« Thematic Highlights

Personal Story

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ The thing is when my mother wrote that my father died, I had something concrete. I had a letter, I cried. But because of not knowing about my mother, I sort of had visions that she might be with the partisans, that she might be in hiding or something. I gave birth to one child after another, and we were struggling to survive. There was no literature around [about the Holocaust], and nobody to talk to. It's very difficult to explain. There was a lot of sadness and I suffered from depression, but eventually, with the Eichmann trial, you couldn't escape listening because it was in the newspaper, it was on the radio, everyone talked about it, but it was very impersonal. It wasn't my mother, it was other people. So it took longer. I can't tell you what I did think because I don't know. Things which are not recorded, I can't recall. But I know that I cried a lot. That I do know. I had years of deep depressions.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Rami Nasrallah
International Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ During my experience at the Hebrew University, as a Palestinian student from Jerusalem who did not know a word in Hebrew but learned the language and received a PhD, I started to understand who this enemy is. I used to think that the enemy was the soldier that checked my ID at the checkpoint. I used to think that the enemy was the settlers. I discovered that there is a civilian side to the Israelis that we might reach an understanding with. The time I spent at the university changed my view generally and my perception of the Israelis. We, as Palestinians, really don't know at all who the Israelis are. We know the Israelis as the soldiers at the checkpoints, we know them by the Hebrew words used in the streets, but do we know the Israeli civilian life? No. That was the motivation for building a comprehensive relationship among civilians.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yafit Gamila Biso
The Olive Tree Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was born in Damascus. My neighbors were Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and the majority were Jewish, but it varied. Most of my friends were Palestinians from the two largest refugee camps there, al-Yarmukh and al-Palestine. In Syria there are schools for Jews up to junior high school. After junior high, whoever continues studying goes to government schools. So I went to high school with Palestinian and Syrian girls - girls like me. I never thought about it, except during religion class, when we were told, "You're Jewish, get out." There were only two of us Jewish girls at that high school. Christian girls went to Christianity classes and Muslim girls went to Islam classes and we Jews sat outside. When I got married and began working, I had Palestinian partners; I worked alongside them in many fields, in sales, fashion, marketing - in every field - and they became my friends.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Riyad Faraj
Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Early on, while growing up, we saw people’s fathers or brothers beaten up. We were humiliated in our homes. There was no educational atmosphere and no means for living. All of that generated the desire within us to improve our condition. There was no method we could think of to improve our condition through dialogue; the only way was to fight.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

George Sa'adeh
Bereaved Families Forum Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ As a result of the situation, the intifada, there were clashes going on in Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities. On that day--it was 6:30 in the evening--I was with my wife and daughters in the car going to buy some things from the supermarket. We saw three Israeli army jeeps on the side of the street. When we passed the first one we were fired at from all directions from a distance of 100 meters. I was injured and so was my older daughter who was 15 back then, and my daughter Christine, who was 12, was killed in that shooting. For some time we didn't know what happened to us as it all happened in a few seconds. My wife and I started shouting out for an ambulance to aid us. We were horrified. Then came the army vehicles, one had the Star of David on it and they took us to the northern checkpoint of Bethlehem. Then the ambulances with the Star of David took us to Hadassah hospital. When I was in the ambulance I asked them why they shot at us when we are only civilians, so they said that it was a mistake.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Kitty O. Cohen
Folklore of the Other: The Institute for the Study of Religion and Communities in Israel Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ What I witnessed in Europe left a lasting impression on me. The war years shaped my views and my outlook on life. My work today has its roots in the traumas of my childhood. From family members I learned one can retain one's humanity. In spite of the persecutions and the fear, I was taught not to condemn any group or people. It was their humanity and their behavior to others that enabled our miraculous survival of the Holocaust [....] I knew what it was like to be discriminated against and be dispossessed of all that was mine. I said I understood their predicament and was trying, in my own small and modest way, to do what I can. People who have suffered from discrimination and oppression, people who could have been or have been refugees can identify with others and their suffering. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Daniel Seidemann
Ir Amim Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Part of my reason for coming to Israel was to live history as a participant sport and not as a spectator sport. This [work] gave me an opportunity to put some soul into a rather soulless profession, namely the legal profession. There's a great deal of satisfaction in taking the hugest issues and disaggregating them and taking them apart into their component parts and fixing some of them, preventing some of the bad things from happening, and seeing actual results. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Prof. Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute of the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was imprisoned in 1993 in "Ansar Three" prison in the Negev [...] My imprisonment affected me in many ways. During my studies in the United States, both for a Masters degree and a Ph.D., I never took a class in which I knew there were Jewish students. If I knew that some of the students attending were Jewish, I would avoid the class or drop it. I simply did not want to study with Jews. I had no interest in that. In the seventies and eighties, our concept of Jews in general, and our experience with Israelis in particular, was as follows: they are the reason for my suffering, my misery, and the situation in which I find myself; they are the reason why the world has neglected me, the reason for the misery I experience every day when I go to school, etc. For this reason, I felt better about withdrawing from any course in which Jews were present.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Adina Shapiro
Middle East Children's Association (MECA) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ It's not that I didn't think there were Palestinians in the West Bank. It just wasn't part of my conscientiousness. As an aside, I once had a discussion with the principal of the school where I went to school here in Chorev and he said to me, "You know, we don't teach hate. We don't teach our girls to hate." And I confronted him on that, and told him, you can tell that to someone else, but not to someone that was educated in your school system. But in retrospect, they really didn't teach me to hate, it was just that they [Palestinians] were non-existent.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ We were sitting on the grass and there were very, very young children with us- one, one and a half year olds. One of the guys asked, "What are you, Arabs?" And my mother said, "Yes. Do you have a problem with that?" Then they attacked us. [...] a man who was with us had his hand broken; he had a cast for about four months. My father was stabbed in the stomach and by some miracle it wasn't anything serious, except the trauma caused to the young children who were with us [...] And if it had happened to a Jewish family? Would it go over so quietly?”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Daniel Seidemann
Ir Amim Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I'm a former American. I've been living in Israel for 32 years. I've been a lawyer for 18 years. How did I get into this? In October of 1991 I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was a member of Knesset. The settlers had just taken over 10 or 11 houses in Silwan. He said, "I want you to take it to the Supreme Court." I asked him on what basis, and he said, "Well, why don't we find out." Initially, the office turned it down because it was just too cumbersome and time consuming to do pro-bono work like this, but we couldn't live with ourselves with a clear conscience, so we decided to take it on. In the weeks and months that followed, we were able to crack the genetic code of a covert government policy that targeted Palestinian properties in order to turn them over as ideological trinkets to settler organizations. We were able to expose this, and take it to the Supreme Court. Not by legal means, but by political means, we were able to shut down the policy for a period of about 10 years. […] That was the beginning of my involvement, and as a result of that I was sucked into the very compelling subject of the relations between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, which is my sandbox.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was born in Tira. My family on my father's side is from a village that was uprooted in 1948, from a small village, Miske, near Tira. I think it all began from that. That is, I couldn't have known from the age of one that my family was uprooted, but while I was growing up I began to understand. My family also got involved because of this. I'm also the daughter of two pretty involved activists. My mother is very, very active.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Shwanesh Maniov
Seeds of Peace, Children of Abraham Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ My parents always wanted to immigrate to Israel [from Ethiopia]. It was something dreamlike, something no one knew about. Maybe others who grew up in cities and had access to communications knew something about Israel. But for me, for my parents and whoever lived in my village, Israel was a place, nobody knew exactly where. We only knew that there were only Jews there; there were no other peoples there because it belonged to the Jews. There was a temple and a river of milk and a river of honey. All you had to do there was religious work; all you had to do was observe the mitzvot. All I knew about was Jerusalem. I didn't know about anything else, the land of Israel, the State of Israel. I wasn't told about terms such as nationality or religion. Those weren't terms my parents used in their kind of Zionism. There was only Jerusalem and life among Jews.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Dr. Khuloud Dajani
People's Campaign for Peace and Democracy Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Lately, and through working in public health, I became totally convinced that peace and a viable means of living are basic to survival. Diseases, such as cholera and malaria are not what threaten human beings. The inability to solve the problems of occupation, oppression, and continuing violence are what threaten our people today. Therefore, I became active in the fields of public diplomacy, public social work and peace making, since peace is essential to the basic life of human beings everywhere and here in particular.[...] Also, I had to work in cooperation with our enemies, with whom we want to be friends.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Helmi Kittani
Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ […From] my personal, financial position I knew I would be taking a drastic pay cut. To be a senior manager in a bank and then to own a private business that had good earnings, and then to move on to an association, an NGO, would clearly lead to a substantive reduction in my personal income. However, I thought about the future of my children, who were still in high school then, and I thought about what I would have to learn in order to help them develop their personal careers. I thought that for the sake of my community, and for the sake of building one society in the State of Israel with regards to Arabs and Jews, it is worth sacrificing money for the sake of making a contribution. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Gila Svirsky
Coalition of Women for Peace, Women in Black Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I grew up feeling very strongly Zionist, very strongly Jewish if not Orthodox, but strongly a daughter of Israel. I moved here [to Israel] when I was 19. [...] There was gradual change [in my thinking], and then there was a moment of deep insight. The gradual change came because I married a man who was not Orthodox, and he had a profound effect on my thinking. He was a staunch Laborite, and grew up in "red Haifa" and believed very strongly that Labor Zionism -- socialism -- was the correct way. You know, I must say, through many years of my life I was not an independent, feminist woman. I certainly feel I am today, but when I married, it was more likely that I would be swayed by my husband's politics than vice versa, and that's what happened. I began to think that Labor was a better place to vote, and that's how it went in the early years.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ihsan Turkiyyeh
Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ There was something my husband told me before he was shot. He said, "If Palestine becomes established, take my children back. Go home. My country is very beautiful." Because I was raised in Lebanon, even though I'm Palestinian, I didn't know Palestine, and I didn't have those emotions like him. He was raised here. I said, "Eh, when Palestine becomes established, god willing, in about a hundred years, we'll go then." That's what I said to him. I was never convinced that we would go to Palestine. The first time I came they took me to Tel Aviv. I couldn't believe it! I said, slap me. Weee, from Beirut to Jordan to Tel Aviv. Nothing is impossible in the world. This teaches you that there is nothing impossible. The impossible became possible. If we believe that, then I also believe that there is no eternal enemy.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Khulood Badawi
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Ta'ayush, Coalition of Women for Peace, Bat Shalom Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ There is a stage in life when one realizes that there are things that exist that one wasn't aware of. In this stage one becomes more aware of one's environment and the conditions one lives in. My awareness of these activities and movements began during my time at the University of Haifa. I started my studies at the University when I was 19 years old. From the beginning, I was an activist with the Arab students movement and especially with the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. I then became an activist with the Arab students committee that worked for improving the status of Arab students in the university.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ayelet Shahak
Association for the Commemoration of Bat-Chen Shahak, Bereaved Families Forum Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Our daughter Bat-Chen was killed by a suicide bomber in Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv in 1996, exactly on her 15th birthday, according to the Hebrew calendar. She was born on Purim and she was killed on Purim. The doubly happy day of Bat-Chen's birthday and Purim, which is the happiest holiday, has become a very sad day. For us Purim is when fate got turned upside down. There is no more Purim at home. Instead of sending mishloach manot and receiving mishloach manot, our friends bring us memorial cakes. Ofri and Yaela do not wear costumes and do not go to parties, although Yaela, in the past two years has begun to go to parties. Ofri still has not. This period of Purim is hard.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Adina Shapiro
Middle East Children's Association (MECA) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I began this work in 1996 when I finished my national service. That was right after Rabin was assassinated, which had an impact on me, as someone who grew up in the national religious community in Israel. And I began teaching Hebrew at a Palestinian school in Bethlehem, which was a new experience shall I say; a very different experience, a learning process for me. It exposed me more to something that I don't think is new, that the educational component of any peace process is a critical part that needs to be invested in.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yafit Gamila Biso
The Olive Tree Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ As an Israeli who paid a high price for coming to Israel, I care; I care to see the State of Israel as exactly what I envision. Obviously I don't expect a state according to my personal characteristics or desires but it is important for me that Israel come across to the world as a democracy and truly humanitarian - but not only nominally, or in quotation marks-- not a democracy of Jews over Arabs. I think that contradicts the laws of nature and humanity. I got involved with our Palestinian neighbors - I call them my brothers-- and I felt that they were being discriminated against. That's how I slowly became involved in this work.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Itamar Shapira
Combatants for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I felt like I was risking the state’s security by entering villages very simply because every time we went in we encountered someone who didn’t quite want us there who would shoot; people were killed, and then there was revenge taken, and then a suicide bombing in another place…20 more dead, and we would set out to catch another one. We saw the names; we were a small unit, so we knew whom we were off to arrest and what they had done. I kept track of all the people we went after in my head and every one of them was connected to someone killed in the previous round. That alarmed me. I used to feel pretty righteous in my own way, I thought that I was there to do police work and catch someone who killed a lot of people, arrest them, and if a person shot at me because they didn’t want to be arrested then that was their problem.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Prof. Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute of the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ [I was] kept inside a prison cell with two soldiers positioned outside the door. The door had a single hole, no more than five centimeters in diameter. The soldiers called out to me and told me that there was a paper that I had to sign. The paper was written in Hebrew and, as I don't know Hebrew, I said, "No, I am not signing a document that I cannot read." He said, "I'll translate it for you." I replied, "Why would I trust you enough to translate it for me? If it states my charge and I sign it, then I will be admitting to that charge." So I refused to sign it […] When I was having this conversation with the officer, however, there was another soldier with him. That soldier asked the officer, "How can we make him sign a paper when he doesn't know what it says?" I'm not sure that I understood exactly what he said, but this is what I assume they were talking about. At that point it was as if the conflict was not between the soldiers and me, but rather between the soldiers themselves. I began to realize that even soldiers wearing the same uniform could have different opinions and ways of thinking. This is what being in prison gave me the opportunity to learn; that I should not look at others and assume that they are all the same. This was an extremely important experience.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ibtisam Mahameed
Interfaith Encounter Association, Middleway Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ [As] I got to be in touch with others [in the Interfaith Encounter Association] I found that they also have their stories. For example, Elana [an Israeli member of the IEA] had a 16-year-old son that was injured in a bus explosion and stayed in the hospital for 6 months. She suffered a lot with him. He couldn't go to school. She was in a lot of pain because he was mentally exhausted and his whole body was a mess. She slept on a mattress next to him for six months until he came back home. When I heard her story, it touched me as a human and I cried. You can also hear the same story from a Palestinian woman. The suffering and pain are the same. A mother raises her son whether she is a Jew or Christian or Muslim or whatever. Our children pay the price.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Melisse Lewine-Boskovich
Peace Child Israel Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I used the same slogans as everyone else, "the only good Arab is a dead Arab," etc. There was something in my psychological make-up as I grew up, things that happened… my personal development gave rise to a strong need for that kind of involvement. I needed to be able to nurture something in a way that I felt I hadn't been nurtured myself. Some of that had to do with my weight and the responses it had evoked in my family. I wanted to be nurtured, and I hadn't been, and that wasn't a very happy thing. And so my involvement was very natural. I needed to feel I was giving love to something, so I gave it to the Jewish people. […] My parents, my rabbi, and my synagogue went to Selma, Alabama during the race riots, so I had that influence. I was involved in all the moratoriums, and I remember the day we ended the dress code in my high school. I was against the Vietnam War. So there was sort of a conflict in my mind. It wasn't straightforward. A process was sort of on hold. I always said that the thing that made the real transition was when I gave birth. Once I realized that instinctual, hormonal connection of a mother towards a child, I couldn't justify ever wanting to see anybody's child go through any kind of pain.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Walid Salem
Panorama Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Since 1974 I was a political activist in the Palestinian political parties. I spent five years of my life in prison. As a result of my time in prison and my political work, I started to discover, after 1994, the importance of working with the Israeli people. It is not enough for us as Palestinians to work against the Israeli people from the outside; we need to work with the Israeli people from the inside in order to achieve equality. We need to talk to the Israelis, because the Israeli media doesn't present a true picture of what is happening. We need to talk to the Israeli people and present to them the true picture of our reality and at the same time look at the reality from their side. We should be influenced by the other side as well as influencing them.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Riyad Faraj
Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I am a refugee of 1948. That year my family came to Deheishe Refugee Camp. That's where I grew up. My family was one of the most harmed by the conflict. It was our fate to resist the occupation in the period starting in 1978. I grew up to find my older brother in jail, and my other brother as well. I was arrested when I was 14. The first intifada started in 1984, and we spent that period in and out of jail. I don't recall a day between 1984 and 1990 in which we, the six brothers, were gathered in the same place. We are six brothers and a sister. We didn't all see each other between '84 and '90 outside of jail.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Eliyahu McLean
The Sulha Peace Project, Jerusalem Peacemakers, Middleway Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was sent [by the Israel Action Committee on the Berkeley campus] to spy in on a class called Palestine, a class devoted to Palestinian history--'48, '67-- the Palestinian narrative. I started to hear the Palestinian narrative on everything I had been defending as an Israel activist. I really started to question a lot of the assumptions I was spouting.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ali Abu Awwad
Bereaved Families Forum, Al Tareek (The Way) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ At that age I was highly motivated, so I began to read more and become more attached to politics. Despite my arrest, I continued my studies, and when I began my studies at university eight months later, I was arrested for the second time and sentenced for ten years, out of which I spent four years in jail. At that time, my mother was also in prison. She was arrested a few months prior to my arrest, and when I used to visit her, I couldn’t embrace her, because we were both prisoners separated by bars. Even the police officer that was present at the time couldn’t hold back her tears. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Gershon Baskin
IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ It was important for me to know that there was a starting point for Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other that was based on the possibility of mutual recognition, not one on the account of the other, and not one in the place of the other; that it was no longer a zero sum game, that there was a place where Israelis could live and survive and exist. I always believed that the basis for coexistence is existence, that you can't have coexistence if one side is wiped off the map.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Prof. Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute of the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Later, when we were being transferred from Thahiriyyeh [detention center to the prison in the] Negev, one soldier insisted that we remain handcuffed and blindfolded while another soldier gestured as if to say that it was OK to take the blindfolds off and look outside. It was summer - July - and it was very hot and the way from Thahiriyyeh to the Negev is long. The officer had said that we could not go near the water faucet, so one of the soldiers forbade us from drinking. After the officer left, however, another soldier told us that we could go over to the faucets and drink. This was another personal experience that taught me not to assume that all people are alike. At the same time, it gave me the idea that dialogue and encounters could offer a better solution to the conflict than avoidance, neglect, or denial.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Prof. Dan Bar-On
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ In '85 I launched a pioneering research project in Germany where I interviewed the children of Nazi perpetrators, which I did for over 3 years. I interviewed about 90 people in Germany. As a result of my interviews, a group was formed of my interviewees; there were about 10 or 12 of them who met as a self-help group for over four years, from '88 to '92. In '92 (I don't think I had the courage before that), I asked them if they would be willing to meet a group of children of Holocaust survivors. When they said yes, I suggested it to some of my students in Beer Sheva [University in Israel] and some colleagues from Boston and New York. That group, which is called TRT, To Reflect and Trust, started to meet in June 1992 and has met every year since then. In '98, I brought practitioners from current conflicts into the group, people from Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Palestinians and Israelis, to see if what we did in that group was relevant for current conflicts. We knew that they were very different situations, but we wanted to see if it was relevant. We had developed a method for storytelling, which we felt might be relevant.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Helmi Kittani
Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ In Bank HaPaolim, which operates in a very professional and business like manner, I aspired to work for economic development in the Arab sector. I wanted to use the bank's resources for the sake of the economic development of the Arab sector. I think the bank must not only be a commercial entity that gains money, but also contributes to the welfare of the community within which it operates. I think I was the first person that had the courage to say that the bank must act significantly for the sake of the economic development of the Arab sector. This approach is beneficial for the two sides. It will lead to more customers, larger turnover and more profits for the bank, and also to more businesses and a new level of business in the Arab sector.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yana Knopova
Coalition of Women For Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was always active. I don't think that anything had changed, maybe only the field of activism. I had always been active in minorities' struggles for rights. In the Ukraine it was the Jewish minority. Now it's the minority that's changed, not me; the current minority is the Palestinians.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Khulood Badawi
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Ta'ayush, Coalition of Women for Peace, Bat Shalom Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ During that demonstration we were violently attacked by right-wing students from the university and we were persecuted and expelled from the University. This event had many implications. Students were arrested and 15 students were expelled. I was expelled from the University for almost two years as a result of my participation in the demonstrations that had lasted for four months. I was also denied entrance to the University complex altogether.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was 10 years old [when Hitler came to power], and although there was a big beautiful synagogue in the town there wasn't a Jewish school, so I went to a Christian school. One day the teacher came in, I sat in the front because I was so little, so he said, "There's no room for Jews to sit in the front, you have to sit in the back." That wasn't so bad, but I was 10 years old and children still played in the yard at the break, and nobody spoke to me anymore from that day on. The boys went to their Hitler Youth, and the girls to a different group. The Jewish community did all it could to compensate us for that by having more activities for youth in the synagogue, and we went to a Zionist youth movement, which my mother helped to set up. So from a very young age, I was engaged in preparing myself to come to Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and to Palestine.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ibtisam Mahameed
Interfaith Encounter Association, Middleway Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ One of the reasons I became a peace activist is that I came to realize that there is no point to what's going on here. Violence creates more violence. Killing after killing, until when will this circle of violence go on? I got to know about the people that are working on bringing the different sides together.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Adi Dagan
Coalition of Women for Peace, Machsom Watch Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ When I started going to checkpoints, one of the reasons that I did it for two years was the desire not to refer to the Palestinians as 'them,' and to maintain relationships with individual people. In today's state of affairs it's so easy to turn people into the collective 'they' and to believe that all this is taking place somewhere else when actually everything is very close by. We have to continuously keep in mind that it's not something that's taking place far away from here. It's happening to people like us. We can't think about it in abstract terms.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Shwanesh Maniov
Seeds of Peace, Children of Abraham Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ When I was at Seeds of Peace facilitating, I had an important experience while we watched a movie about what happened in South Africa. I'm sitting there during the film saying to myself, "Wow, how can they call the blacks 'terrorists' on the news?" (They showed parts of news broadcasts.) "How can they call them terrorists? They wanted their freedom, they want to live on their lands, why should they be called terrorists?" Suddenly I was against this strong government, in this case it was white, and it didn't seem right. And then we watched Jenin, Jenin half an hour later, and suddenly I was on the powerful side, the Israeli side, trampling the other. And I call people 'terrorists.' Suddenly I was experiencing thoughts like, "What right do I have coming to Israel, immigrating to Israel, living in Tel Aviv without any fear?" I wasn't born here; my parents weren't born in Israel! What right do I have? Who gave it to me? I never thought about these things before! I never questioned my right to the land. But watching the film about South Africa raised moral questions inside me.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Walid Salem
Panorama Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I was imprisoned for a year and a half while in university; 76 days of which I was in interrogation chambers--but I didn't confess. With all that, it took me eight years to finish my studies instead of four. After that I worked as a journalist in eleven newspapers and magazines for almost eleven years. All of them got closed down by occupation forces. At the time I was still politically active with Palestinian organizations that opposed occupation and all those newspapers and magazines had strong political agendas against occupation. The last time I was administratively detained was for a total of one and a half years in six months intervals.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Meir Margalit
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ When I'm asked [why I keep doing this work] instinctively I say it's because my father is a Holocaust survivor. The fact that my father lost his family because of racial discrimination drives me to fight such phenomena here with all that I have in me. Some would say, "Why are you comparing? There isn't anything to compare here." True, there is no comparison. But there are too many things taking place here that remind me of the Germany of 1933. Having been infused with all the grief and pain of people who have suffered excessively, and because I can't remain impassive to such inequities, I am fighting for what I see as basic social justice on the humanitarian level, not even on the level of politics. This is why I cannot remain impassive, nor can I give up.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Walid Salem
Panorama Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ […]I was always involved in the political wing, I was never part of the militant wing; I never shot a bullet or learned how to use a weapon, which explains why my detention periods were not very long, relatively. The sum of the time I was in detention was five years, whereas the militant activists were detained for longer periods.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yafit Gamila Biso
The Olive Tree Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ When I arrived in Israel the first business I opened was a large sewing factory in Tel-Aviv. I had almost twenty workers from Gaza. I got on very well with them. There was a period when I even had a partner from Gaza. Look, I'm a daughter of the Arab culture. I'm Israeli and Jewish, and I don't know whether I'm proud of it or not in view of the operative policies. I'm sometimes ashamed of being Israeli when I see that an Israeli killed a little girl, whose only fault was that she went to school that morning. That's what brought me to all these activities.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Adi Dagan
Coalition of Women for Peace, Machsom Watch Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I stopped going to [monitor] checkpoints because I just couldn't take it anymore. I did it for two years and it became unbearable. It was mainly a feeling of being crushed, as though someone were stepping on you. It was a sense of a lack of control over life, of someone taking your life away from you, just taking it away, a very bad feeling of helplessness and identifying with the people who need to cross the checkpoint then. Young soldiers stand there and they decide who passes and who doesn't. It feels very bad. After two years of seeing that I think that rather than improving, the situation is only getting worse. I couldn't bear it any longer, now I'm dedicating my experience in the field to the issue of the media because I hope maybe that will be successful.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Meir Margalit
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ There was a period in which there were hundreds or thousands of Palestinians [residents of Jerusalem] who lived here without IDs. The state confiscated their IDs. They were walking around Jerusalem without any identification and if a policeman or border policeman stopped them they would go through hell. Some would get beaten up, some would be arrested, some got fined. The person would say, "I'm a resident of Jerusalem," but the policeman would tell them to prove it. That is how it went. I tried to obtain alternative papers for them to prove their residency using all the means I could, and I really do mean that. I tried through the Municipality, the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Ministry of Defense. When I couldn't bear it any longer, I myself wrote letters using the Municipality's logo, attesting to that person being a resident of Jerusalem despite not having an ID. I signed my name as council member. I was told that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. If in 50% of the cases a policeman read the letter and was satisfied, then I was happy. When the Mayor found out he was very angry. He filed a complaint with the police for me overstepping my authority. [He said] my responsibilities didn't include giving IDs to people. A journalist wrote "who knows who Meir Margalit gave these letters to, who knows who got their hands on them." This was during a period of suicide bombings, and their supposition was that more than one suicide bomber slipped in using my letters.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Robi Damelin
Parents Circle - Bereaved Families Forum Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I wrote a letter to the family [of the man who killed my son]. It took me about four months to make the decision, many sleepless nights and a lot of searching inside myself about whether this is what I really mean. I wrote them a letter, which two of the Palestinians from our group delivered to the family. They promised to write me a letter. It will take time; these things take time, I'm waiting. It could take five years for them to do that. They will deliver the letter that I wrote to their son who is in jail…If they write me a letter in return then I could publish both of the letters as an example and it could show some people that there is a way. That the people you least expect can do this kind of thing, surely that's an example to other people to start to look for a way.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ibrahim Issa
Hope Flowers School Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ [The] most painful thing for me as a child at that time was that I couldn't recognize the difference between a peace activist and a collaborator; it took me years until I did. And this is something that Palestinian radical groups also couldn't recognize, the difference between collaborators and peace activists. I was a child at that time but when I grew up I started to recognize the difference. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I do know that I want things to get better. That's why I'm not sitting at home or working and studying for the college entry exams. I want things to change. I'm only nineteen, my grandmother is eighty and she went through the whole Nakba. And she's still willing to accept the things that I'm doing [living in a communal house with Palestinian and Jewish Israelis]. Maybe not that we live together with boys and that I live away from home, but the fact that we're working on this, that there are Jews who come to our family's house, that we go to demonstrations; she's eighty and was expelled from her village and she can accept it! "Do it," she says!”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ali Abu Awwad
Bereaved Families Forum, Al Tareek (The Way) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ During the recent intifada I became connected to the conflict in a different way. I was badly injured in my leg by an Israeli settler and my brother was killed by an Israeli soldier in a totally inhuman way and without any reason. The soldier shot my brother from a distance of two feet only because he was talking to him. This isn’t human conduct at all. At the time, my brother Yussif didn’t know that the Israelis had issued a new law. He didn’t know that it was forbidden from opening his mouth; we were supposed to keep our mouths shut. My brother broke that law, and since then I decided not to shut my mouth.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yehuda Stolov
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I think that the roots of my activity are in the writings of Rabbi Kook, which are very inclusive in spirit towards opinions and people. He says we must take care of the rest of the universe, including nature; it goes beyond humanity. That's what influenced me. I learned all that there. I don't think that I'm the only one who did.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Dimitri Diliani
People's Campaign for Peace and Democracy Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I went to the US in 1990. In 1994, the Oslo process began and gave us all a push. I decided to finish my studies and come back here in order to contribute to building my homeland. When I returned, I was shocked by the reality that I discovered. The Palestinian revolution had turned into institutions of government, but I didn't think that transformation had happened in the right way. There were so many problems: management problems, financial problems, political problems. The collective vision had become blurred. There began to be internal squabbles over positions and influence that we never even knew existed.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Daniel Seidemann
Ir Amim Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ During the last four years of the intifada, where Israelis and Palestinians have regressed and cancelled the mutual humanization that took place before, and dehumanized one another again, we never missed a beat. It's not touchy-feely people-to-people stuff, it's very object oriented: history has condemned us to share the city [Jerusalem]; we've got work to do, let's get the work done. I'm involved in very eye-level, joint efforts without for a minute forgetting that I'm an Israeli trying to advocate an Israeli interest as I see it, and my partners, rivals, sometimes enemies are trying to advance their causes from the Palestinian perspective.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Walid Salem
Panorama Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ This is part of my past and I have forgotten about it, but in 1975 I was detained for being a member of the political wing of the Arab Communist Ba'th party. The detentions in the eighties were for being charged with being a member of the DFLP [Democratic Front For the Liberation of Palestine], although I never admitted to it. In '91 I was charged with being a member of the higher central committee of the DFLP. According to the DFLP, it was considered a betrayal to admit you were a member, since it considered itself a secret movement. Admitting you were a member was considered a betrayal of your country and of the DFLP. Of course there were members that would confess, but the higher ranked leadership of the Front would never confess. I was considered one of those leaders, that's why I was committed not to confess.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Itamar Shapira
Combatants for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I’ve also reached a level where I could think over how angry I once got at a group of taxi drivers because they indirectly served people who avoided the curfew -- the workers who left Jericho to go to work. The taxi drivers waited for them to return and that really irritated me; it was after a night without any sleep… I ordered them to leave and they didn’t want to. They gave me the finger; in the end I shot tear gas at them. I asked for permission and a sleepy clerk gave me the okay, so I shot tear gas. They ran away, came back, and laughed. It really annoyed me; how dare they laugh at me?”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yehuda Stolov
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ For a long period I was involved with this type of activity because I was interested in meeting with different people. I found interfaith dialogue novel and surprising, because prior to that, when I found myself interested in other religions, I would simply take a course at a university or read a book. I had never considered the possibility of actually meeting with other people. That in itself was interesting for a certain period. Later, I began to understand the force of interfaith dialogue and its ability to be a facilitative mechanism between communities. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]