http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/649812.html
Last update - 02:43 25/11/2005
Getting to know the neighbors
By Akiva Eldar
In the middle of the summer, at the height of the struggle against
the withdrawal from Gaza, a man wearing anti-disengagement orange
walked up to a young man with long hair and a well-groomed beard, who
was dressed like a lawyer and was on his way to the courthouse in
downtown Be'er Sheva. The "orange" man spent a long time trying to
persuade the other man to sign a petition against the "deportation of
Jews." The attorney turned out to be a tough nut to crack. After a
prolonged argument about the political and moral sides of the
disengagement, he introduced himself to the right-wing activist. "My
name is Anwar al-Hajaji and I am from an unrecognized Bedouin
village."
As Al-Hajaji explains it now, "it was important to me to show him
that an Arab is not an animal that happens to walk on two feet." No
one knows the power of stereotypes better than he. A few years ago,
he and his wife bought an apartment in a new building in Be'er Sheva.
A Haredi ?(ultra-Orthodox?) family with lots of children moved into
the apartment across the hall. "I told my wife that this was it, our
money went down the drain," he recalls, smiling. But that didn't
happen. On the contrary: "Ever since then, they have been the regular
babysitters for our twins."
Al-Hajaji says that if not for the workshop, he strongly doubts
whether he would have bothered to listen to the right-wing fellow
outside the courthouse. The "workshop" is a course for training
facilitators in conflict-resolution groups, which is offered jointly
by AJIK, a Bedouin organization, and Kolot Banegev ? two groups that
promote coexistence and dialogue.
Ahlama Peretz, wife of the new chairman of the Labor Party, attended
the workshop together with Al-Hajaji. They met 30 times during the
last academic year, seven residents of Sderot with a similar number
of Bedouin from the area. They are still in contact. She remembers
Al-Hajaji sharing his experience near the courthouse with the other
participants. "The settler was also exposed there to the 'other,'"
Peretz says. "Who knows, maybe he found that the Arabs are people
like him, and that they are even willing to listen to his troubles."
She herself did not need a workshop to make that discovery. Peretz
relates that she became acquainted with Israel's Arab minority many
years before she met her husband. The feeling of being equal human
beings was shaped nearly from the day she was born.
"My parents' home was near Wolfson Hospital in Holon," recalls
Peretz, "between the orchards, olive groves and houses of Arabs who
did not abandon them in the War of Independence. I drank the milk
that my mother got from the goat of our neighbor Abu-Ali. His son
would from time to time light our kerosene stove when it went out on
Shabbat."
In the early '80s, when Amir Peretz was head of a local council in a
politically right-wing outlying town, they would frequently invite
over students from Taibeh, who were guests of the local high school.
Ahlama Peretz relates that many people in Sderot were not happy about
the new alliance between the Jewish children from the Negev and the
Arab children from the Triangle. She was also at her husband's side
in Shemesh ? a movement whose name ?(meaning "sun"?) is the Hebrew
acronym for "neighbors talking peace." "We made a connection with
education and media people from the Gaza Strip and devised joint
projects between various groups of adults and children. We hosted
them here, and they hosted us there."
This positive, optimistic attitude toward Arabs is natural among the
Peretz family. Ahlama relates that her sister-in-law, Dalia Peretz,
is the principal of the bilingual school in the Katamonim low-income
neighborhood in Jerusalem, at which Jewish, Muslim and Christian
children celebrate the holidays of all three faiths. Inspired by her
experiences in the workshop, Ahlama Peretz herself recently initiated
similar encounters at the academic pre-college preparatory center at
Sapir College of the Negev, where she serves as deputy director. The
facilitators are mixed couples ? Jews and Arabs ? who completed the
AJIK-Kolot Banegev workshop.
Peretz did not originally enroll in the workshop as part of a search
for her identity. "I have always lived in peace with my identity,"
she explains. "If Amir's success in reaching the top boosts the pride
of members of the Sephardi community, I consider that added value."
The desire to get to know "otherness" and respect it is what
attracted her to the meetings with the Bedouin. Most of all, she was
moved by the situation of the Bedouin women in the group, who, "in
spite of being educated, successful and assertive women, vacillate
between a tradition that is sometimes at odds with their worldview
and their own lifestyle, and are in great need of empowerment."
"Polarization in our society spurred me to find out whether it is
possible to find what differentiates and sets apart various
population groups, and what the common denominators are that unite
them. I wanted to see if I could contribute anything to an attempt to
mediate between them."
The most interesting revelation that came out of the series of
encounters, she says, is that "Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazim and
Sephardim, women and men, all live in a vicious circle of fear of one
another. The fear of the 'other' is identical for all of them. All of
a sudden, the participants discovered that the person who for years
was portrayed as an enemy is actually afraid of them no less than
they are afraid of him. This shared revelation and the attempt to
build a bridge together helped everyone to defuse their fears."
The coordinator of the workshops, kibbutznik Sharon Leshem-Zinger,
also facilitated encounters between residents of Gush Katif
communities, prior to the disengagement, and members of the political
left. She is planning similar meetings between other polarized groups
in society.
Leshem-Zinger vividly recalls the first meeting between the Jews from
Sderot and the Arabs from the Bedouin villages. She remembers how
each side exchanged stories about discrimination on ethnic, gender
and nationalist grounds. In ensuing sessions, each participant
described an incident in which he or she caused someone else to feel
discriminated against. Rukiya Marzuk Abu-Rakiyak, who facilitated the
workshop, is filled with praise for the intimacy that was created
among the group. She feels that each one of the participants
succeeded in looking into themselves and finding the parts that are
difficult to live with.
Abu-Rakiyak, born in the village of Arara, is a graduate of Bar-Ilan
University and is married to a Bedouin from the Negev. She believes
that these sorts of direct encounters will make it possible for
Jewish-Israeli society to connect with what she calls "transparent"
Arab-Israelis. She hopes that from that point, the road to a
connection with Palestinian society in the territories will be a bit
shorter. She explains that participants in the workshop sit in a
circle because that way everyone is equal; no one can know where the
connection begins and where it ends.
Motti Gigi, born in Sderot, is the director of Kolot Banegev and was
Abu-Rakiyak's partner in facilitating last year's workshop. He notes
that the ethnic discourse in the group pushed aside the national
discourse. "The Arabs began to identify with the Sephardim and with
the injustices done to them by Ashkenazi society." Through the
workshop, he himself came to understand his "Arab side as an Israeli
of Moroccan descent," and fell in love with the new identity. "I felt
that a psychological barrier was breaking apart inside me. All of a
sudden I discovered that I understand Palestinian Arabic, and not
only Moroccan Arabic. All the Sephardi folks in the group realized
that you can be proud of your Sephardi identity."
Al-Hajaji, the young Bedouin lawyer, says he did not come to the
workshop to ask the Jews to identify with him. All he wanted was for
the Jewish members of the group, most of whom were meeting an Arab up
close for the first time, to begin to notice his existence. "I live
here," he says, "and all I want is to be part of the solution and not
part of the problem."
***
Dear Friend, we all have many things to be thankful for, and it is good to
take a moment and remember them. At the same time, however, we must not
forget the struggles of those who are fighting day after day for the most
basic of rights--territorial, social, political, economic, and cultural
rights. Join us after the holiday in solidarity with Luz Marina, renowned
leader of the fight for the rights of displaced Afro-Colombians, who will
speak at the Southern California Library on Wednesday, November 30, 7 p.m.
Please scroll for more info.
AND DON'T FORGET TO MARK YOUR CALENDARS for our end-of-the-year celebration
on Saturday, December 10, 1-4 p.m. featuring poets, musicians, tours,
exhibits, silent auction, gift table, and desserts. It will be a wonderful
way to close out the year.
In thankfulness for all those willing to fight for our human rights,
Michele
Michele Welsing
Communications Director
Southern California Library
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(323) 759-6063 (ph)
www.socallib.org
Working for a world where all people have the ability, resources, and
freedom to make their own histories
___________________________________________________
LUZ MARINA
Secretary General of the National Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians
(AFRODES)
Wednesday, November 30, 2005, 7 p.m.
LEARN ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION IN COLOMBIA, DISPLACED COMMUNITIES, LABOR
ISSUES, WOMEN & YOUTH ISSUES, AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS WORK OF LUZ MARINA ON
BEHALF OF AFRO-COLOMBIANS
Born in 1973 in Chocó, Colombia, Luz Marina has worked as an activist for
Afro-Colombian rights since the 1990s. In 1998, Luz was displaced by
paramilitary groups and fled to a refuge in Bogotá. Since 1999 she has been
an integral part of the Organization of Displaced Afro Colombians (AFRODES)
and in 2002 was elected General National Secretary. She has become a
recognized leader for the National Colombian Women's Movement, the National
Women's Afro Colombian Movement, youth issues, labor and workers' rights,
indigenous issues, and displaced Afro-Colombian rights. Luz is especially
dedicated to working with the women and children of Afro-Colombia. Speaking
tour sponsored by Witness for Peace Southwest.
FREE. EVERYONE WELCOME
@ The Southern California Library
6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles
(323) 759-6063 . www.socallib.org
___________________________________________________
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