Teens from 3 countries paint for peace in Pilsen
Thursday afternoon in a Pilsen park, a Palestinian girl carefully painted the blue stripes of the Israeli flag, part of a larger canvas mural depicting two differentcolored hands holding a peace sign.
The hands represent diversity, and the peace sign will be filled with three flags, the girl explained: the Israeli; the red, white and blue stars and stripes of the U.S. flag; and the black, white, green and red flag representing Palestine. After the purple background is painted, two olive branches will be added on either side.
“We’re hand in hand, we’re all in the same world,” she said. “What color are you, it doesn’t matter.”
Two weeks ago, that wouldn’t have happened, said Darling Kittoe, the site director for Hands of Peace, a 19-day program that brings together high schoolers from Israel, Palestine and the United States to find common ground.
Based in Glenview, the program this year has 43 participants, who live with host families around the Chicago area. Every morning, they gather to start with ice breakers before diving into dialogue, a two-and-a-half hour conversation among small groups that mix teens of different backgrounds.
“A lot of our young Israelis and Palestinians grew up looking at the other side as their enemy, but they’ve never had the chance to face them, never had the chance to connect with them and have a positive meaningful experience,” Kittoe said.
Listening to others’ stories allows the teens to think more personally about their own role in the conflict and get a different perspective. It offers insight into how the system works as a whole and how it can be changed, Kittoe said.
During dialogue, discussion ranges from aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, such as checkpoints and the difference between terror and freedom fighters, to giving participants the opportunity to share their personal experience with the conflicts, said participants, some of whom the program asked be identified by first name only for safety reasons.
“You can never cover it all,” said Uri, 15, an Israeli who joined the program last summer. He looked on as members of his group, made up of American, Palestinian and Israeli teens, worked on the three flags representing their countries.
“I’m a citizen of this world, and I can’t just stand still while war (is) happening,” he said. Although he lives in a relatively safe area of Israel in a town called Raanana, his brother is a soldier and tells him stories of the conflict.
“Sharing my story is also sharing my feelings and my thoughts, it’s not just a chronological order of events,” he said. “It makes you feel much more empathy for the other side.”
Eliza Schloss, from Glenview, was raised in a Reform Jewish family and attended Jewish preschool, but didn’t know much about the conflict in the Middle East before Hands of Peace.
“The piece of the conflict for Israel-Palestine was something that was really missing for me,” Schloss said. “I knew it was a thing, but I didn’t know anything about it.
“Just hearing from my peers, my new friends, what they had experienced and how the conflict has affected them, their families and their communities on all sides, is really impactful,” said Schloss, 18.
Program participants stay in touch after the program through Snapchat and Instagram, Schloss said. Last year, when Chicago made international news for violence, Middle Eastern participants reached out. The discussion that followed proved to Schloss that the group really cares about change.
“We learn what we learn in Hands of Peace not only so we can apply it to Israeli-Paelistinian conflict, which is our main goal, but so we can take those tools and apply it to our own communities and our own countries,” Schloss said.
After dialogue each day, participants engage in activities that help them bond and get a taste of living in Chicago, ranging from Pilates and restorative justice yoga to visits to the Chicago Freedom School and art workshops.
Participants had a mural workshop last week with local Chicago artists who helped them create a plan for the murals they painted Thursday. The participants painted three murals: One will be auctioned off to the public, one will remain in the Hands of Peace office and one will accompany visiting participants back to the Middle East.
Gretchen Grad, of Glenview, was inspired to found Hands of Peace after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since the first gathering in 2003, the group has grown substantially, with a program opened in San Diego in 2014, and more programming, including a Middle East program in which people tour Israel and Palestine, has been added.
Hands of Peace will end this year’s program with a farewell reception on Sunday, when participants will share testimony and short films they created throughout the week. Tickets can be purchased by the general public at www.HandsofPeace.org.