JERUSALEM — In a classroom decorated with Hebrew and Arabic letters, third-graders — eyes closed — took deep breaths in unison. “And exhale,” a teacher told them.
The students, a mix of Jews and Arabs, attend the Max Rayne Mano a Mano school in Jerusalem, one of six such bilingual institutions in Israel dedicated to the proposition that Israelis and Palestinians can learn and live together in peace. One day last month, shortly after a temporary ceasefire in Gaza collapsed and peace seemed further away than ever, the students were meditating.
Schools across Israel, most of them divided by religion and language, are struggling to help students deal emotionally with the deadliest conflict in a generation. At Hand in Hand schools, where each class has two teachers — one Hebrew speaker and one Arabic speaker — the conversation about the October 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza sounds markedly different than in other schools in Israel, where A far-right government is promoting a nationalist curriculum.
“We may have different languages, religions and cultures, but we choose to be here together,” Haya Saleh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the Arabic-speaking teacher of the third graders, told her students.
As suspicions between Israelis and Palestinians are at an all-time high and support for a peace deal is at its lowest point in decades, faculty and families at Mano a Mano schools are trying to bridge those differences. . They believe they have created a model for honoring each other's traumas, experiences and stories that can be replicated throughout the region.
Some Arab students at the schools have relatives who have been killed in Gaza. And some Jewish students have relatives who were murdered or kidnapped on October 7, or who are serving in the Army.
“It is possible to be together, it is preferable to be together and it is also the right thing to do,” said Gezeel Jarroush Absawy, principal of the Mano a Mano primary school in Haifa.
The schools present history through the lenses of Israelis and Palestinians, and foster relationships between Arabs and Jews in childhood in the hope that they can extend into adulthood.
“We need to be friends with each other and not fight,” a school student in Jerusalem said in Arabic. “We can live in peace,” said another in Hebrew.
At Haifa's Mano a Mano school, teachers recently asked students to illustrate an answer to the question “How do I feel right now?” Their answers decorated the walls.
One student drew rockets shooting with the words “No, no, no!” drawn in Hebrew letters in the sky. Another student drew two people holding hands, with wide smiles on their faces.
Parents have participated in exercises inspired by those carried out in their children's classrooms. In October, a group of parents in Haifa began meeting regularly to talk. The sessions are usually moderated by two parents: Merav Ben-Nun, an Israeli Jew, and Mouna Karkabi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel.
“We always say it's like making your kids vegetarian, but then you eat steak,” Ben-Nun said. “If you bring your children to this very different educational system, you, as a parent, have to show that you are there too.”
“My best friend is Arab. It’s funny that a religious Jew is friends with an Arab,” said Ben Vick, a fourth-year Jewish student from Jerusalem.
The boys like to go to the library and play soccer. But things are also stressful.
“It's kind of hard to believe they're literally killing people right now,” Ben said upon arriving at school. “And here it's like, relax. “Another normal day.”
By: TALYA MINSBERG
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7063910, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-10 19:52:04
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