Art can be a path for Israelis and Palestinians to better understand each other, the organizer of an organization called Arts Bridge told students during a presentation in the auditorium last Wednesday.
Debbie Nathan, the executive director of Arts Bridge, founded the organization to try to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without the perpetual fighting and negotiating: instead, she hopes to end it through art therapy.
“Conflicts can be resolved through art,” Nathan said. Art, Nathan believes, makes it possible to communicate and to resolve problems. Nathan went out and acted upon these beliefs.
Arts Bridge organizes a three-week summer art camp. By the end of the three weeks, each pair of artists, comprised of an Israeli student and a Palestinian one, must have an art project—there are no restrictions to what that may be—to show for their effort.
In a short documentary on this camp made by CBS, many of the kids spoke on their feelings of the discourse this opportunity gives them.
“There’s a lot of emotional baggage,” one Palestinian participant, Kerem Benishay Baierey, said. “Maybe, people in this country don’t really understand, because it’s a different reality.”
Despite this, Arts Bridge provides many students with a new perspective, as the heated discussion they are used to on this subject makes way for a different kind of exchange.
“Usually when people argue about the conflict…each side starts to raise his voice, and then it ends by shouting,” one member said. “I think students here get to know a new way of dialogue that makes people listen more.”
The CBS documentary ends with Israelis and Palestinians talking about how to reach peace. “I think because we live this, like, a normal day is our conflict…we need to do this change because we really know what this is,” an Israeli student, Naomi Levi, said after finishing her project.
Other than learning about peace and varying perspectives, many teenagers leave this program as friends—unlikely friends, as some Israelis had never talked to Palestinians before this camp, and vice versa.
Many ask Nathan why she chose art as a medium for peace and are skeptical about her camp and the effects it will have on such a large and serious conflict.
“Art is a metaphor for resolving conflict,” Nathan said. She argues that being forced to work together to make something new and creative has a conjoining effect. Nathan believes that strong ideas are planted in these students right from the beginning through their communities, families, and experiences, and that this program helps loosen them.
“From the time they’re born they learn the other is the enemy,” Nathan said. Art is a new lens through which they can see the world—a common ground shared by everyone.
Students who watched Nathan’s presentation at Newton South, many of them Israeli, had varying reactions to it.
Shira Abramovich, a freshman with many connections to Israel, did not think that she could participate in such a program.
“I came in thinking, ‘I could do that,’ but no, it’s really, really hard,” she said. “[I] always want to be right.
“That’s really, really hard to accept: that we both may be right,” Abramovich said. “I can sort of step back sometimes, but not completely.”
Liel Dolev, a freshman who was born in Israel, agrees with Abramovich that participation would be difficult, but he still thinks that he could do it.
“Maybe some Israelis have never seen Palestinians, and maybe they learn more about themselves,” he said.
Ceramics teacher Karen Sobin-Jonash, who organized the event, said she thought the event related to Newton South. She believes that art is important for students everywhere, and that there should be a stronger connection between art and the core subjects.
“It is critical to have taken art before you graduate,” she said.
This program is operating again this summer, and for the second time is open to Americans as well as Israelis and Palestinians.
