The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington launched the Partners for Peace initiative on Thursday with peace organization Sharaka.
Meaning “partnership” in Arabic, Sharaka is a delegation of Israelis and Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze from across the Middle East, working together to create a “new Middle East, built on dialogue, understanding, cooperation and friendship,” according to Sharaka’s website. Sharaka was formed in the wake of the 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords, which promoted interfaith and intercultural dialogue among Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Partners for Peace is a local initiative that aims to foster “people-to-people collaborations” and educate the community about the Middle East, Guila Franklin Siegel, JCRC’s chief operating officer, said.
Bob Margolis, a member of JCRC’s board of directors who is spearheading Partners for Peace, said the initiative involves amplifying “moderate voices” regarding Israel and Palestine. Partners for Peace will eventually welcome community participation, taking groups of community members to Israel to visit peace groups and tour the country, Margolis told Washington Jewish Week.
JCRC first partnered with Sharaka last year, with a joint program at the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington.
“We had such an overwhelming response from those who attended,” Siegel told Washington Jewish Week. “At a time when hope is in short supply, it is so meaningful to Jews and to others to hear a message of hope for a better future in the Middle East.”
“We continue to stand by Israel, but we [can’t] forget that there is no alternative but an eventual peace,” Ron Halber, JCRC’s CEO, said in his introductory remarks at the March 20 launch event. “It’s the only way forward. There is simply no other reality than the fact that there are two peoples — actually, more than two peoples — that are destined by history to live in the same land.”
Halber added that JCRC strives to build a “constituency for peace” and amplify the voices of those on the ground already making those efforts in their respective countries.
Sharaka joined JCRC for a scholar-in-residence program from March 18 to 20, speaking at 13 meetings with local schools and organizations. The program culminated with the launch event in Washington, D.C., where members of Sharaka shared more about their work.
Five members of Sharaka discussed their personal ties to interfaith work, their discovery and love of Israel and the importance of pursuing peace in the Middle East. Much of their panel discussion focused on the Middle East that people don’t often see on the mainstream media.
Dan Feferman, Sharaka’s co-chairman and an American-born Israeli, embarks on regular speaking tours to educate Americans about the Abraham Accords.
After the “unbelievably transformative” bilateral agreements were signed in 2020, Feferman spoke with people he said he never would have encountered before as an Israeli: people from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Lebanon.
“One by one, my eyes opened up,” the self-proclaimed Middle East expert said. “My eyes opened up that there is a Middle East taking shape beneath the surface that you don’t hear about on the news. … It’s a different Middle East; it’s one of nuance and openness and tolerance and modernity.”
The panelists rejected the narrative that Israelis and Palestinians are “beyond any chance” of a two-state solution through telling personal anecdotes of their cross-cultural experiences.
Hayvi Bouzo decided she wanted to be a journalist to tell the many untold stories that she grew up witnessing in Syria. She came to the United States to pursue that career.
“I met many Jews and Israelis, immediately formed great friendships, realized all the similarities and the love we have for one another,” Bouzo said at the event.
She went to Israel and met both Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.
“I heard the stories about their suffering from Hamas, and that was the first time I actually got to speak to Palestinians from Gaza and hear them saying to me, ‘We are basically occupied by Hamas,’” Bouzo recalled, wondering why she hadn’t seen this sentiment reflected in the Arabic media.
The three other panelists also traveled to Israel to learn more about the people and culture, noting that Israelis were nothing like they were taught to believe growing up in Arab countries.
“We were forced to think of Israelis as in constant war with Arabs,” Ahmed Khuzaie, a Sharaka panelist, said at the event. “With all these issues and conflicts, we got lost in the way of understanding why conflicts are happening.”
Khuzaie said Iran is responsible for some of these conflicts, “taking over countries” and “sending or creating proxies.”
“Yet we never hear about that,” Khuzaie said. “We only hear about Israelis killing Palestinians. That’s the news we grew up with.”
A few days in Israel showed the Bahraini political consultant the “opposite of what we were taught, of everything we saw in the news.”
“It was not easy; it was contradicting me,” Khuzaie said.
Khuzaie, Fatema Al Harbi, Sharaka’s Gulf director, and Youssef Elazhari, the director of Sharaka Morocco, said they all felt warmly welcomed by Israelis during their respective trips to Israel, Al Harbi adding that she has attended “hundreds of Shabbat dinners.”
“It’s very unique to receive love from the people you are supposed to hate,” Elazhari said, expressing the importance of stopping the war.
Bouzo, the journalist and public speaker, said people should get to know the faces and stories of the “others,” which embodies Sharaka’s mission.
“We need to humanize people,” Elazhari said. That empathy and understanding can lead to a better future for the Middle East, according to the panelists.
“I think the best is yet to come despite the heartbreak we’re experiencing right now,” Bouzo said.
