Quality as critique: promoting critical reflection among youth in structured encounter programs

Abstract

In this manuscript, I interrogate the concept of ‘quality’ encounter programs for youth in conflict zones. I focus on two Israeli organizations implementing encounters for Jewish and Palestinian citizens, and draw upon narratives of former participants as articulated during life history narratives to illustrate divergent emphases in each organization’s goals and implementation strategies. Through my comparison of the organizations and their work, I highlight the importance in encounter programs of providing opportunities not only for legitimizing the collective narrative of the ‘other’ side, but also for critical reflection upon in-group narratives and policies, and suggest that ‘quality’ peace education programs are those that provide these opportunities.

Keywords:

• encounter
• Jewish
• Palestinian
• narratives
• critical
• reflection

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Ed Brantmeier and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript.

Notes

1. Interview, September 5, 2010.

2. The citizens of Israel who are of Palestinian descent have been called, at different times and by different groups, Israeli-Arabs, Arab citizens, Palestinian-Israelis, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Israeli-Palestinians. In this manuscript, I utilize the term Palestinian citizens of Israel (shorthand: Palestinians), except when citing academic scholarship or quoting research participants who utilize a different term. My choice of terminology is based on the fact that most, though not all, of my Palestinian research participants referred to themselves in this way. I note also that the focus of my study is on Jews and Palestinians residing within the State of Israel. Thus, my reference to Palestinians does not include residents of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or elsewhere in the Palestinian Diaspora.

3. The Israeli education system is divided into four tracks, or sectors. Three of these sectors – State Education, State Religious Education, and Ultra-Orthodox Education – serve the Jewish population, while the Arab sector includes schools serving Palestinian citizens, including Druze and Bedouin students.

4. 13 of the 73 interviews were conducted over Skype with individuals no longer living in the State of Israel.

5. Peace Child Israel Mission Statement. Accessed March 29, 2010. http://www.mideastweb.org/peacechild/mission.html.

6. Peace Child mission statement.

7. A few years before the organization closed, a decision was made to perform existing plays adapted for Peace Child and translated into Hebrew and Arabic, rather than having each group develop original productions.

8. Interview, August 29, 2010; February 7, 2011; April 13, 2011.

9. Interview, August 29, 2010.

10. Interviews, August 29, 2010; September 19, 2010; September 21, 2010; October 1, 2010; October 11, 2010; November 4, 2010; January 6, 2011).

11. While as a whole in my Peace Child observations I noticed that political discussions rarely occurred, one day during rehearsal there was a bombing in Jerusalem that killed two Jewish Israelis. Rather than ignore it altogether, the facilitators made sure to mention this during the day’s closing activity and to discuss the reactions (field notes, March 23, 2011).

12. Peace Child mission statement.

13. http://en.reutsadaka.org/?page_id=627, accessed July 5, 2013.

14. Sadaka Reut’s Facilitation Manual, 2000, 5.

15. Sadaka Reut’s ‘Ma’arachim’ Facilitation Manual, 2005, 1.

16. Interview, September 8, 2010.

17. Field notes, January 6, 2011; March 21, 2011; March 30, 2011.

18. For purposes of confidentiality, the names of all research participants have been changed.

19. All quotations in this section of the manuscript are direct quotations from participant narratives.

20. Interview, November 4, 2010.

21. Field notes, March 2, 2011.

22. e.g. The annual Index of Arab-Jewish Relations shows that in every year between 2003 and 2009, between two-thirds and three-quarters of Jewish Israelis expressed a reluctance to enter Arab villages within Israel. More than two-thirds of Jewish Israelis also expressed a feeling of distance from Arabs in Israel overall (Smooha 2010a).

23. The Jerusalem Cinematheque is a well-known theater straddling East and West Jerusalem. It shows primarily independent films and is home to the annual Israel Film Festival (see http://www.jer-cin.org.il/Default.aspx?Lang=En).

24. Shira was referring to the Mamilla Mall, an upscale, outdoor commercial area located outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and connecting the center of West Jerusalem to the Old City’s Jaffa Gate. The Mall, which opened in 2007, generated significant controversy with religious, national, and environmental aspects (Kroyanker 2006).

25. Indeed, the lack of critical awareness characterizes not only Shira’s narrative but also the narratives of almost all Jewish Peace Child alumni with whom I spoke. Even among Palestinian alumni of the organization, individuals with perspectives that might be said to be critical of both out-group and in-group narratives indicated that their belief systems resulted from experiences outside of Peace Child participation.

26. The ‘2nd Lebanon War,’ as this conflict is sometimes referred to, was a 33-day operation that began following Hizbollah’s abduction of 2 Israeli soldiers on 12 July 2016.

27. Mizrahi, or Edot HaMizrah (literally: ‘Communities of the East’) is a term referring to Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent, as well those whose families immigrated from the Caucasus.

28. In Israel, the Law of Return grants Jews, children of Jews, and grandchildren who have one Jewish grandparent the right to obtain Israeli citizenship, facilitated by the Israeli government. Thus, even if someone was brought up in another faith, if he or she has one Jewish grandparent, he or she can become an Israeli citizen immediately upon crossing the border into Israel. The nearly one million immigrants to Israel from the Former Soviet Union included over 300,000 who were not Jewish according to Jewish religious law but who fit the definition of Jew under the Law of Return. It is important to distinguish the Law of Return from discussions of the Right of Return, which address the right claimed by Palestinian refugees to return to homes they left or were expelled from during the events of 1948 leading up to and following Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

29. Interview, October 19, 2010.

30. See Ross (2013) for further discussion of this activity.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This research was made possible through grants from the Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Program and from the Palestinian-American Research Center.