The International Advocate for Peace Award 2002
John Wallach, Founder, Seeds of Peace
Melissa Stewart, President, International Law Students Association
I am honored to introduce a new component to the International Advocate for Peace Award. This year we decided that because advocates for peace have many faces and forms, we would recognize an organization whose mission embodies the values underlying this award. Seeds of Peace, an organization founded by John Wallach, which empowers children of war to break the cycle of violence, is exactly such an organization. Before today, many of you may never have heard of Seeds of Peace and the children who have been a part of it. After today, you will never forget them. Seeds of Peace is a non-profit, non-political organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict around the world learn the skills of making peace.
How do they do it? They bring the teens to a camp tucked away in the woods of Maine on Pleasant Lake. The teens come from all over including Israel, The Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar, Yemen, Cyprus, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, the former Yugoslavia (including Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo), Romania, India, Pakistan, inner cities here in the U.S., and next year they hope to have teens from all over Ireland. The teens arrive in Maine with baggage from home: distrust, anger, and fear. They arrive with the hope of creating a different future.
Set in the neutral, supportive environment of the camp in Maine, Seeds of Peace creates a community in which the youngsters live together, share meals, and participate in numerous summer camp activities. Many of them meet, for the first time, teens "from the other side," the so called enemy. These youngsters canoe, swim, and play sports together. They find creative expression through music, drama, and fine arts.
Though it is not all fun and games at the camp, daily co-existence sessions constitute the core of the Seeds of Peace summer program. Led by a team of professional facilitators, the sessions are designed to support the teenagers in building relationships based on honesty, understanding, and respect. It is here that the youngsters are given an opportunity to link their new camp experience to the values and relationships that defined their world before Seeds of Peace. It is here where anger is expressed, tears are shed, and hugs are exchanged. The sessions are designed to create opportunities for the youngsters to discuss the harder and more contentious issues, learn the communication skills necessary to develop a trusted peer group with whom they can recount painful memories, express pent-up anger and frustration, and search together for answers and new solutions to old problems.
Seeds of Peace is not just a summer camp in Maine. Seeds of Peace has a year-round program around the world. Their co-existence center in Jerusalem, bi-communicable workshops in Cyprus with Greek and Turkish Cypriots, who have attended Seeds of Peace camp, gather.
It is impossible to talk about Seeds of Peace without talking about John Wallach. Mr. Wallach is the founder and President of Seeds of Peace and an award-winning author and journalist. He founded Seeds of Peace in March 1993 to provide an opportunity for the children of war to learn the tools and develop the skills for a more secure future.
From 1997 to 1998, Mr. Wallach was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) that recently published his book, The Enemy Has a Face: The Seeds of Peace Experience. He is a teaching fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation. His awards include honorary doctorate degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Southern Maine, a UNESCO Peace Prize awarded in November 2000, and the prestigious Legion of Honor presented by the late Majesty King Hussein of Jordan.
In congratulating him, President Clinton said, "Your commitment to spreading the message of tolerance, justice and human rights has helped so many people. You have indeed planted the seeds for peace in the generation that will one day be leading our world."
From 1968 to 1994, Mr. Wallach was the Foreign Editor of the Hearst Newspapers that syndicated his articles through The New York Times News Service. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he was seen regularly on PBS' Washington Week in Review, on many CNN programs, on NBC's Meet the Press, and other network shows. In 1980, he was named the BBC's First Visiting Foreign Affairs Correspondent and was a regular contributor to NPR, BBC, and CBC. Among the stories he broke during his journalism career are the Iran-Contra scandal Ð for which he received the National Press Club's highest honor, the Edwin Hood Award Ð and the CIA's covert mining of Nicaragua.
Mr. Wallach also received the highest diplomatic award from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, two Overseas Press Club awards, and the B'nai B'rith Humanitarian Award for helping to publicize the plight of Soviet dissents. He was the founding editor of WE/MBL, the first independent weekly newspaper in Russia, and was the creator of the Chautauqua Conference on U.S.-Soviet Relations, for which he received the 1991 Medal of Friendship, the highest civilian award, from President Mikhail Gorbachev. President Jimmy Carter also presented him with the Congressional Correspondents Award for his coverage of the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian Camp David Accords.
Mr. Wallach is co-author with his wife Janet, of three books: a biography, Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder, with a Foreword by Shimon Peres; Still Small Voices; and The New Palestinians. The Wallachs have two sons, David and Michael.
As a journalist covering the Middle East, Mr. Wallach saw only a continuous cycle of anger and violence. The leaders who were negotiating different peace agreements that met for the first time did not trust each other. They did not respect each other. He realized that they could not because they did not even know each other.
At the height of his impressive career as a journalist, he gave it all up to start Seeds of Peace. He dared to give the youth of nations in areas of conflict the tools necessary to imagine and create a future different than today. He dared to offer the leaders of tomorrow the ability to give peace a chance.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a privilege to present the Organization Award of the Third Annual International Advocate for Peace Award to Seeds of Peace, John Wallach, and two Seeds who you will hear from today, Eli Steinberg and Laith Khouri.
John Wallach, Founder, Seeds of Peace:
Thank you very, very much for that kind introduction. I was not sure that I recognized who it was about, but I was delighted to hear such wonderful things about myself. (laughter) I want to thank Dean Rudenstine, Lela Love, and all of those who have made this special effort to be here today to honor Senator Mitchell and myself. I feel humbled to be in the presence and company of Senator Mitchell because he is truly one of the great Americans of our time and there are not very many. I think his passion, devotion, and commitment to working for peace among the world's leaders is second only to the difficulty of working for peace with the young people we work with. I salute him. (applause)
Let me tell you a little about Seeds of Peace and how it began. I am going to try to keep my remarks fairly short because I want to hear from Laith and from Eli.
I really had the idea for Seeds of Peace back in 1993 after the first bombing of the World Trade Center. I was still a journalist and it was February 1993, and I asked myself a very simple question: What are the terrorists trying to do? The answer was very simple. They were trying to instill fear. They have always tried to instill fear and to paralyze the majority, to paralyze all of us into inaction. Was there something that could be done to counter this? It seemed to me that what we had to do was to come up with something that would inspire hope. If terrorists are trying to instill fear, if we inspire hope by mobilizing the majority, we could make a dent in achieving greater justice in the world.
At a dinner party in Washington, DC, in March 1993 given in honor of Shimon Peres, who was the Foreign Minister and is again the Foreign Minister of Israel; Ahmed Maher, who was the Egyptian Ambassador, now the Egyptian Foreign Minister; and Hassan Abu Rahman, who was the Palestinian PLO representative at the time, who today is the Palestinian envoy to Washington. I asked the hostess if I could make a toast. I stood up and I said, "I would like this summer for each of your governments (actually the PLO did not have a government then) to send a youngster to a summer camp in Maine that my son Michael had gone to." It used to be called Camp Powhatten, on the shores of Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Maine. I said, "if you would each send me fifteen kids, I would like to see what we can do." Being very courteous, Shimon Peres first said, "of course we will, John. We have known you for years, we trust you." The Egyptian Ambassador, not wanting to be embarrassed by the Israeli counterpart said, "of course, we will do the same." The Palestinian said the same, "we will do the same." But I did not want to take a chance. So, the next morning I called a news conference and I announced that Egypt, Israel, and the PLO had agreed to send forty-five kids to a summer camp in Maine. That was the first summer and it was a tough summer.
To just give you a comparison between then and now, we were forty-five or forty-six kids in 1993 from three different parts of the world Ð Egypt, Palestine, and Israel. Today, we have twenty-two countries, between 400 and 500 youngsters that come to Seeds of Peace every summer. We have India, Pakistan, and, this summer for the first time, Afghanistan. [We have] 2,000 graduates, almost 100 of whom are now enrolled on scholarships at some of the most prestigious colleges and universities all over the United States. So, we think of ourselves as a leadership track training program. We hope we are developing the leaders of tomorrow. They are thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years of age when they came to us. They are now today in their early 20s.
There was a marvelous piece on Nightline a few weeks ago, in which one of the former Seeds said he had once felt compelled as a Palestinian young man to go to a rock throwing demonstration. He picked up the rock and he could not throw it because he remembered he was a Seed and he put down the rock. The headlines tell of a great deal of hatred and violence these days, of kids who are sacrificing themselves, their lives, their bodies strapped with explosives to seek vengeance. Nothing but pure hatred. There is a silent majority that does not accept that way. I would say that they are not so silent because they are Seeds.
They come every summer, and we will have another Palestinian delegation and Israeli delegation this summer. They are brave and courageous young men and women because they have to go home and face the threats and condemnation of their peers. One young Palestinian told [of a time that] he was sitting on his computer corresponding on e-mail with an Israeli friend when a member of the Tanzim broke into his house and put a gun to his head and said, "You get off that computer with that Israeli." He refused and he threw the fellow out of his house and redoubled his efforts to keep in contact with his Israeli friend.
There are countless stories of bravery and courage on an individual basis that never get reported. Just two weeks ago in Jerusalem, General Zinni [came to] our Center in Jersusalem Ð we have a 5,000 square foot Center. Until the latest round of fighting, we were bringing Israelis and Palestinians together on a regular basis. General Zinni met with thirty-six Israelis and Palestinians and their families. In the midst of all this violence and all this hatred and suicide bombs and everything else, here you had eighteen Israeli families and eighteen Palestinian families coming with their sons and daughters in order to be with each other and to hear what General Zinni had to say and to ask him questions. General Zinni spent an hour and a half with these youngsters, taking their questions and responding to them. Was that reported in the media? Unfortunately, no.
Seeds of Peace has a mission. It is to provide a ray of hope in the midst of this horrible cycle of violence, which seems unending. We exist for perhaps one purpose above all else, and that is to humanize conflicts that have been deliberately dehumanized by governments in order to perpetuate those conflicts. The dehumanization today has reached an unparalleled level. If one thinks about the image of a suicide bomber strapped with explosives, if one thinks about Israeli forces blowing up homes, kicking people out of their houses, destroying their possessions, all the possessions they have, tanks rumbling through refugee-camp streets, the little that they had being destroyed. How can one reach a lower level of dehumanization than that? In fact, if one thinks of the uniform which soldiers wear, whether they are Israeli soldiers or others, or the uniforms that Palestinian Fedayin or guerilla fighters wear, the kafir, the black and white kafir wrapped around their face Ð it is the ultimate sign of dehumanization because in order to kill our enemy, we have to dehumanize them first.
Seeds of Peace exists in order to reverse that process. We are a drop in the bucket Ð 2000 kids in ten years and we will have 400 or 500 this summer. We exist in order to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty and make real peace in the real world. That is not an easy thing. We do not plant a tree and call it Peace. We do not sing a song and join hands and call it Peace. We are not Make-Love-Not-War. We are not some 1960s left-wing organization that believes that all you have to do is smile for the camera and hold hands and that tomorrow will be a new day. No, we believe that making Peace is very hard and that making Peace requires co-existence. Not necessarily liking one another, but agreeing to co-exist. I tell youngsters two things at camp during the summer. One is that Peace has to be as Dean Rudenstine said, "more than the absence of war." It has to be something that you are really willing to fight for and willing to celebrate. And one of the things we try to do at camp during the summer is to come together as a community and create something among ourselves that is very precious and that we are all willing to try to preserve when we go home. Two, Peace is also a very emotional and difficult thing to achieve in the real world because we may not like each other.
In the three and a half weeks (we have three sessions during the summer), we frequently find in the second week Ð after the kids come bright-eyed, feeling that they are going to do a better job than their parents did, that we are going to make Peace, that we have been chosen by our Governments to be part of Seeds of Peace, and, suddenly, in the second week the dissolution sets in. They come and they tell us, "we really do not like the enemy. I know we are supposed to like, but they are saying terrible things and [it is] very upsetting. You know we are really beginning to find out that maybe our parents were right: maybe they are the enemy." We say, "that is okay. Let it out, let your real feelings come out." One girl, an Indian girl, came out of the co-existence session last summer and said, "I did not know I had so much hate." That voyage of self-discovery is one that goes on in the co-existence sessions on a daily basis.
I walked into a session a couple of years ago and everybody Ð all of the Israelis and all of the Palestinians and Egyptians Ð were crying like babies. I felt like I was at a funeral. This was perhaps one of the most depressing things I had ever seen in my life. And then I realized that it was not. It was one of the most hopeful things that I had seen because here were people who perceived each other as enemies, unafraid to share the most noble human emotion of all Ð the courage to appear weak in front of your enemies and to cry. I have never gotten over that because I thought it was such a remarkable thing to create something that you want to preserve, you want to share. We do not spare any emotion.
The youngsters discover they have different histories. They have been taught different facts. They sometimes act like they do not like each other very much. But you do not have to like each other to make peace. You have to co-exist. The British and the French do not like each other very much, but they manage to co-exist. Somehow, that is what we are striving for. We are not striving for some new universe in which it is Make-Love-And-Not-War. Love is a word you do not hear too much at Seeds of Peace. What we want is understanding.
Understanding and trust Ð those are things that are missing in the Middle East. Beyond everything, what we want is humanization, to try to humanize the process that has been so badly and tragically dehumanized, intentionally and deliberately, by both governments in the case of the Middle East and in other parts of the world, in order to perpetuate the cycles of conflict and in order to justify the killing of the faceless enemy. I could stand here for another twenty or thirty minutes and tell you all kinds of stories. I wish I had the time, but I do not want to take up the time of the two young Seeds who have come here today Ð Eli from Israel, Laif who is a Palestinian from Jordan. Which of you are going to start first? I would like to introduce Eli Steinberg from Israel.
Eli Steinberg, Seed, Seeds of Peace:
Thank you very much. My name is Eli. I am an eighteen year old. I live in Haifa, in Israel. Haifa is a mixed city where Arabs and Jews live together.
Three years ago, before I came to Seeds of Peace (I joined Seeds of Peace in 1999), I used to know very little about my neighbors, about the people who live right next to me in my city, in my house, in my neighborhood. Seeds of Peace gave me the opportunity to look them in the eyes and understand them. When you understand someone, when you sit in front of him, and look him in the face and talk to him, you cannot think of him as the enemy. There is simply no such thing.
Each day of this terrible conflict, of the latest outburst, that has been going on for almost two years, each day, Seeds of Peace gives me hope. Seeds of Peace gives me an optimistic view of the future because I know, like John said, there is a minority of violent people who convince other people to be violent and to hate us. But, I know there is a silent majority, and this silent majority are my friends: my Palestinian friends, my Jordanian friends, and my Egyptian friends. Although I cannot visit them right now, because it is too dangerous for me and it is too dangerous for them to visit me right now, we still keep in touch. We write e-mails and talk on the phone. Every time something happens in my city or in any other big city in Israel, what gives me comfort and gives me hope is to get a phone call from my Palestinian friends asking how I am doing, am I okay, did something happen to anyone I know. Fortunately enough for me, I have not lost anyone close in this conflict yet. But, I am afraid this might happen and I think what will give me hope is this contact. I know that I have someone to talk to on the other side.
Three years ago on Christmas Eve, the last Christmas of the Millennium (it was a happier time then), we all went to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, on the 24th. We went in a large group of Israelis, about 50 people. We met with our Palestinian friends in Bethlehem at the same place, which is now the scene of a terrible battle that has been going on for a couple of weeks now, the Church of the Nativity and the compound. Looking at the news today, I cannot even imagine I was there just three years ago, just three short years ago. It was so beautiful. It was full of light, it was full of happy people, full of people smiling Arabs, Jews, Israelis, Palestinians just walking together, holding hands, singing, and dancing to Christmas songs. Today, it is just so terrible. None of it is how I remember it just three years ago. Still, like I said before, the hope is there. The situation is very bad, but we have each other. We keep in touch. We do not hate each other. We do not have any reason to do so because we know each other too well to do that.
To put a face on the enemy, to see him, to know him Ð that is what is important. That is why I wish more people could come through this program or any other program, which will introduce them to the enemy to show them the enemy has a face. It will show them that the enemy is not just a bad person that hates you. They are people just like you but on the other side, and that is what is important. It is what gives me hope in this terrible situation. Thank you very much.
Laith Khouri, Seed, Seeds of Peace
He did not leave anything for me to say, so I am going to be brief. I am Laith from Jordan. I do not live in the capital Amman. I live in a city called Erbick. I heard about Seeds of Peace from my cousin who did Seeds of Peace before me. He was so hyper when he told me about Seeds of Peace. I was like, "Okay I am going to try it." Before that, I was so interested in the cause, because I am originally from Palestine. So, I went to Seeds of Peace, first, in the summer of 2000.
When I reached Maine, I was extremely tired from the trip, but my mind was working. [I thought] am I going to meet the other side, because I had never met an Israeli before in my life. We met each other in the bunk. The first few days, I was so nervous Ð he was my enemy. I discovered that my enemy is a human being like me. He is not even an enemy. He is now my best friend. We lived together, ate together, swam together, played sports together, and had sessions with each other. We tried to understand each other and we did. We understood each other from all points of view. Even though we disagreed a lot with each other, at the same time, we really understood each other.
That was my first time in 2000. In 2001, I came again after the second Intafada, which really destroyed a lot of lives. When I came there, I was so angry because of the situation that was going on. I wanted to suppress my feelings to say that what was going on was wrong. I am not justifying suicide bombers. I am not saying that Israelis are doing something wrong. Both sides are doing something wrong. Everybody is being killed by Palestinians. At the same time, suicide bombers are killing themselves and Israelis. They are killing everybody. They do not even know if they are killing Israelis or just Palestinians. I came here just to suppress my feelings and to say that we can do something now. We are simple peacemakers, not just followers of peacemakers, but peacemakers. We are the ones who make peace. I said that we can do something. We are not here just to see each other and have fun. We are here to achieve peace through Seeds of Peace. Seeds of Peace, at the time, taught us how to discuss, how to understand, and how to know who is your enemy.
I thank John and all the staff for giving us the opportunity. This opportunity is so important for every single person in that conflict to understand what is going on. He gave us this opportunity, and we are so thankful for that, for him, for the whole staff Ð for the facilitators who have really been trying to make us closer to each other and for the counselors who have been with us the whole time, just trying to make us have a life together. Now, we are in touch with each other. We go to the Seeds Net, we write our e-mails, and we call each other everyday. I receive phone calls from all my Israeli friends every single day. We are really in touch. Even though it has been ages since we have seen each other, we still have that hope. We have that hope that Seeds of Peace gave us.
Now, I would like to say my feelings about the current situation. It is really, really hard to understand how I can imagine that my Israeli friend or Palestinian friend is going to be killed. I cannot even weigh that moment. I cannot even imagine my friend would be killed, or even injured, because of a war going on. It must be stopped. The leaders of the world have been working for a long time. I am sure, because I have hope, that a solution will be found to solve this problem. A lot of lives are gone.
My plans for the future: as of now, I am a freshman studying political science at Manhattanville College. I think when I graduate, I will be someone who works for peace; someone who might work with Seeds of Peace, or who might work in the Parliament, or hopefully, my dream, in the United Nations. I will try to find a solution, not just for the Middle East problem, but for all conflicts in the world. I will try to solve these problems because that is what Seeds of Peace taught us. Seeds of Peace taught us how to be ourselves, how to achieve peace, and that is why we are here today. Maybe to give someone hope that the problem is going to be solved. Thanks.
