








The Other Side
In this article, Melisse Lewine-Boskovich, Managing Director of Peace Child Israel gives some background on the vital work carried out by Peace Child Israel in helping to build greater understanding and cooperation between communities in the region. Peace Child has an exemplary record and we are proud to work with them to build peace, tolerance and understanding.
"Peace Child Israel is in its third decade of activity as one of the veteran organizations dealing with coexistence problems between Jews and Palestinian in Israel. Founded in 1988, at the height of the first intifada, Peace Child Israel committed itself to majority-minority relations inside Israel at a time when it was significantly more fashionable to be implementing "cross-border" programs. Theatre, as a group process and advocacy tool, is the vehicle for reaching its objectives."

Um El-Fachem and Mevot Iron playwriting session
"Due to segregation, historical grievances, the on-going cross-border violence and tribal allegiances, relations have deteriorated since the organization's inception and PCI has had to adapt with changing times. Programs for parents and an accredited teacher's course were developed beginning in 2003.
DU-DRAMA - THE YOUTH PROGRAM
DU-DRAMA is a year-long leadership program for 25-30 direct beneficiaries, Jewish and Palestinian teenagers in the 9th or 10th grades from two neighboring schools. DU-DRAMA is co-facilitated by one theater professional and group facilitator (one Palestinian and one Jew). Weekly meetings take place at the two schools on an alternating basis."

Melisse and her students
"The program, recognized by the Ministry of Education, includes 2 weekend seminars, the first for team-building and the second for rehearsals. It also includes 2 nation-wide fieldtrips to theatres for all active groups in the program. The first trip is for learning about the magic of the stage and the second to perform excerpts of their plays for each other and the public at-large at a prestigious theatre in the country.
TAKING THE SHOW ON THE ROAD
The impact extends beyond the core group. Each group of teens produces a bi-lingual play in Arabic and Hebrew (original, or an adaptation of a classic text) which is performed four times for over 2,000 Jewish and Arab schools. The actors prepare themselves for an inter-active workshop with student audiences that conclude each performance."
THE CHILDREN OF PEACE INTERVIEW: SAJIDA ASIF

Sajida Asif
Professor Sarah Brown, a Trustee of Children of Peace, finds out a little more about Sajida Asif's exhibition, The Road to Peace. Sajida is a Friend of Children of Peace. She has raised £1000 so far from sales and is donating all these proceeds to four charities, including Children of Peace which recently received £250.
Sarah: Sajida - your paintings are very beautiful, and I love all the different combinations of colours and textures you use. But I also like the way they seem to set puzzles for the viewer, a bit like crossword clues, and I found myself wanting to know more about the stories which lie behind them. Could you tell me more about this one?

Sajida: This painting was one of the very early paintings I created in the Road to Peace collection. Within this painting I have used roses as a symbol of Britain/ England and the blue Feroza stone as a symbol of Pakistan, as it's Pakistan's national stone.
The feroza maze is created as a finger maze which will take you to a journey of peace as shown in the centre with the CND symbol. To get to the maze one must first walk the path, the road to peace which was created very carefully with fine sticks representing the time, care and effort needed to build peace in the world.
All the paintings are predominantly green as each painting is a garden in which there are labyrinths and mazes that take you on a journey of healing and peace during war.
Sarah: What made you start work on the paintings which you included in the 'Road to Peace' exhibition?
Sajida: The 'Road to Peace' is a collection of paintings with great significance to me.
I began these paintings when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began taking place with rapid losses of human life. This was an emotional time for all involved as well as audiences of the war like myself. As I began research into the war, its effects on all humans involved, be they children, civilians, journalists, soldiers or prisoners, I felt that I somehow needed to raise awareness of the issues while promoting peace.
What was also important to me was that we never forget about all whom have died or suffered in the name of war even though our lives carry on as normal. I wanted the victims to know that they are always thought of, and in our prayers though we may never know or meet them.

Sarah: You are very generously donating all the proceeds from sales to four charities. Could you tell us how you came to choose them? And how did you first hear about Children of Peace?
Sajida: As mentioned above, what was extremely important to me was that the world recognises that war creates all sorts of victims of war. There is pain and sadness in our hearts when we see innocent children die in war. However, there is also pain and sadness when we see other civilians, journalists, soldiers and prisoners die and suffer in the name of war, as every human is someone's child. Every human will have had the same nine months of being inside their mother before they enter this world so every life is precious, whether that life takes the shape and form of a civilian, prisoner, soldier, homeless child or any other poor and destitute person in war. The charities were chosen based on a representation of different victims of war such as tortured prisoners, homeless children of war, limbless soldiers and children who lose out in life because of hatred and the lack of peace. This is where Children of Peace comes in.
PUBLIC FIGURES JOIN US AS FRIENDS
In recent weeks, leading public figures have joined Children of Peace as Friends, showing their solidarity with our message of peace, reconciliation and understanding between all children and their communities in Israel and Palestine. They join us at an important moment, when high level peace talks are taking place bringing the prospect of hope to all of us engaged in conflict resolution in the region.
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Mohammed Amin - has recently retired after 19 years as a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He is vice-chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum and treasurer of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester. Mohammed Amin studied mathematics at Clare College, Cambridge, and also obtained a postgraduate certificate in education from Leeds University. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and an associate member of the Association of Corporate Treasurers.
Giving his reasons for supporting Children of Peace Mohammed Amin says:
"I support Children of Peace because I believe that action on the ground can help to bring about reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians, and because children's lives should not be blighted while adults spend years negotiating peace.
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Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi are leading food writers, chefs and the co-founders of the highly successful Ottolenghi group of food shops and restaurants in Belgravia, Islington, Notting Hill and Kensington. This inspirational and influential success story is all the more compelling because Yotam is an Israeli and Sami is a Palestinian.
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Yotam Ottolenghi's path to the world of cooking and baking has been anything but straightforward. Having completed a Masters degree in philosophy and literature whilst working on the news desk of an Israeli daily, he made a radical shift on coming to London in 1997. He started as an assistant pastry chef at the Capital and then worked at Kensington Place and Launceston Place, where he ran the pastry section. Yotam subsequently worked for Maison Blanc and then Baker and Spice, before starting his own eponymous group of restaurants/food shops, with branches in Notting Hill, Islington and Kensington.
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Sami Tamimi's intimate engagement with food started at a tender age, whilst watching his mother prepare Palestinian delicacies at their home within the walls of Arab East Jerusalem. His first job was as a commis chef at the Mount Zion hotel in the city. He thereafter investigated some of his culinary passions, including the food of Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Persia and even the Eastern European Jewish communities. In 1997 he moved from Tel Aviv to London to work at Baker and Spice, creating a unique traiteur section with the strong identifiable flavours of the Middle East. In 2002 he teamed up with Yotam to open Ottolenghi.
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The Very Rev Michael Edward Tavinor has been a supporter of Children of Peace for a number of years. He is the current Dean of Hereford. He was born on 11 September 1953, educated at Durham University and ordained after a period of study at Ripon College Cuddesdon in 1983. He was a Curate at St Peter, Ealing and then Precentor at Ely Cathedral. After this he became Priest in charge at Holy Cross, Stuntney then Vicar of Tewkesbury Abbey. In 2002 he was appointed to the Hereford Deanery.
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WE HAVE MORE TO UNIFY US… writes Mahmoud Jabari
In this article, regular contributor and Children of Peace Palestinian Youth Ambassador Mahmoud Jabari gives his own highly personal viewpoint on the chances of peace between Israel & Palestine.

We Have More To Unify Us Than To Divide Us…
Let's Rethink And Begin Again Toward
Peace
writes Mahmoud Jabari
It has been truly an exceptional time for those of us who live in different parts of the world. All around us we are witnessing some pretty decisive events that bring hope for some people and bring very little for others.
The Founder of Children of Peace, Richard Martin often speaks wisely that human beings have much in common with each other and he asks us to celebrate our similarities together with our differences."
When you take an objective view and watch Muslims fasting in the holy month of Ramadan which has recently finished and then you see the Jewish people celebrating their New Year "Rosh Hashanah", you come to realise that the people of the world have more reasons to be unified than to be divided.
In Ramadan, Muslims learn how to forgive and rebuild love and respect and they experience the tolerance of God. That's little different from Rosh Hashanah which is an opportunity to start again and to rebuild love and respect inside everyone of us.
There is no true meaning for these special times in the year if we don't allow them to be an opportunity for wider and deeper messages for us all.
Everyone of us is member of the global family and every move, decision, behaviour or beliefs we each of us make will have a powerful affect on this family.
If it then about us, how do we want to see this family ?
And how we would like this family to behave in this world ?
The answers are within each and every one of us. We want our world family to be responsible, united, full of love, and full of humanity. And if we do, we need to bring forward the reasons that make our family act the way they do and for that we are all collectively responsible for the world we live in and the way we treat each other.
What we miss between us all today is enough trust that will lead us to believe in each other. If we would open our hearts and minds we can rebuild bridges between us - bridges of forgiveness, respect and understanding
As an international Peace Ambassador for Children of Peace and before that as a human, I felt depressed and sad when I heard that four Israelis were killed on a road beside the city of Hebron. It was a vile, cruel murder and the murderers shot a pregnant women and put a bullet into her unborn child.
It was timed to derail the Peace Talks whilst the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority Israel and the United States were gathering to meet at the White House to begin direct negotiation between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
We Palestinians all know that the people who were behind this operation had one goal - to damage any efforts toward peace. Their message to those leaders and to us as human beings is crude and inhuman. It says: that we can't run away from violence. Well, their violence kills people for no logical reason and targets families and pregnant women.
The Palestinian and Israeli people and the world have been yearning for peace - so that we can go about our daily lives without fear and hatred. So that we can look forward to calm, stability, prosperity and a decent future. We have all been waiting for this moment to come and we all pinning our hopes that the negotiations will lead to political stability, after decades of bloodshed.
Unfortunately, there are also voices in Israel that try to depress the public about a possible peace solution and encouraged for more settlements construction in the Palestinian Territories.
It is here that our mission begins. It's a mission of being ready to give up more for the sake of ending this painful conflict and starting a new period of peace and shared living on the land we share, a land we both love and want to build the best life ever on it.
I call upon the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to choose the path of wisdom and to think of the coming decades. We Palestinians want it be become decades of peace for all.
I also call upon President Abbas to be ready to pay more than what is expected from you because in the end - young people - Israeli and Palestinian deserve a future free from hatred and bloodshed.
I am writing these words to invite our world to take every opportunity to pause for a moment, to learn to forgive and then to begin again. We need to be able to counter violence and terrorism together by building tolerance, respect and trust.
Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah and the Al-Fitter Feast have passed. Yom Kippur is coming and we all have the chance to rethink and work together within our global family. Perhaps the answer is that the United Nations introduces one Global Fasting day - where we remember our suffering and all of us think about our hopes so that we can make a fresh start for a better future.
ABIR ARAMIN GIRLS BURSARY
The two successful recipients of the 2010-11 Abir Aramin Girls’ Bursary will be announced in our next website update in October, together with details of those organisations in Israel & Palestine who are to be awarded a Children of Peace grant this Autumn 2010. Look out for details.