Tagebuch

Like every day, this day also started with a nice breakfast. After breakfast we split up into our four groups and started with our duties. The Mandelas continued working on the rainbow. They were painting, preparing the wood, building the pillars for the slides and a fence of rocks and tires filled with soil around the playground area. This is not only for safety reasons for the children who are going to play on the rainbow, but also for protecting the olive trees from getting hurt.
The publish group had an interview with Khedva about stereotypes (summary is attached).
Together with Claudia and Matthias the creative working group was working on mosaics which are showing signs for peace and situations from our personal lives.
In the afternoon Freulich got the chance to get rid of all her frustration and aggression while fighting some stones. Finally she won.
We stopped working a little bit earlier than the other days because all of the participants went into the hosting families. There they got very nice dinners and even had real beds to sleep on.

One example of the peaceful island that we are living on is that we didn’t know about the strikes that were happening in many Arab villages. Only today (Tuesday) we heard about the demonstrations and strikes. There were many strikes in the Arab communities, both the small ones and the large. The people were striking to show solidarity with the Arabs living in Gaza and to protest against the recent government campaigns.  These demonstrations were organized countrywide by a coalition of upper committees of Arab social organizations and political parties.  The minister for foreign affairs has called for a boycott of Arab products because they are supporting the people in the Gaza strips by demonstrating.  Also, in cities like Haifa, there were even demonstrations where Jews and Arabs protested together to show their solidarity with the people of Gaza.
The police arrested about 500 people in the demonstrations.
We are happy, but a little bit sceptical about the “peace talks” which are taking place in Egypt.  

Interview Summary:

Interview with Khedva from Dugrinet

The culture group got a chance to speak with Khedva from Dugrinet about the work she does for various NGOs. She works a lot with young people of both Arabic and Jewish heritage trying to understand and break down stereotypes from both sides.

Personally Khedva is a mother of 3 boys, one of whom is deployed in the Gaza strip and lives in a Kibbutz. The focus of Dugrinet is also to give the ‘voiceless’ a chance to be heard and understood. An example of the ‘voiceless’ was given as the disabled who face many challenges in their daily lives especially due to their disability. ‘Once you hear the voice, you begin to know the person’. She believes that most Israelis are against the idea of mixing cultures and religions and have a pessimistic outlook about the future of this state. To this outlook she responds by saying there must be a solution otherwise life would have no meaning and would be very frustrating. She also believes that even if her efforts have a 5 percent success rate and seem small, it is important to start somewhere and influence where you can. Khedva expressed the fact that people who live in gated communities would be shocked to see the reality of the world they live in. She also pointed out various stereotypes that exist between Jews and Arabs. In the projects she works in, the relationships develop naturally between both religions but become obviously strained in instances of enlisting, woman emancipation.

It is good to work and make a difference wherever you can especially in your community but this can also lead to being too comfortable and there is a possibility that your contribution will not be noticeable or effective.

‘Being good enough, is good enough.’