Michal Eskenazi
31
You are reaching out to Israeli young professionals and academics yet you said the process needs to be bottom-up.
When I talked about the work beginning at the level of the people, at the bottom, I meant what should be happening generally speaking. I think that in YIFC we stress the people situated in between - between bottom and top, meaning leadership. When we talk to people at universities, we welcome people who aren't students if they are very active and are influential, because I am searching for a way to influence decision makers. We are addressing the middle, there is no doubt. Before I joined YIFC the people there took part in a project with Palestinian kids and took them on guided tours to the Museum of Islamic Art in order to demonstrate that Israelis don't hate Islam, how Israelis perceive Islam and their respect for it. That was a social activity. We had an idea that we would begin a film project using films that deal with the conflict's core issues and discuss them in different groups within Israeli society, and outside it, as a series of discussions. We are focusing on the people in between, with the assumption that each organization focuses on their specific forte. There are so many organizations so we have to decide what we think is right, what is important for us, and what we can focus on so we can do that.