Breaking the ice
they have reached the top of Mont Blanc!
« Breaking the Ice », constituted of 4 Palestinians, Malek, Lobna, Nadim, Shadi, and of 4 Israelis, Ori, Tomer, Shiri and Golan, who came hoping to climb the Mont-Blanc, has been the heights of this summer and of this year’s activities. The group was remarkable, and the 8 made it to the summit on a sunny albeit very cold day.
testimonies
Breaking The Ice program has positively influenced my life in several ways, more than I can describe, but here I managed to write about 4 aspects:
First and foremost the true adventure and challenge in the mountains, along with the excitement of being elected for such a unique project, has taught me a lesson about self-confidence and about reaching personal goals.
Second, many new friends and interesting people have become part of my day-to-day life. Starting with my own teammates (Jews and Arabs) and also a few more "by-product" acquaintances. Definitely another lesson, this one about human-relations, friendship and commitment.
The third change is on a larger scale. Today I am incomparably more aware of political and social issues. I feel that my judgment ability has improved towards a more balanced and less biased point of view, now that "I know what the other side thinks" and spend lots of my time dealing with these issues. This has led me to understand that what we perceive as justice, equality, freedom and democracy - not what they have always seemed to be. In my country today, Jewish or not, the majority is simply being denied all sorts of general public and social rights. Hidden corruption of all kinds and in all levels is now being uncovered in all sectors on a daily basis. The public understands that there is always someone with private motives pulling the strings for his own short-term profit at the society's long-term expense. This means that the government and all the things that it stands for are now being doubted, and as a consequence, also the public's loyalty to the state and its fundamentals.
For this matter, I feel the "state" has always made the "people" believe that Arabs and Jews cannot live together, that Jews must live in an all-Jewish state, that all the Arabs are trying to eliminate all the Jews that one must chose to be "with us or against us". These insights, coupled with rising extremism (mostly on the Jewish side) make it clear to me that the forced division between Jews and Arabs only profits a small group for the short-term, and the rest of us are paying, and will continue to pay, the heavy price of shortsighted and narrow-minded politicians. Bottom line - I am less inclined to identify myself with the "state's" aspirations.
Last but not least, the fourth change involves the conflict. Thanks to the three processes I mention above, I can understand better now the roles and meanings of Zionism, Jews, World politics, Colonialism and Force in the history of the conflict. That's why I fell less biased. For the first time I am able to think about things like people who were killed in '48 but were not Jewish so they are not commemorated anywhere. That’s what the Arabs mean when the say that the flag and anthem do not represent them.
How to summarize what I've been to in a few words? This is not an easy task, at least not for me. I think about this expedition more as a journey that integrate 3 levels of relationships: the intrapersonal level (how I felt during this journey as a person, what have I felt, thought, and behaved), the interpersonal level (how I felt in relation to all other participants around me), and the intergroup level (how I as an Israeli Jew felt in relation to the other Israeli Arabs who participated in the journey).
To be honest, the strongest level for me was the intrapersonal level. I felt I experienced a unique experience, a one in a lifetime. Another strong level of relationship for me was the interpersonal level- the relationships between all participants, without being labels as an Israeli Jew or as an Israeli Arab. As a psychologist, it was a beautiful "field experiment" in social psychology for me. All the abstract theories I learned of became very live and vivid for me. The third level- the intergroup one- was the shallowest one for me (and I think it is a good thing).
I had a good time with some participants or some disputes with others, but none of these experiences were based on religion or nationality. I have good memories with both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. In a retrospective view, I didn’t think about my friends during the journey as Jews or as Arabs, I thought about them as my friend, as persons, as human-beings.
