Canada’s own impactful way of uniting Jews, Palestinians

On July 31 — the day after the kick-start of peace negotiations in Washington between Palestinians and Israelis and on the same day that, for the first time, a delegation of Palestinian lawmakers visited Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem — some 200 Canadian Muslims, Christians and Jews came together at Toronto’s Noor Cultural Centre for Islamic learning to celebrate a very modest, yet symbolically significant, encounter.

They came to welcome 20 Arab and Jewish Israeli teenagers who had just spent a couple of weeks at a summer camp in Ontario. This is the third year that such a group had been guests of a Zionist organization in Canada.

The project is aptly called Heart to Heart. The brochure that describes it states that “the program allows Jewish and Israeli Palestinian youth to experience not only coexistence, but a shared existence.” The organizers’ aim is to articulate “the ability to envision a better future in Israel” and to help transform it into reality “by supporting the development of the next generation of leaders in Israeli society.”

As the teenagers came from established Arab and Jewish families and are the beneficiaries of a good education, they are indeed likely to become leaders in their respective communities, even though none of them live in the West Bank and all presumably travelled to Canada on Israeli passports.

The visit was part of similar projects in different parts of the world aimed at promoting Arab-Jewish coexistence by inviting young people from both sides to spend time together, to have fun and to get to know each other away from the fray. Though geographically they’re neighbours at home, circumstances make it necessary for them to travel to the other side of the world to meet as friends in a relaxed atmosphere on neutral ground.

What politicians are trying to do on a grand scale there, educators and social workers are attempting to achieve here through programs like the one we celebrated at the Noor Centre.

Hopefully, the negotiators will hammer out a viable agreement leading to a two-state solution. When that happens, we pray, the result will be put to a referendum. Thus the parents and adult relatives of the youths returning home with an enhanced commitment to peace will have a say in the final outcome.

Despite understandable skepticism on both sides, the votes of ordinary citizens may help to bring about peace. Perhaps in addition to good memories of a couple of weeks in Ontario, the young visitors may, albeit indirectly and marginally, help influence the future of the region.

Every effort to augment sterile diplomacy and rigid politics with fruitful personal encounters that encourage risk-taking for the sake of peace should be greeted with enthusiasm.

Instead of just talking about peace, organizations like the one that hosted the young visitors are trying to help make peace, however peripheral their influence may seem. Good intentions and symbolic gestures by members of the next generation can in the long run turn out to be neither less important nor less effective than the proven negotiating experience and ostensible statesmanship of the old hands.

The fact that the project also involved Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims living in the Canadian diaspora is significant. People who are far from their kith and kin often tend to assuage their guilt for not being there by being hawkish here.

Therefore, I very much took to heart the statement by 14-year-old Ali, who wants to be a doctor and a politician, when he wrote that the visit “has extended the meaning of peace for me.”

May his experience be sufficiently contagious to influence decision-makers. Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every other week.

Perhaps in addition to good memories of a couple of weeks in Ontario, the young visitors may, albeit indirectly and marginally, help influence the future of the region