I'm sitting at my desk in Los Angeles, far away from everything going on in Israel. These days, I often find myself recalling a session at the village during the NSWAS Friends Associations General Meeting when I was listening to reports from the different educational institutions. I was fascinated by the panel of young people who presented on the second day of the meetings, the "second generation." They are all beautiful to my eyes and ears, and they speak so well – in English, as well as Hebrew and Arabic. “Now that you are out of school” I wanted to ask them, “what will you do with your lives? How will you make a difference in your country that needs you so very much?” Some have followed into their parents' professions and others are making their own way as young people do everywhere, becoming accountants or artists, teachers or physicians, human rights law-yers or journalists. I can see that while some have specifically chosen the healing arts as their profes-sion, each one of these young adults, the village’s “second generation,” is daily engaged in the healing of their world. They so clearly carry with them the lessons they learned from their parents (the first generation of the village) and their Primary School: that two peoples, with competing narratives, can live together in equality and mutual respect, while they find a new way to transform the conflict. What impressed me the most is how confident they all seem. I wondered how many of them will join the next generation of peace builders, along with the thousands of children and teenagers who have gone to the Primary School and participated in School for Peace programs. Then I realized that they are doing it every day. Wherever they work, they may find themselves expos-ing an injustice or healing a breach, confident that they are the living proof that such a world is possible. The School for Peace is seeing its own “second generation” moving out to make a difference in their world. Monthly re-gional forums of School for Peace graduates have begun in Nazareth, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba focusing on the current situation in the region and identifying opportunities to get to work, making a difference for the good. They are developing projects relevant to their local communities, with some projects already underway. I would love to listen in on one of the meetings, to hear what the graduates are saying about the impact the School for Peace has had on their lives. Right now, I return to my desk and the work that I and other board members and staff do to keep our organization run-ning, making sure that we can send funds to support this second generation who are at work, being change agents for peace throughout the region.

Judy Dubin

L e t t e r f r o m t h e P r e s i d e n t o f A F N S W A S

N S W A S I m p a c t S t r e t c h e s F a r B e y o n d V i l l a g e

School for Peace cross-border/binational programs for physicians, educators, journalists; Palestinian-Jewish high school residential youth encounters; SFP University courses; Nadi (youth club) summer camps for children from refugee camps; Primary School programs for regional children, parents, teachers; Spiritual Center bilingual/Jewish- Palestinian (Israeli and West Bank) gatherings, sa-cred text study, youth leadership programs; Museum and archive. You’ve read about them and, because of your sup-port, the map can show you just how far-reaching the vil-lage’s impact has become.

S P R I N G 2 0 1 5

Judy Dubin

Sixth Grade students

“Celebrating Democracy Day” at NSWAS

During Tu B’Shevat /Eid i-Shajarah, the holiday of the trees, the Primary School stu-dents at the Oasis of Peace took their classroom learning outside and participated in several planting activities in and around the school, using seedlings they had raised in their school’s greenhouse. Making connections with the community out-side the village, and guided by teachers Nadwa, Voltaire, and Michal, the children explored the surrounding area learning about local herbs and useful or medicinal plants, recycled found trash and junk into art, and learned to plow a small field on the village’s hillside, followed by the planting of locally grown Armenian Cucum-bers.

The importance of the environment and nature’s ability to make connections be-tween people is a growing part of the Primary School’s curriculum. The Primary School at the Oasis of Peace wel-comed a teacher from Düesseldorf, Germany for a week-long visit. What had begun as an exchange between two teachers from two different schools, both of which have a multicultural, multi-religious, and multilingual popula-tion, has blossomed into a thriving partnership between two classes in different countries. The 6th grades began creating projects together while sharing and comparing progress and change online. The first project involved growing daffodils and tulips while comparing how the flowers reacted to the differences in climate and environ-

mental conditions. A second project called, “The View from My Win-dow,” gives students a glimpse into the world and life of students from their partner class. (To see “The View from My Window,” and daffodil project please visit http://awaybuttogether.net/projects/).

The children understand by experience that, like a sapling, coopera-tion and peace is fragile when first begun but, when tended to pa-tiently, they can flourish into deeply-rooted trees that continue to bear fruit for future generations. As the next step in this evolving, in-ternational and cross-cultural collaboration, the sixth graders at the Oasis of Peace Primary School will visit their new co-learners and friends in Düesseldorf this spring. We look forward to reporting what

we can learn from their emerging model of multi-lingual, multicultural collaborative learning beyond the usual boundaries of time and geography.

Primary School: Growing Life, Building Partnerships

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S P R I N G 2 0 1 5

The School for Peace is well on its way to achieving one of its goals of establishing an academic course in every higher education institution with mixed Arab-Jewish student bod-ies. More than any other institution in Israel, the School for Peace has been responsible for developing a professional standard for working with groups in conflict.

The long-term specialized training program and unique group facilitation techniques have resulted in the creation of a number of university courses. Recently, at the request of Ben Gurion University’s Student Union, for the first time the

SFP expanded its curriculum to include a second semester that adds practical work in Jewish-Arab relations by volun-teering in bilingual pairs in elementary schools, and in social change organizations. Often, the graduates of these pro-grams continue on to becoming professionals and leaders in the peace and human rights groups in the region. The School for Peace continues to look for more opportunities to develop such courses in other universities.

School for Peace: A Change of Course

Thanks to our Adopt a Class supporters, these First

Graders are our future ambassadors of peace!

School for Peace Workshop

Children working at Arbor Day.

Newly appointed Coordinator of the Nadi (youth club), Nadine Nashef has been moving the Nadi toward an exciting direction. After moving with her parents to the village in 2000, Nadine, now 23, graduated from the Primary School and volunteered for the village in her teens. After graduating from Bezalel College of Art, she has committed to strength-ening the work of the Nadi. Following Nadine’s example, four high-school volunteers, Noam, Bissan, Diyar, and Ramez have been assisting, holding regular meetings to plan and implement new activities for Nadi members.

With the goal of encouraging youth from outside the village to partici-pate in future Nadi activities, the students of the Nadi partnered with

the Jewish and Palestinian youth camp organized by the Forum for Bereaved Families. Together, they took a trip to Hava and Adam, a small eco-farm. The participants were divided into groups, taking turns making ecological bricks, medicinal pastes, and organic soaps. To the students of the Nadi, interaction with youth outside of the village and inviting them to take part in the future Nadi activities is a way to introduce living with equality and mutual respect, core values of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, to a wider audience, a goal close to the hearts of all the members.

In April, the Nadi will be holding a Youth Leaders Course for students in high school designed to provide teens with the tools and skills to serve as youth counselors for children both within and beyond the village. Facilitated by ex-perts in youth leadership, the course will consist of workshops, discussions and an intensive 4-day training seminar outside the village. The graduates of the course will go on to volunteer at the 2015 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Palestinian Summer Camp and at the ongoing activities at the Nadi.

N a d i : M a k i n g C o n n e c t i o n s

Spiritual Center Brings Creativity and the Arts into Peace -Making

In the ongoing conflict-transformation work that is led by members of NSWAS, the Pluralistic Spiritual Center sup-ports the connections between spirituality —whether introspective or expressive— and the work we can do as part of healing the conflict. The Spiritual Center has de-veloped a Museum, Gallery and Archive so that the inte-gration of the arts and the spirit will have a permanent home.

On March 10, 2015, the Wahat al-Salam/ Neve Shalom Museum, Gallery and Archive extended an open invita-tion to its inaugural event: “Remembering the Righteous: For the sake of humanity and in memory of the righteous who acted to save lives in different places of genocide.” At-tended by many of all faiths and from many cities and towns in Israel, the program offered presentations and discus-sions honoring the memory of Palestinians and other Arabs who saved the lives of Jews, honoring the memory of Jews who saved lives of Palestinians and other Arabs and an introduction to the movement "Gariwo: Gardens of the

Righteous Worldwide." A variety of works designed for this focus will be on long-term display.

The Museum and Gallery is the home for a new program, "Artists Creating Peace,” where 20 Palestinian and 20 Jewish artists will spend several days and a long weekend together at the Museum and Spiritual Center, building networks for ongoing connec-tions among Jewish and Palestinian artists, and jointly creating a piece of public art which will then be on exhibit. Museum Director Dyana Shaloufi-Rizek is currently cre-ating opportunities for engaging younger and older participants in the Museum and archive work.

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Nadi Workshop with the Youth Camp.

Daphna Karta Schwartz and

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

Different Activities at the Pluralistic Spiritual Center

I n t e r v i e w w i t h : M a i S h b e t a

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S P R I N G 2 0 1 5

Mai was born at Neve Shalom/ Wahat al-Salam to a Jewish-Swiss mother and a Palestinian-Muslim father, and lives there with her parents and two younger sisters. A law student at Bar Ilan University, Mai is completing both her law degree and an internship in Human Rights and right now, her dream is to work for the United Nations. At Bar Ilan, Mai was active in the Model United Nations, the debating society, Creativity for Peace (organizing peace camps and leadership training for girls), V-Girls, (young women from around the world committed to spreading the idea of women’s and girl’s rights) and Global Change Makers (who choose young activists to attend a youth summit in London, giving them tools to create the changes they want to see in their societies). After attending that summit Mai focused on a project to raise funds and awareness for women's rights.

Mai has met many mixed families, but most of them tend to choose a side, to emphasize one or the other. On Inde-pendence /Naqba day in the Wahat-al-Salam/Neve Shalom Primary School, the Jewish and Palestinian pupils are separated in the morning and brought together in the afternoon. Mai felt torn, not knowing which “side” to join, so she asked to move between both and the school respected her request.

At age 17, Mai and her friends had a discussion about the army in one of the meetings at the Nadi, the local youth club. It wasn't an easy talk, and it got very emotional. But what made it important to Mai was that after the difficult and emotional conversation, they were still ‘best’ friends. This makes Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam so special: learn-ing how to have a discussion about personal (or political) issues, and staying friends while acknowledging others' points of view. Mai feels that if someone has to do the job of a soldier, she would prefer it to be someone from the village but she would rather serve the country by making the conflict end.

Mediating the conflict: As a student of law and mediation, Mai has represented her university at the International Criminal Court's international mediation competition in Paris. “It is important to remind them that we all suffered from the same conflict, and one day we'll have to stop. It's just a question of how many more people have to die, and how long it will take. They have to come to an agreement, and it doesn't matter who started and what happened sixty years ago, what matters is what's happening now, and where we can go from where we are today.”

School for Peace: Organizations Working for a Common Goal The School for Peace is dedicated to providing a non-violent and sus-tainable response to the conflict. Despite the recent challenge of the summer 2014 war in Gaza, the SFP is getting traction in, and support from, a number of peace organizations in the region. Influenced by a recent trip to South Africa, the SFP established a steering committee to strengthen peace and human rights advocacy among the Israeli left, human rights groups and peace organizations. Most recently, the committee, the village and the SFP held a day-long conference on the conflict in Gaza and its repercussions, attended by 25 organiza-tions (film selections available on the SFP website). A letter of sup-port for the recognition of a Palestinian State, to be sent to the Euro-pean Parliament, was initiated and signed by activists from peace

organizations, human rights organizations, graduates of the School for Peace, and representatives from the Other Voice of the Negev.

As one outcome of the conference and the rich exchange of ideas the committee made a formal visit to Ramallah in order to attend a meeting held by the Palestinian Committee for Interaction with Israel, headed by Dr. El Madani. The participants and their organizations have determined that the best course of action at present is to initiate more joint Palestinian-Israeli actions promoting peace and non violence among their populations, support efforts for the United Nations recognition of Palestinian statehood, and gain greater media coverage for visits of Palestinian officials to Israel and Israeli officials to Palestine. The committee will continue to meet and work towards reaching out to a number of Arab Israeli organizations as well as religious and Russian communities throughout 2015.

Mai Shbeta

Dr. Nava Sonnenschein at a demonstration in support of peace between

Palestinians and Jews.

I n t e r v i e w w i t h : N o a m S h u s t e r

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Noam moved to Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam in the second grade. Her mother (born in Iran), and her father (a Jerusalemite) who is a Holocaust survivor from Romania, made a conscious choice to expose their children to both Jewish and Palestinian narratives. Aware of the responsibility of being an ambassador of the village, she wants to raise awareness that the two peoples can live together in equality. As part of her Coexistence scholarship at Brandeis University, majoring in International Relations, Noam developed a project in Rwanda for young people from both sides of that conflict, exposing them to each other's narrative.

Noam did civil service instead of Army service, realizing both how difficult it is for Palestini-ans to see their friends go into the army, and that some Jews in the village decide to serve in the army. The diversity of opinions in the community, and the fact that people make decisions for themselves is precisely what she likes about the village. Learning about the other people doesn't mean “looking for big solutions, big answers, just acknowl-edgement, knowing that there is injustice.”

Today, Noam works for on a unique project funded by the United Nations called “Interpeace.” She works with the populations in Israel traditionally excluded from the peace process - the ultra-orthodox, the Russian speaking popula-tion, and leaders of the Palestinian community in Israel.

In Noam’s work with the UN, communicating in Arabic is very much a part of her everyday life. Palestinian percep-tions of Jews who speak Arabic are influenced by the fact that so many Arabic speaking Jews are drafted into the se-curity forces for purposes of intelligence gathering. Consequently, many Palestinians feel at first wary about her use of Arabic, but Noam explains how she came to learn the language and why it is so important for her to speak it.

Living in the village, “We do not shy [away] from disagreement. The educational system in Israel makes people inter-nalise our victimisation and therefore be completely blind to other suffering.” The Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Pri-mary School is where she experienced that there was no contradiction, between learning about the Naqba and her own heritage. “The fact is that we are able to live together with all the difficulties… awareness and the acknowledge-ment of suffering is the key.” If the next generation’s leaders come from this place this could have a significant im-pact.”

Noam realizes what a true gift she's been given by living at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. “What is important about the village is the re-humanization of each other. We’re the generation that will make the change here, and I’m willing to sacrifice, to give everything, to dedicate my life to this.”

J Street has just honored AFNSWAS Director Richard

Goodwin and former Director and daughter, Joanna

Goodwin Friedman, for their committed, compassionate

and remarkable work of creating and sustaining organiza-

tional support for Middle East reconciliation and peace-

building. Judy Dubin, AFNSWAS President, David Matz, Vice

President and Development Director Sarah Burns attended the conference and

award celebration. Presenting the T’zedek V’Shalom (Wisdom and Peace) award

was journalist and supporter of peace and bilingual education in Israel, AFNSWAS

Director J Zel Lurie, whose daughter Susan Lurie Zaslavsky is now an AFNSWAS Director living in Israel. The ‘Second

Generation’ model of passing on the values and bringing in the next generation to continue the work that was be-

gun isn’t something that only happens at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam.

P a s s i n g i t o n !

Noam Shuster

Earlier photo of Honoree Richard Goodwin and Zel Lurie

Honoree Joanna Goodwin Friedman

Pe

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Sti

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T h e A m e r i c a n F r i e n d s o f N e v e S h a l o m / W a h a t a l - S a l a m

I N P E R S O N Representatives from Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam: Dr. Maram Masarwi and Ety Edlund will be in the

United States from April 26th - May 9th. Their tour will take them to New York, Washington D.C., San

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where and when you can meet these two inspiring and accomplished ambassadors of peace. If you are inter-

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