So I've finished off the Fellowship year. Came back from the Balkans, dropped all my classes, started working as a piano teacher, gave a talk at the International House in Berkeley about my experience, got invited to give a TEDx talk about my experience, and somewhere in there as well I started a masculinities collective consciousness-raising group to empower men to speak out against violence, sexism, racism, homophobia, and all of the negative aspects that come along with masculinity that fuel a lot of the conflicts I've learned about and witnessed over the past year. Oh, and somewhere in there as well I managed to ignite a family feud, and have decided to have an adventure in South America in the fall. Yup, things have been extremely busy.

Currently I'm at a crossroads in my life. I'm preparing to wrap up my job as a piano teacher and put on a final piano recital for my students in June. Then I'm going to head back home to the South Bay and work as a science instructor at a summer camp until August. Then I want to hit the road with my backpack and my notebooks and see the world. At some point I might go to graduate school or find some way to focus my efforts.

I suspect conflict resolution, culture, communication, and all those wonderful things are going to play a large role in my life. But as it is I don't really want to get deeply involved with the details until I have more of a feel for the bigger picture. It seems to me most conflicts are the symptoms of a larger system that doesn't seem to be working, a system that has to do with economics, gender, communication, distribution of power, race, class, sexuality, ownership, insecurities, fear, narratives... I want to understand as much of it as possible, and right now I do not feel like the best way to do that is sitting and worrying about ways to pay my rent.

Life is short. I want to enjoy it and understand it. And I want to find the most efficient ways to empower people and to develop new social systems that are more effective than the current ones. I think one of the best ways to do this is to go out there and observe other social systems. That's my current plan. I'm expecting it to be wonderful. A lot of it is thanks to Abraham's Vision. So, thanks Abraham's Vision. I'm excited to see where we're all going to be as we progress into the future, fully graduate, and continue to find ourselves.

-Amit Deustch

This final retreat left me with a sense of closure in some areas and opened up new doors at the same time. Most of the retreat was reviewing the Vision Program - what worked and what didn't work. Although I personally thought the program was great, I realized that the biggest impacts for me were not in the Balkans or at the retreats, but rather when I tried to integrate my relationships from VP into my regular life. Although the fellowship has ended, that journey is nowhere close to closure.

There was some discussion at the retreat about how we transformed as a group, but honestly, I feel like we all progressed individually more than as group (if at all). I think we were less concerned about how 'we' felt as a group and more about how 'I' felt within the group. I saw this in how each person spoke for their presentations and in group process. I don't necessarily think this was a failure of the group, but more a sign about what the fellows wanted to get out of this experience.

-Benji Berlow

During the Balkans trip as a group, we spent a lot of time focusing on Palestinian and Israeli narrative. But what we didn’t spend much time talking about is the similarities in the two people’s values. Last semester I was reading a book called Cosmopolitanism, which focuses on ethics in a world of strangers and by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University. In his book he devoted a small portion about the Palestinian Israeli conflict. He explains in the section “Fighting for the Good,” sometimes when two communities have the same or similar values -instead of providing a middle ground of cooperation- it can provide the bases for conflict. It is always easy to point out the differences between two groups in conflict, in order to draw a line between you and them. People sometimes assume that the reason conflict begins is because of some type of disagreement or difference in values. But if you look at the line drawn, it could be the link between the two groups that can provide a basis of cooperation.

The line which I am talking about is the one created to separate Israeli capital of Jerusalem from Palestinian East Jerusalem. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United Nations, the European Union, and related bodies and Palestinian, who demand East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, have repeatedly criticized Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem.
“The fact that both Palestinians and Israelis-in particular-both observant Muslims and observant Jews- have a special relation to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, has been a reliable source of trouble.” Jews relate back to the period of David the king of Israel and the building of the first temple, and Islam regards Jerusalem as its third holiest city. The conflict here does not derive from differences, but yet the opposite.

Both people have the same conception of the “good” and feel a religious and spiritual connection to Jerusalem. “Muhammad, in the first years of Islam, urged his followers to turn toward Jerusalem in prayer because he had learned the story of Jerusalem from the Jews who lived in Mecca.” Both Israelis and Palestinians care for Jerusalem so deeply. They want to protect this city, but unfortunately this fact has been overshadowed with conflict.

The meaning of Jerusalem in Hebrew is “Teaching of Peace” and for Muslims the name suggests “Peace” and corresponds closely to the Muslim concept of the sacred; a place where peace reigns and conflict is excluded. What is needed to help resolve the conflict is a substitution of nationalistic values and loyalty to one religious group for a more practical approach. By developing an understanding as a human community and developing habits of coexistence- living together in relative understanding and tolerance- we can achieve what the ancient city was intended for, peace.

- Shadi F. Karajeh

I have been struggling with something for a while, but unable to articulate it. With some distance since the last retreat, the struggle seems clearer. In discussions about Palestine/Israel, various voices run through my head. One belongs to the human rights, pro-Palestine narrative; the narrative that has alienated me from the Jewish community in which I grew up, the narrative that argues that despite complications in conflict, we must see them, to a certain extent, as simple. People are suffering, and this is not complicated. It simply has to be fought, to be stopped. I think this is the voice that people heard from me in group process most often.

The other voice, however, is the one that holds less anger towards Jews who cling to their need to protect Israel, who do not see the fullness of Israeli crimes or Palestinian suffering. This voice is an empathetic one, and sees these Jews’ love of Israel as part of a wound inherent in a community that has been oppressed in the past, and thus has made victimization a central element of its identity. This voice does not necessarily contradict the first, but it does ask for an acknowledgement of the Jewish story that the other voice does not. It clings more to the notion that this conflict is “complicated,” to the notion that Jews who do not acknowledge their privilege are not just “oppressors”, but people with stories they have been unable to escape, stories that have made them support terrible things. When I am thinking in this way, these people are not at fault in the same way; they are misled and mistaken for deep and painful reasons. Sometimes in group process I would notice this voice come to the forefront, urging me to explain, if not defend, the Jewish story.

But the first voice challenges the second, and tells me that I am the oppressor, that when I try to “complicate” things I am reinforcing my power, trying to feel less guilty, less responsible. So often, I do not let this second narrative speak. Because of this, when it does come out, I think some people are confused.

I am not sure how much to voice it. At the very least, it is part of me and if I am not being totally honest I am not doing good work. At the same time, I am not willing to let go of the idea that this voice comes in part from an education that wanted me to think Israel belonged to me and not to others, a voice I want always to challenge.

So, I am struggling to figure out when to speak each narrative, and when to be silent.

-Penina Eilberg-Schwartz

Group process reminded me of the limitations of conflict resolution. This program is appropriately labeled a conflict transformation project because there is no resolution. I realized that the “constructive engagement” of groups in conflict can be problematic when there is the assumption of equality in the group regarding relationships of power. Even in the controlled setting of the group process, the power imbalance of the outside world seeps into the group. In this case, the Palestinian participants seek a pledge of change from the Jewish students who are considered to be in a position of greater power, privilege and in some sense beneficiaries to the conflict. This dangerously perpetuates the imbalance of power by giving the dominate group in conflict the power of choice while forfeiting the agency of the oppressed. In turn, a situation is created where the future is left to be determined by the dominate group.

In looking at this engagement as a project in conflict transformation, the process doesn't stop. The constructive engagement is not at all looking for resolution, it is looking for transformation. We see the "other" as we choose to see, in some cases not what we want to see. At the very least, they are a tool in the project of engagement to understand our selves, the conflict, the others perspective and the perspective of our own communities better.

When I went to the movie ibn um with my family and saw that the movie provided a very superficial perspective of the conflict, one that was most likely supported by the Egyptian government with propaganda for the masses in Egypt, I realized the process of transformation in my own perspective of my own community. That is what this is all about.

-Joe Farsakh