NEWS SIDEBAR: Kibbutz Promotes Arab-Israeli Coexistence

c. 2000 Religion News Service KIBBUTZ LOHAMEI HA GHETTAOT, Israel _ After the first round of violent confrontations this fall between Arabs and Jews within Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, 18-year-old Manar Fawakhri noticed that people in her Arab Galilee village were looking at her a little askance. “One of my friends taunted me saying, […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

KIBBUTZ LOHAMEI HA GHETTAOT, Israel _ After the first round of violent confrontations this fall between Arabs and Jews within Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, 18-year-old Manar Fawakhri noticed that people in her Arab Galilee village were looking at her a little askance.

“One of my friends taunted me saying, `did the Jews call you a dirty Arab yet,”’ she recalled.


This Israeli high school student is involved in a unique partnership with the Holocaust Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Ha Ghettaot (The Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz) whereby Arab teen-agers, as well as Jews, study the history of the Holocaust and are trained as museum guides.

The 6-year-old Jewish-Arab educational project, which seeks to draw humanistic lessons from the Holocaust, has been shaken _ but not destroyed _ by the recent unrest.

And Fawakhri, along with her fellow student guides, has continued to lead groups of school children and tourists through the cavernous bowels of the underground Holocaust “Museum of the Child” which documents the experiences of Jewish youngsters trapped in World War II Europe.

Speaking in an English tinged with an Arabic accent, as she escorted a group of Christian tourists through the museum, Fawakhri read excerpts from children’s memories of the war, which are framed on the museum walls.

They are simple statements of lost parents, siblings and toys that tell the story of a world destroyed: “I was small then, I had a house. I lived with my parents and two big brothers,” reads one such testimonial.

Fawakhri says her experience in guiding at the Holocaust museum has taught her to empathize with the pain of both sides in the present-day Arab-Israeli conflict without trying to assign blame.

“When the disturbances first broke out, I was in a state of shock,” said this quiet, articulate high school student. “It just broke my heart because the lesson I had learned from studying about the Holocaust was that peace is always the fundamental solution.


“But I try to look at it from a humanistic perspective. I don’t blame the Jews or the Arabs. It doesn’t matter who is the guilty party. I want to hear both sides, and I just hope the present crisis can lead us to something better.”

Fawakhri hopes, however, that more Israeli Jews can also learn about and appreciate the pain of Arab Palestinians who were displaced by the creation of the Jewish state in the same way she has learned to appreciate the pain of the Nazi era in Jewish history.

“I’m not trying to equate one with the other,” she said. “But both wars were horrible. Both sides have suffered. But only if we learn about the suffering of each other, will be able to understand each other.”

DEA END FLETCHER

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