Doves of Peace © Malak Mattar, with permission.
When you allow Palestinians and Jews to study together in the same school, it actually changes their brain chemistry… that's how healing begins.
-Amal Mattar, Hand in Hand, Alumna
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears...
-William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality
As an educator, a parent, and a descendant of the Jewish Holocaust, I think about the next generation, not just in the United States, but all over the world. As a journalist, I search for stories that promise a peaceful future. I remember my own childhood in New York City where the invisible walls of race and class were insurmountable for many. I grew up above 96th Street, but below 125th Street, what political scientists call the "interface." Rochelle, my best friend in elementary school, lived above 125th Street. I've written about Rochelle before, but she came to mind again today as I was reading the Hand in Hand newsletter. Rochelle's mother was a nurse, my mother was a doctor. Both women worked at Planned Parenthood, and they were also good friends. I don't know how Rochelle's mother got her into PS 75, far away from their home, but she did, perhaps with my mother's help. Every morning she picked me up and we walked down West End Avenue together. At the end of the day, we walked back up West End Avenue, walking and giggling and talking, and when Rochelle's mother picked her up to go home, they disappeared behind the invisible wall where Harlem began. Eventually I was able to articulate what that meant, but when Rochelle and I were children, our friendship was all that mattered. Rochelle and I were in the same class in school, our mothers worked together, we loved each other. Children do not experience the walls adults have constructed in their Jim Crow or apartheid laws.
It's admirable that in the midst of a war zone, in a divided, violent society, there are parents and teachers, Arabs and Jews, working for a peaceful future for their children. Their utopian ideals have not been shattered. What can an engaged, caring American citizen learn from them as the year turns to 2026?
1. To sustain hope, we begin small, we change slowly. Hand in Hand began with only 50 children in 1998; it now has six campuses. USAID funding has been lost, but the project continues to flourish. Bilingual, it serves 2,000 children and is partially funded by the Israeli government. If ever there is a Palestinian state, and a semblance of restitution and reconciliation, perhaps there will be a Hand in Hand project in the West Bank also.
2. When children are in proximity, they play together, they ease into connection. When adults are in proximity, amd their children are playing together, they talk and socialize. As an act of resistance, and despite fear and hesitation, we must continue to talk to everyone in our lives with an open, tender heart, and with civility.
3. By modeling civic inclusion and equality, children learn civic inclusion and equality. Let us ask ourselves: Are our communities truly inclusive?
In November 2014, one of the Hand in Hand Schools was subjected to an arson attack. The school was defaced with anti-Arab graffiti. Just a few weeks ago, a house owned by the President of the Black Cultural Center in New Paltz, the town in Upstate New York where I live, was defaced with racist graffiti. In Israel, the attack brought out a show of community support for the school. The Israeli police arrested a number of suspects. In New Paltz, there was a community meeting, but no arrests have as yet been made. The 5,000 + miles between these two locations feels like a stone's throw across a wall.