PRESIDENT’S COMMENT
From Richard Martin, Founder.
There are currently more than 45 armed conflicts taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the following territories. In Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Western Sahara.
On 22 June, United States president Donald Trump announced that the United States Air Force and Navy had attacked multiple nuclear sites in Iran.
Just four days later a fragile, unilateral ceasefire between Iran and Israel was announced by US President Trump following twelve days of hostilities – the third round of direct Iran-Israel combat in just the past 14 months.
We hope that peace will prevail and the historic friendship between the Jewish and the Persian peoples will resurface.
The MENA is a crossing point of ancient grudges, tribal and religious hostilities that simmer and explode into a cycle of rancour, revenge and violence. The Abraham Accords have shown that there is a better way and our friends and supporters across the region testify to a more hopeful future.
This June 2025 at the height of regional conflict – we know that our path of peace and reconciliation is the waymark to follow. We are therefore proud to announce that our annual grants will go to Israeli and Palestinian groups, all members of our Coalition of Peace, the largest peace network across the MENA.
“ Dehumanisation is the First Article of war”
Richard Martin FRSA.
NEWS – JUNE 2025
The 2025 Grants
Multicultural Israel
Palestine Play Projects
Footnotes
THE CHILDREN OF PEACE GRANTS
The Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the following recipients of our 2025 grants.
AJEEC-NISPED (Israel)
(Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development) is an Arab-Jewish organization for social change that was established in the Negev in 2000.
The organization joined our Coalition of Peace in 2014 and is made up of a joint team of Arabs and Jews. They work together to create an equal, shared society, which allows Arabs and Jews to coexist while preserving their identity and culture. Currently, the organization operates in civil society all over Israel and in cross-border programs.
THE CHALLENGE
Over 30% of Israeli Arab young adults are NEETs – Not in Employment, Education, or Training. These youth face limited opportunities, language barriers, and social isolation, making them susceptible to criminal recruitment.
Qutaiba’s story illustrates this transformation. The 20-year-old from Baqa al-Gharbiyye joined MatzpenTech while at high risk of criminal involvement. After being involved in a shooting, program staff prevented a revenge incident and facilitated his complete turnaround. Qutaiba reflects,
“Before joining the program, my life was a mess. I made many mistakes, went down the wrong path. When I joined, I started meeting with Marwa, the teacher. Suddenly, I felt there is still good in the world. Today I’m working, staying consistent, and helping others get out of the same situation.”
MatzpenTech runs five days weekly, combining vocational training in industrial fields, language acquisition (workplace Hebrew and English), resilience coaching, and community engagement. The program emphasizes both individual skill-building and social responsibility.
Creating Real Impact
The September 2025 cohort will serve 170 Arab young adults across eight localities, with goals of 70% entering sustainable employment and 90% reporting increased emotional resilience.
MatzpenTech represents more than crime prevention. It’s shared society in action, building bridges while addressing security concerns through social intervention rather than enforcement alone.
HOPE FLOWERS SCHOOL (Bethlehem Palestine)
Children of Peace has worked with this remarkable school for over a decade. We recognise its inspirational work and underlying message of a hopeful future.
Ibrahim Issa, Director of Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem tells us more…
Children of Peace-UK Supporting Child Protection Program at Hope Flowers School
Children are among the most vulnerable victims of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Many have lost family members or suffered deep psychological wounds, living under constant threat of violence and displacement. Without proper mental health support, these experiences can lead to long-term conditions such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD, severely impacting their growth and future.
Children of Peace-UK has approved a grant of GBP5,000 to support the trauma counselling program at Hope Flowers School (HFS) in Bethlehem to provide essential care for these children and their families. Through professional counselling, children are guided to process their pain and develop healthy coping skills. Therapies like cognitive-behavioural therapy, art therapy, and play therapy offer safe spaces for healing, resilience-building, and emotional recovery.
The Child Protection Program at HFS serves children aged 5 – 16 affected by violence and trauma. In 2024, HFS supported 90 children from Bethlehem and 76 orphans from Gaza. In 2025/2026, we aim to reach 135 children, including those in urgent need of continued care and new referrals from schools and local organizations.
The Nest Center at HFS will provide a safe, nurturing environment for personalized psychosocial and educational support. HFS, a non-profit school since 1984, serves 350 children, most from refugee camps, and prioritizes inclusion for children with special needs.
Thanks to the generous grant from Children of Peace-UK, we can offer life-changing support to these young survivors. On behalf of the HFS staff, children, and the Bethlehem community, we extend our heartfelt gratitude. Your support truly transforms lives.
RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
One of the outstanding human rights organisations, Rabbis for Human Rights were early members of our Coalition of Peace.
Over the years, RHR have played a leading role in protecting Palestinian farmers in the West Bank from extremist settler attacks where ancient olive groves have been destroyed.
Here RHR outline their important work…
Rabbis for Human Rights is an Israeli NGO founded in 1988 that works to connect Jewish religious practice with human rights values in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). For decades, the organization and its 170 Rabbinical members have worked to support Palestinian farmers in Areas B and C of the West Bank, who face frequent violence from extremist Israeli settlers aimed at forcibly displacing the communities their land.
Children are especially affected, experiencing trauma, disrupted education, and food insecurity. After October 7, the was a surge in settler violence that led to 20 communities, nearly 1,200 people, abandoning their homes and land.
Settler attacks often target olive trees, a vital economic and cultural resource for nearly 100,000 Palestinian families across the OPT. RHR’s Planting Justice campaign responds to this violence by bringing hundreds of Israeli and international volunteers to plant olive trees together with the Palestinian communities most effected.
The planting season runs through the winter, and coincides with the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the New Year for trees. RHR runs weekly planting trips throughout the season, in 2024-5, over 400 volunteers joined our activities, planting 1,000 trees with,
- Nine Palestinian communities across the West Bank.
- Three communities in the Nablus region.
- Three in the Bethlehem region.
- And three in the South Hebron Hills.
Planting Justice conveys a powerful message of interfaith, binational solidarity and hope while providing material support and deterring settler aggression through protective presence. The initiative promotes immediate action and long-term change, strengthening mutual understanding and shared commitment to a just and peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
To find out more and plant a tree: www.tree-rhr.org
SAVE A CHILD
Save A Child is an extraordinary charity founded by leading humanitarian Sally Becker (pictured above). She’s a Goodwill Ambassador to Children of Peace and has carried out missions to save children in Iraq, Kosovo, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Gaza and Syria. Her newly published autobiography: ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’ (publisher: HarperElement) is highly recommended.
Here Sally explains how our Grant will make a difference…
Having worked in areas of conflict since 1993 I have developed a strong understanding of the challenges and complexities involved in providing children with urgent assistance.
During a mission to help victims of ISIS in Northern Iraq in 2018, I was collecting injured children from the front lines in Mosul and bringing them to our emergency paediatric unit where they were assessed and stabilised by our doctor before they were transported to hospitals on the outskirts of the city.
Some of the children had complex conditions that required specialist advice so we enlisted the help of a small team of remote paediatric specialists to offer advice which resulted in improved diagnosis and treatment for many children in Northern Iraq.
Recognising the need for a solution that can transcend borders and reach communities affected by conflict, we brought together a team of experts in telemedicine and paediatric health to create a Global Paediatric Network.
We partnered with the British and European Associations of Paediatric Surgeons and now have 300 specialists responding to doctors treating children in besieged or remote areas.
The prolonged conflict in Syria has devastated the healthcare system, particularly in minority enclaves such as those inhabited by Druze and Christian families. Paediatric care has suffered acutely, with a severe shortage of qualified doctors, equipment, and safe access to hospitals.
Save a Child is responding to the crisis by embarking on a critical humanitarian mission to deliver paediatric telemedicine services to clinics serving the Druze and Christian communities in southwestern Syria, with an operational framework to bring the most urgent paediatric cases across the border for specialised treatment. We have partnered with the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, a member of the Coalition for Peace, who will manage the complicated logistics necessary to arrange care in Israeli hospitals.
We are urgently seeking funds to enable us to implement the program and are most grateful to receive a grant of £5,000 from Children of Peace. This is towards the cost of the first mobile paediatric telehealth unit in Syria which will help us to save the lives of many sick and injured children across the region.
PALESTINE PLAY PROJECTS
Lesley Ravenscroft, a Trustee of Palestine Play Projects (formerly Playgrounds for Palestine UK) underlines the importance of play for a child’s well-being…
At Palestine Play Projects, we understand the power that play has in the life of children. On a physical level, playing develops children’s motor skills, keeps them active and strengthens balance.
It also plays a vital role in children’s emotional development, allowing them to work through challenges, experiment with different possibilities and release stress. It lifts children up and away into a world of imagination, creativity and freedom.
Play becomes even more important for children living under daily chronic stress, as Palestinian children do. Across Palestine, threats of displacement, violence and loss have a constant presence in their lives. While play cannot change children’s daily realities, it provides a unique and invaluable opportunity to relieve trauma, strengthen friendships, build confidence, exercise imagination and enjoy a space of dignity.
Our work upholds children’s right to play, as enshrined in Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children. We believe every child has the right to play and Palestinian children are no exception. With our partners across Palestine, we have delivered drama workshops, built playgrounds for visually impaired and older children, facilitated music and art projects, and much more.
While our hearts are broken for Palestinian children, we remain resolute in our goal of providing play opportunities for their wellbeing and dignity. As Gaza has been destroyed and Palestinians in the West Bank face increasing restrictions on daily life, our work has necessarily expanded from playground building to facilitating all kinds of play.
We joined the Coalition of Peace several years ago in continued support of Palestinian children’s right to play. Like Children of Peace, we don’t take sides, and our hope is that the children of today, both Palestinian and Israeli can grow to be adults who live peacefully side by side.
MULTICULTURAL ISRAEL
Our Israel correspondent Rolene Marks writes of the Israel you don’t hear about – a truly multicultural and diverse country.
What many people don’t realise about Israel is how diverse the population is.
On campuses around the world, in the streets of major cities and on social media, the slurs that are leveled at Israel are diabolical, including the accusation of the country being an Apartheid state.
NOTE. Pictures here are of Arab life within Israel.
Israel receives a disproportionate amount of media coverage – often at the expense of other conflicts in the world. This spills over into social media as well. And you would be hard pressed to find anyone without strong opinions about Israel – good or bad.
The rationale behind this is that if Israel is compared to and demonized just as much as Apartheid South Africa was, then treating the Jewish state like a pariah and meting out the same treatment in the form of boycotts, divestment and sanction policies is the logical step. In fact, if Israel is as odious as South Africa was, should it exist at all? Herein lies one of the fundamental differences. At no point during the apartheid years was South Africa’s legitimacy or existence as a state challenged, just the racist governmental policy.
I don’t think many of these activists or others who chant these pejoratives know what Apartheid is – but I do. The very use of the word to describe Israel is not only odious, but it also makes a mockery and cheapens the tremendous suffering endured by South Africa’s black citizens during that period.
Growing up in Apartheid South Africa, I bore witness on a daily basis to the inhumane suffering of my fellow citizens. Only they were not regarded as such.
Simply put, Apartheid was a series of state legislated laws that determined that ‘non-whites’ were second-class citizens. These laws governed every aspect of a person’s life – from where they lived and whom they married to simple ablutions.
Israel is not a perfect country. Like every country, it has its issues and like every country, there are racists in society – but Israel is not an Apartheid state.
Israel’s population is diverse and many are pleasantly surprised when they visit the country and see the mosaic of different ethnicities, cultures and religions. While there will always be a very small contingent of troublemakers, the cohesiveness and co-operation between communities has never been greater than it is now.
On October 7, we were all attacked, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Druze and Bedouin, everyone. Since then we have defended together, mourned together, volunteered together, sheltered together and endured together.
We are all in this together, through this most difficult and challenging time, supporting each other as best we can. This is the Israel I want you to see. We are not the country that those who libel it and call for boycotts say it is. This is our Israel – and there is nowhere else I would rather be.
OUR COALITION OF PEACE
… is a unique peace network with affiliates on every continent, and especially in Gaza, Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco.
FOOTNOTES
In her latest news update, Professor Sarah Brown reviews key events in the region.
A fragile ceasefire in the wake of US attacks
On 22 June three nuclear facilities, including the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, came under attack from the US Air Force and Navy, using ‘bunker-buster’ GBU-57s – these bombs are much more powerful than Israel’s missiles and thus have the capacity to cause significant damage to deeply buried sites such as Fordow. It remains uncertain exactly how effective Operation Midnight Hammer was. The US claims it was a great success whereas Iran insists the damage was comparatively minor, and leaked Pentagon sources suggest Iran’s programme may only have been delayed by a few months.
Iran responded with an attack on a US airbase in Doha. This was a limited strike, apparently calculated not to encourage still further escalation. Donald Trump subsequently announced that a ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Iran. Although there continued to be some exchanges between the two countries, a fragile ceasefire does appear to have been established for the moment.
Reactions to the US air strikes were predictably polarised. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response was naturally enthusiastic,
“Congratulations President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history.”
The UK expressed backing for the action, but Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer struck a cautionary note, urging the need for talks and warning of the danger of escalation. Russia and China strongly condemned the action.
But Trump also faced pushback from less expected quarters. His own supporter base had put pressure on the President not to draw their country into another war. High profile figures such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson are among the most vocal of these America-first campaigners.
A fragile ceasefire in the wake of US attacks
On 22 June three nuclear facilities, including the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, came under attack from the US Air Force and Navy, using ‘bunker-buster’ GBU-57s – these bombs are much more powerful than Israel’s missiles and thus have the capacity to cause significant damage to deeply buried sites such as Fordow. It remains uncertain exactly how effective Operation Midnight Hammer was. The US claims it was a great success whereas Iran insists the damage was comparatively minor, and leaked Pentagon sources suggest Iran’s programme may only have been delayed by a few months.
Iran responded with an attack on a US airbase in Doha. This was a limited strike, apparently calculated not to encourage still further escalation. Donald Trump subsequently announced that a ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Iran. Although there continued to be some exchanges between the two countries, a fragile ceasefire does appear to have been established for the moment.
Reactions to the US air strikes were predictably polarised. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response was naturally enthusiastic,
“Congratulations President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history.”
The UK expressed backing for the action, but Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer struck a cautionary note, urging the need for talks and warning of the danger of escalation. Russia and China strongly condemned the action.
But Trump also faced pushback from less expected quarters. His own supporter base had put pressure on the President not to draw their country into another war. High profile figures such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson are among the most vocal of these America-first campaigners.
Background to Israel’s initial attacks on Iran’s nuclear programme
The latest conflict began on 13 June when Israel launched its attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It is widely believed that Iran has long been attempting to develop nuclear weapons, and some thought it was on the threshold of success.
This threat has always been of particular concern in Israel due to Iran’s consistently hostile attitude towards that country, and its oft-stated intention to destroy the Jewish state. Earlier international attempts to monitor and control Iran’s uranium enrichment, or to negotiate an agreement over the programme, have been fraught with difficulties.
The possibility that Israel might target Iran’s nuclear capability has been mooted for several years, but the 13 June attacks came as a surprise to many. As well as Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, individual nuclear scientists and military leaders were targeted for assassination. There were also many civilian casualties.
Even though Iran’s own military response has led to many Israeli casualties, there has been widespread support for the war in Israel across the political spectrum due to grave anxieties about Iran’s nuclear programme.
More than 50 reported dead at Gaza aid site
On 17 June many witnesses reported that forces from the IDF fired into a crowd waiting for aid supplies near Khan Younis. Over 200 people were wounded, according to medics in Gaza, with injuries being caused by artillery shells and live gunfire. The Israeli military has confirmed that it is looking into the incident. Although this was a particularly serious incident, dozens of people in Gaza have been killed in almost daily shootings near aid distribution sites. In relation to many of these incidents, the IDF has responded that some of the people present posed a threat and that warning shorts were first fired.
These deaths come in the wake of controversy over Israel’s decision to back the private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US organisation, rather than work with UN bodies. The GHF has been accused of limiting the food it makes available and not taking appropriate steps to reduce violence. However, the GHF has denied claims that deaths have taken place near its sites, and recently issued a statement asserting that it has been associated with killings which in fact took place near a UN World Food Programme site.
Photo credits.
Israeli Arab pics came from Wikipedia, Creative Commons.
Other images were supplied by the subjects.