought it was so funny how excited I was to see a camel. We spent a night in the desert in a tent (basically a cloth roof on wooden poles) which was super fun because we had a campfire and time for group singing. Jerusalem was also an amazing experience. The highlight for me was the Western wall, a two-thousand year-old wall where people go to communicate with God. You write a wish on a slip of paper and put it in the cracks of the wall. It was a spiritual experience to touch the wall and to watch people praying and even crying at the wall, communicating with God. The environment around the wall was definitely spiritual-- you could feel that it was a sacred place. The other parts of Jerusalem were fun to see as well!

All in all, everyone was so disappointed to have to leave Israel, because the conference had been such a success! I would love to come back someday to visit my new Israeli friends.

Other than the conference in Israel, the other big recent event for me was that my dad came to visit me in Italy for 2 days at the end of March! It was great to see him after 7 months of not seeing each other, and I showed him Vicenza and Venice. We had several meals together with my host family so they could get to know each other.

Sorry for the long post, if you've stuck with me this far I thank you! Until next time, ciao ciao.