Life Together: Haifa Cultural Center Builds Community Among Arabs and Jews
PART TWO: CHIPPING AWAY AT STEREOTYPES THROUGH SHARED INTERESTS
by Christin Davis, USC graduate journalism student
Assaf Ron (photo: Christin Davis)
“I was raised in a pluralistic house,” said Assaf Ron, a Jewish man from Haifa, Israel. “An Arab was not cursed, he was a person.”
In a country where separation — even physical walls — between Arabs and Jews is common, Mr. Ron’s perspective stands out. News headlines included the murder of a Jewish settler family in the West Bank as Ron, 51, sat in his Haifa office, flooded by a strong sea breeze. Mr. Ron discussed his work as the executive director of Beit Hagefen Arab Jewish Center, a nonprofit cultural center in Haifa. Though he has no written job description, Mr. Ron said his overall role is to promote a need for mutual respect between people, specifically Jews and Arabs.
“My definition of coexistence is normalization, to respect the other’s narrative,” Mr. Ron said. “This is the biggest and hardest step on the way to coexistence.”
Beit Hagefen, according to Mr. Ron, is a “window to a multicultural community” where Jews and Arabs interact together. Despite living in the same city, he said, the two groups do not interact, so the center encourages and facilitates connections through activities in the local area.
The center has an art gallery, a library, and an Arab theater. It recently began a women’s walking club, a program bringing Arab and Jewish families together in each others’ homes, and a photography class that allows for young people to connect through their work. Founded in 1963, it is a non-profit organization supported by the Haifa municipality; the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport; and private donations.
Beit Hagefen cultural center in Haifa. (photo: Christin Davis)
“It is important to me to have people respect and accept the other, no matter his religion, nationality, or education,” Mr. Ron said. “There is only one way to live a good life on this globe — share resources and respect differences among people. I truly believe it is in my power to convince people of these ideas.”
Before coming to Beit Hagefen, Mr. Ron, who has a master’s degree in public administration from Haifa University, was the executive director of the department of education for the regional council in Gilboa, a rural area bordering the West Bank. Functioning much like a superintendent does in the United States, Mr. Ron oversaw seven Arab and six Jewish schools, often bringing together the teachers for collaboration. In his current position, Mr. Ron overseas the departments of Beit Hagefen, initiates new projects, raises funds, networks, and coaches the staff.
Mr. Ron works closely with Ulfat Haider, the program manager at Beit Hagefen and an Arab woman. Together, they promote “neighborliness.” According to Mr. Ron, this means, “We don’t have to agree about everything. If Palestinian is the way you define yourself, it doesn’t mean you want to do anything to me.”
He acknowledged the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict but said that at Beit Hagefen “we reduce the level of fear and hatred and increase the understanding of the other’s narrative. We try to reduce stereotypes.”
A mother and her son play outside Beit Hagefen community center. (photo: Christin Davis)
It’s an ongoing effort, as Mr. Ron learned when his son came home, excited to have made a new friend. Mr. Ron asked his son if he wanted to invite the boy to their house. “’Are you crazy? He’s Arab,’ my son said,” Mr. Ron recalled. “Can you imagine? My house is one of coexistence, but he still gets this from the outside. Why couldn’t we invite him over?”
Mr. Ron does make clear that he supports a Jewish state, “but not a Jewish state that is against civil rights for all people,” he said. “Ask Arabs, they want to live here because it is a democracy — even if it is not completely equal now,” Mr. Ron said. “We are an ethnic democracy. Jews have some benefits above the rest. In the eyes of the world, this is racism…sorry. My answer might be different if there was democracy in the Middle East. But right now, with the hypocrisy of terrorism, I’m too frightened.”
I trust the Arabs that live in Israel,” he said. “They choose to live here. But you can always find one or two people that are not trustworthy.”
Mr. Ron said he doesn’t consider himself that different from other Jews but has “more structured views and general tolerance.” His friends, however, question his work toward coexistence.
“People call me naïve,” he said. “I insist on being naïve… It’s just believing in people. I learned that if you respect people as human beings and hear their story, most will respect you as well.”
Christin Davis is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Southern California, and the managing editor for Caring, a magazine focused on social services produced by The Salvation Army.
This report is part of a collaboration between On Being and the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism in an attempt to add to the public’s understanding of the diversity of stories of daily life in Israel and the West Bank.
We welcome your original reflections, essays, videos, or news items for possible publication on the Being Blog. Submit your entry through our First Person Outreach page.
Life Together: Bereaved Families Create Social Media Space Aiming at Reconciliation and Not Protest
PART ONE: EXPERIENCING THE OTHER ONLINE
by Christin Davis, USC graduate journalism student
Siham Abuawwada and Aaron Barnea (photo: Christin Davis)
With a set goal in mind, social media moves people. This is especially true in our heavily networked world where social media is enabling the spread of popular revolutions across the Arab world — protesters organizing via Facebook groups and Twitter campaigns.
The Parents Circle Families Forum, an organization of more than 500 Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost immediate family members as a direct result of the conflict, now has a plan to use social media as a tool, not for protest, but for reconciliation.
Their Crack in the Wall (CITW) campaign connects Israelis and Palestinians in order to share stories of the “other side.” The aim, according to group member Aaron Barnea, is to break down psychological, if not physical, barriers between the two peoples. The project is set to launch this June.
Mr. Barnea’s youngest son was killed in 1999 while serving his mandatory duty in the Israeli Defense Forces. While explaining the trauma of his loss in a Jerusalem meeting, Parents Circle member Siham Abuawwada, a Palestinian from the West Bank, took Barnea’s hands into her own, “I am so, so sorry for your loss.”
At the age of 14, Ms. Abuawwada took on the responsibility of raising and caring for her five siblings after her mother was first arrested and periodically jailed in subsequent years. In 2000, her closest brother was shot in the head at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. “All of us have a broken heart,” she said. “I don’t have to forgive or forget, but I have to understand the other.”
The idea is to determine how to “translate rage into human words and find a path to work together,” Mr. Barnea said. ”We have a deep feeling that what happened to us shouldn’t happen to other people.”
While mourning for his son, Mr. Barnea said he realized that Palestinians were also demonstrating against the conflict and had lost their beloved. “They were talking the same language of peace. It was a shocking, enlightening new experience,” he said. “As an organization, we give the ‘other’ a human dimension, which is necessary to create the belief that reconciliation is possible, and fundamental to peace. With social networks, we can create an open discussion with millions of people in the region.”
CITW follows the organization’s 2002 initiative, Hello-Shalom-Salaam, a telephone hotline and voicemail system that allowed Israelis and Palestinians to engage with each other. Since its launch, the project has recorded one million minutes of dialogue.
In a virtual venue, CITW offers the space for individuals to express views and tell stories from their community, which will be immediately translated into the other’s language — Arabic or Hebrew.
Mr. Barnea said CITW is not an effort to promote one narrative or the other, but simply to portray to people that there is in fact another side. By targeting youth, Parents Circle hopes to move both peoples toward understanding and dialogue.
“It is necessary to create a belief that reconciliation is possible,” Mr. Barnea said. “Not only is it possible, but it is fundamental for any peace agreement. Without reconciliation, there is no peace.”
Christin Davis is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Southern California, and the managing editor for Caring, a magazine focused on social services produced by The Salvation Army.
This series is part of a collaboration between On Being and the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism in an attempt to add to the public’s understanding of the diversity of stories of daily life in Israel and the West Bank.
We welcome your original reflections, essays, videos, or news items for possible publication on the Being Blog. Submit your entry through our First Person Outreach page.
Making Life Out of Ruin in Ramle: The Work of Sculptor Nihad Dabeet
by Janine Rayford, USC graduate journalism student
“This is the project of my life,” says sculptor Nihad Dabeet, 43, as he gives a tour of his unfinished home in Ramle, Israel. Built over 400 years ago, the house was in ruins until its newest tenant devoted himself to its renovation. Mr. Dabeet says he and his wife continue to excavate and build upon the land, without permission from the government.
Petite and jovial, Mr. Dabeet is an internationally known artist and sculptor who usually works with iron wire. From his dingy jeans and sweatshirt, it is hard to imagine a man whose art can cost thousands of dollars and is displayed and purchased throughout the world, including a recent exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia.
Now Mr. Dabeet’s main masterpiece is his home. Renting from an Arab couple who have owned the property before the State of Israel declared independence in 1948, the Ramle native and his wife have excavated rooms buried under more than 10 feet of sand and rubble.
With an art education from Bulgaria, Mr. Dabeet says that “as a sculptor you understand materials.” This understanding is allowing the Arab citizen of Israel to reconstruct a home out of ruin. So far, Mr. Dabeet has only refurbished a small percentage of the original structure.
What was once rubble has become a modern home with an aged façade. There are flat-screen televisions and jetted hot tubs, with Mr. Dabeet’s sculptures of women and olive trees featured throughout. The new mortar ends towards the back of the house.
Unlike in Jerusalem and Nazareth, the Israeli government and local Ramle municipality have not invested in the architectural preservation of Ramle. It is up to individual residents and shop owners to restore and maintain the centuries-old structures of the biblical city, often without support from the current government.
“They want to clear the old part and to build something new,” says Buthaina Dabit, a Ramle native who is giving a tour of the local ruins. Ms. Dabit points out the remnants of a building from the Ottoman period, which has been partially cleared for a parking lot near local shops.
Today, many buildings in Ramle are dilapidated and unlivable. “It’s Arab culture, so it has to be erased,” says Mr. Dabeet, speculating on why he thinks the city abstains from preservation. Families move on as stones crumble from their properties’ arches and ceilings, burying architecture and artifacts in piles of beige rubble. Stray cats abound amongst relics and materials that could belong in the Smithsonian.
Past the bathroom and through an open quad, the sculptor shows one unfinished room at the back of the house, where the ceiling continues to deteriorate.
“If I am not here to repair this every few years, it will just fall in,” he says.
All of this work will be for not if the city decides to bulldoze the property due to the illegal expansion of the structure. It is difficult for Arab citizens to receive permits to build or expand on their land. If they build without permits, their structures are subject to demolition by the municipality.
Despite lacking a building permit, “he insists to pay the taxes,” said Ms. Dabit. The artist hopes that paying taxes regularly may spare his home from demolition.
One of Mr. Dabeet’s projects is to resurface an entire room using tiles gathered from demolished Arab homes in the area. The artist has no trouble finding these tiles, considering the large number of home demolitions that have occurred in the Arab communities of Ramle and neighboring Lod. In an open-air quad on the property, festive-looking ceramic squares, some broken, stand in piles along the stone wall.
Dabeet’s house sits in the Christian quarter of Ramle, in the shadow of the massive Terra Santa Franciscan monastery and a few blocks down the street from an 800-year-old Arab-Christian restaurant.
Mr. Dabeet is a self-proclaimed atheist. “I never believed in the b—- s—-,” says the artist, standing next to a small plastic Christmas tree atop his refrigerator. His wife is a Muslim Bedouin from Libya and the mother of his two young daughters. The Dabeets are the only Muslim family in the area.
When Mr. Dabeet’s wife comes home with their girls, he scoops up his eldest daughter Samira Landa. Despite the uncertain future, the father is proud of the home that he is creating for his family, as well as the benefit it brings to the community.
“I was the right person in the right time to come to this place.”
All photos by Bethany Firnharber.
Janine Rayford is a freelance writer and graduate student in journalism at the University of Southern California. Originally from San Francisco, Rayford obtained her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in 944 magazine, LAmag.com, and the Cape Times of South Africa.
We welcome your original reflections, essays, videos, or news items for possible publication on the Being Blog. Submit your entry through our First Person Outreach page.
Coexistence Is in the Eye of the Beholder for Design School Students in Haifa
by Jessica Donath, USC graduate journalism student
Jonathan Land and Eric Judkowitz (photo: Jessica Donath)
At the Neri Bloomfield School of Design and Education in Haifa, a microwave is one of the hot-button issues for students and faculty alike.
“He won’t let us have one because it will be difficult to make sure non-kosher food stays out of the microwave,” says Jonathan Land, the third-year graphic design student’s voice and facial expression caught between restraint and outrage as he describes a diktat from David Alexander, the school’s president.
This type of problem illustrates the tensions between religious and secular Jews in Israel. This level of religious conflict, however, was not on the official agenda when students and faculty met with journalism students from the University of Southern California to discuss how the power of art can facilitate coexistence.
The Neri Bloomfield School of Design and Education was founded in 1971 by WIZO, an international women’s Zionist organization, and is located in this seaside city’s multicultural German Colony. In 1868, German members of the Evangelical Templar order started settling in the area. They believed that doing so would hasten the second coming of Christ.
“I could have not found a better home for it,” says David Alexander, an Orthodox Jew.
David Alexander (photo: Jessica Donath)
The eloquent educator has no trouble introducing nuance into the discussion. He acknowledges the kosher problem but reminds students that he did not want his school, with all its open space, to permanently smell like a cafeteria. This issue, too, like many questions that touch religion, democracy, or land in Israel, is complicated.
Alexander explains that Neri Bloomfield was different than other Israeli arts and design schools because its students are trained to become high school teachers in their field.
For most of the visiting journalism students, Jewish Israelis, from various ethnic and religious backgrounds studying together with Christian and Muslim Arab-Israelis is the distinguishing element. While this fact of life in institutions of higher education in Israel seems normal to the Israeli students and far less exciting than the low student-to-faculty ratio at the school, their USC counterparts have trouble moving past it.
In smaller group sessions, they inquire about the relationship between arts and politics, as well as the potentially transformative experience that studying and creating art together could have for Jewish and Arabic students.
“I don’t think the idea of a transformative experience is exactly what you should be looking for. How we live our lives on a day-to-day basis is enough,” says photography student Eric Judkowitz, after regaining his composure from laughing hard at the question put to him.
Hady Azaizy (photo: Sharis Delgadillo)
For Hady Azaizy, the only Arab-Israeli graphic design student currently enrolled at Neri Bloomfield, there are just not enough Arabs in the four design-oriented departments (architecture, graphic design, photography and documentary film) to turn his education into a deliberate exercise in coexistence. Thirty percent of the school’s total student body are Arab-Israelis, but most of them don’t study toward a degree in one of the creative disciplines. Rather, their focus is in culture and educational management.
“Me and you can be in one room together for four years, and maybe I will learn something about you, and maybe you will learn something about me. But just because I study in a place where there are Jews and Arabs doesn’t mean there will be communication,” he says.
But the school they attend is not a place for loners, adds Itay Eylon, who grew up on a kibbutz. When students criticize very personal works in front of a classroom of their peers, they need to be respectful of the narratives and beliefs that are revealed through art.
Itay Eylon (photo: Jessica Donath)
Suri Michaeli was looking for openness when she chose a university. The modern Orthodox woman received her primary education at a religious girls school, and she considered more of the same at a small religious arts college. But instead she chose Neri Bloomfield.
“I was looking for a very open place. I didn’t want to be closed-minded. I wanted to have all the experiences that you have here,” she says. Too many topics are taboo in religious schools, she explains while sitting next to Hady, whom she helps to find the right English words to express himself during the group discussion.
For the Neri Bloomfield students, talking about coexistence is far less important than living it.
Jessica Donath is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Southern California. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, she moved to California in 2009 after spending a year in Prague, Czech Republic, where she studied journalism and political science. She has written and published articles in German and English.
We welcome your original reflections, essays, videos, or news items for possible publication on the Being Blog. Submit your entry through our First Person Outreach page.
Discovering the Bahá’í Gardens
by Janine Rayford, USC “Reporting on Israel” Journalism Student
“Wow, what is that?” This question sprang from my mouth the moment I first saw the Bahá’í Gardens in Haifa, Israel.
My classmates and I had just gotten off of the bus in the German Colony area and were on our way to a restaurant that sits on the street just below the breathtaking monument. Since it was nighttime, all I could make out was an organized pattern of lights seeming to ascend into the sky.
I had never heard of the Bahá’í Faith prior to my visit to Haifa. After a bit of research, I found out that Bahá’í is a relatively new monotheistic religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia and that the Bahá’í Gardens (or Terraces of the Bahá’í Faith, or Hanging Gardens of Haifa) are gardens that surround the Shrine of Bab. Bab was the founder of Babism and forerunner to the Bahá’í Faith.
Intrigued by this new information, I decided to get a daytime look and spend my lunch hour at the brilliant edifice. The gardens are a landscaper’s dream (or nightmare, in terms of upkeep). Layers upon layers of perfectly manicured lawns, sparkling fountains, and pruned foliage scale the side of Mount Carmel. Guided tours take awestruck visitors from all faiths up and down the stairs and throughout the flower-lined terraces.
A colleague and I listened in on one tour guide as she described how the Israeli government dealt with the Bahá’í community during the establishment of the Jewish state. Holy places, like the Bahá’í Gardens, would be preserved, but the Bahá’í had to stop their missionary activities and limit for the number of followers allowed to remain in the new nation.
Leaving the gardens, I couldn’t help thinking that in Israel, religious politics plays a part in everything, even the flowers.
(photos by Ron Almog)
Editor’s note: Krista and the On Being team are in Israel this week and working with Diane Winston’s graduate students from the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism. We’ll be sharing some of these students’ reports as part of our collaboration and to add to the diversity of observations of this complex place.
We all want to see more and more Jews immigrating to Israel, but we aren’t willing to accept conversion over the Internet or by mail.
—Israeli Likud MK Danny Danon, chairman of the Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs.
Haaretz reports that Danon recently affirmed Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s decision not to recognize conversions by most Orthodox rabbis outside of Israel. The implication is that many converts may not be “eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to Jews.”
In his explanation, Rabbi Amar cites that Orthodox rabbis from the European and American continents are receiving bribes from converts up to the sum of one million U.S. dollars.
Names So Similar
by Bethany Firnhaber, USC “Reporting on Israel” Journalism Student
Mezer, a kibbutz (collective Jewish community) 45 minutes north of Haifa, is known for its reputation of peaceful, productive coexistence with its Arab neighbors in nearby Meiser. The names of the two locales are so similar that on this sign, the Arabic script in the middle puts the word for “kibbutz” in parentheses next to the word “Mezer” so there is no confusion.
Architecture Students Design the Future of Israel
by Janine Rayford, USC “Reporting on Israel” Journalism Student
When Hagar Admi thinks about the political future of Israel, she thinks in terms of blue prints. Admi, an architecture student at the Neri Bloomfield School of Design and Education in Haifa, contests that art, specifically architecture, is inherently political.
“It’s all about society in architecture, as you plan for people,” Admi interjected at a discussion on coexistence through art, when photography and animation students explained how politics are not a factor in their work. “It’s not just art. Everything in Israel is political.”
For the Tel Aviv native, design and architecture is about planning for the future of Israel, whatever that may be. She and fellow architecture students are working on a project that directly addresses the possibility of a two-state solution.
“Designs take into account what could happen, what should happen,” said Admi.
The project, focusing on the Israeli coastline, allows design students to engage the social and structural implications of Israeli politics. The coastline community may become home to a major railway station, connecting settlements to the cities.
“The way that politicians divide Israel, it doesn’t work. They just draw a line, they don’t employ architecture.”
Admi rejected the political apathy of some of her fellow art students. “When you put up a building you plan something, it’s going to stay for a really long time. It has an effect on people’s lives. I think that architecture can actually change things. Maybe I’m naïve?”
Editor’s note: Krista and the On Being team are in Israel this week and working with Diane Winston’s graduate students from the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism. We’ll be sharing some of these students’ reports as part of our collaboration and to add to the diversity of observations of this complex place.
It is like being totally paralyzed. The most important thing is stability, without it I cannot think. I feel saddened every day.
—Fatmeh, an Arab Palestinian resident of Barta’a, Israel.
Fatmeh, who was born in the West Bank, and her husband Yousef, an Arab born in Israel, are unable to visit her family who live minutes away on the other side of the separation wall, reports USC’s Christin Davis. They married before Israeli law disallowed Palestinians born in the West Bank from freely living and moving about inside the state of Israel and outside lands ruled by the Palestinian Authority. In order to stay with her husband, Fatmeh must go through the “grueling process” of reapplying for temporary identification every year since she cannot become a citizen of Israel.
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Arabs Lead Peaceful Demonstration in Nazareth
by Sharis Delgadillo, USC “Reporting on Israel” Journalism Student
A small group of Palestinian-Israeli demonstrators gathered Tuesday evening in Nazareth to call for the reunification of the divided Palestinian parties of Hamas and Fatah.
“We are demonstrating here to push on both parties. They must sit and reunite and confront the Israelis in politics. I’m not talking about violence,” said Mubada Gargoura, a member of the Israeli Communist Party (ICP).
The ICP and Hadash, which has four members in the 120-seat Knesset parliamentary government, organized this peaceful 
candlelit demonstration. It supports the evacuation of all Jewish settlements and the right of return or compensation for Palestinian refugees. The event was part of a larger set of coordinated demonstrations held inside the Palestinian occupied territories of Ramallah, Nablus, and Gaza.
An example of violent tensions between the two groups occurred last week. Five members of an Israeli settler family, including a baby, were stabbed to death inside their home in Itamar, a village in the West Bank. Some members in the Israeli-Jewish community were outraged and called the assault a Palestinian “terrorist attack.”
Editor’s note: Krista and the On Being team are in Israel this week and working with Diane Winston’s graduate students from the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism. We’ll be sharing some of these students’ reports as part of our collaboration and to add to the diversity of observations of this complex place.
