A Jewish-Arab Partnership Is Building a Young New Peace Camp in Israel

[Nanjeanne]

Last edited Sat Jan 6, 2024, 02:08 PM - Edit history (2)

From Haaretz. A little bit of hope — this newly formed organization hopefully is the future for Israel and Palestine. I’ve posted about them before and continue to be impressed with their outreach. Sometimes I need a ray of hope.

It is a very long article filled with many stories. It is so worth reading (IMHO)

Amid the war in Gaza, Standing Together is on a roll: It has 5,000 dues-paying members, the number of its student chapters has doubled, and new groups of Jews and Arabs are working to preserve solidarity – and to instill hope for shared life in Israel

"You're not alone," said the Jewish woman to the Arab woman. Shedding tears, the two Israelis, who were meeting for the first time, embraced. The scene played out in the modest Lod apartment of the Arab woman, Isra Abou Laban Oudi. She's a single mother, and her 3-year-old son, Tareq, scampered merrily among the 14 strangers, Jews and Arabs, who were guests in his home.

From the beginning of the school year, Oudi says, her son, who speaks only Arabic, had attended a municipal Hebrew-speaking preschool. After October 7, when the children returned to school, Tareq too was happy to reunite with his friends after what had been a two-week break. However, Oudi says, when she heard him speaking Arabic, his teacher hit him and demanded he not use "that language."

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The whole situation left Oudi feeling helpless and very much alone. That is, until the solidarity encounter that took place in her home, when members of Standing Together – an Arab-Jewish social movement that seeks to advance a beneficent, egalitarian society in Israel through joint grassroots activity – came to show their support.

Three days after that visit, Oudi and her toddler son attended an event organized by the movement in the nearby city of Ramle which, like Lod, has a mixed population. There, in a banquet hall that had no banquets to host, Arabs and Jews were working side by side to prepare food packages for Jewish, Muslim and Christian families whose source of livelihood had been truncated because of the war.

Oudi and her son did not join in the activity of Standing Together ("Omdim Beyahad" in Hebrew) by chance. It's part of the "recovery plan" that the movement recommends for people who have been hurt by racism: to transform the affront into constructive activity. "It gives people the strength to translate the hurt into joint activity, restores a renewed sense of control and also brings us new and highly motivated members," explains Omri Goren, 24, who oversees the movement's activity in the Ramle-Lod area and also heads its student division.

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[link:https://archive.is/1c3Kl|]. Free Link

[link:https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-05/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/a-jewish-arab-partnership-is-building-a-young-new-peace-camp-in-israel/0000018c-daa9-d751-ad8d-ffadd6e00000|]. Haaretz Link if you have subscription