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Israelis visiting the area work for a better future
Peter J. Cleary
Sentinel Staff
Sunday, July 23, 2006
NELSON—With the people of Israel and Lebanon facing violent fighting during the past week and a half, two Israelis—one Jewish, one Arab—have been visiting the Monadnock Region with hopes of building relationships and understanding that will help them move past the long-term Middle East conflict.
Each year since 1988, the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music has invited musicians from conflict-ridden regions to Nelson to play with and get to know people from cultures on the other side of the conflict.
And one of those musicians, Wassim Azzam, a 17-year-od Arab from Nazareth, Israel, was at Apple Hill last week when Hezbollah missiles hit near his family’s home.
His family is okay, he said, and he’s been able to speak to them every day.
But he wishes he could be with them during the fighting. He won’t return for a few more weeks. In part, he said, he wants to be there to make his 12-year-old sister feel okay.
“It’s my job as a big brother,” he said.
And as both Arabs and Israelis, the fighting has been confusing for his family.
“We don’t know what to feel,” he said. “You are an Arab and you are being attacked by Arabs.”
But they do know one thing: they want the violence to stop.
Joining Azzam at Apple Hill for the past week and a half has been Iris Jortner, a 33-year-old Jewish Israeli cellist now living in New York City. Her family in Israel is also okay, she said though a missile struck next door to a vacation house they own in the north of Israel.
“It’s very ironic that I’m here while this is happening,” Jortner said. The Apple Hill Playing for Peace program, she said, is setting an example of what should happen.
Jortner said she has strong feelings, including fear for the future of Israel, when she thinks of the fighting. But through interactions with other Middle Easterners, she said, experiences like Playing for Peace help her get past those feelings by building relationships on a personal level.
Azzam agrees.
“It’s beautiful,” Azzam said, “we connect through music.”
Music, he said, can bring people together no matter what culture or place they are from.
And that connection, he said, may be a starting point for peace in the Middle East, as the relationships he forms raise his awareness of the situation.
The way to a better future, he said, is through peace. And he can bring the understanding he gains at Apple Hill back to help him foster peace in Nazareth, he said.
His friends back home feel the same way about wanting to end the violence, he said. His generation, he said, is being raised to believe in peace.
Jortner said her family is also concerned about the damage the violence is doing to both sides and would like to see an end to the fighting.
But a resolution depends on more than just the Israelis or the Arabs deciding they want peace.
“It’s not only up to us,” Jortner said. “It’s up to all the sides.”
And while playing music and developing friendships at Apple Hill, the musicians can start to figure out how they must interact with each other today to work toward ending violence tomorrow.
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