A Reflection - Five Years at Hands of Peace

Please Let Them Not Be On Our List

Nov. 14, 2022

A shooting by a 15-year-old in North Carolina, the almost daily killings of teens by IDF soldiers, the stabbings of a young soldier or civilian in Israel – the beat of violence is incessant. As I scan Israeli/Palestinian media daily, along with news from the U.S. of school, university and community shootings, the knot in my stomach grows tighter. Each time I catch a name of someone who is injured or killed, I check the database of the organization I work for, Hands of Peace, dreading that one of the names will be in our records.

You may know the same feeling when you hear about random killing, a school shooting, a concert massacre, an attack on a house of worship, especially when it is nearby. Do you know someone who might be there? Could this happen to someone I love?

Among the thousands of parents, host families, volunteers, peacebuilding partners, and supporters in our database are more than?750 Americans, Israelis and Palestinians who came as teens to the Hands of Peace Summer Programs in Chicago or San Diego over the last 20 years. For three weeks, living with American families, they immersed themselves in daily facilitated dialogue sessions, leadership training, conflict resolution modeling and social activities. Each activity is ?designed to build trust and deep connections between youth who have often been taught to see the “out” group as “the other,” or even “the enemy.”

The goal of the program is to develop agents of change -- to provide these youth with the skills and networks they need to work for peace, justice, freedom and equality. In order to achieve that goal, the Summer Program is followed by years of training in facilitation, resilience, conflict analysis, social entrepreneurship, and ongoing dialogue.

Our Theory of Change is that, as the youth grow into positions of influence in their communities, they will have the tools to build “positive peace,” which is much more than the absence of violence. By incorporating a peace and justice approach with their families, social circles and work in every profession imaginable, they will work individually and collectively to develop systems and structures that allow all people to thrive. They will strengthen their communities using the skills they have learned from crossing the visible (walls, oceans, checkpoints, occupation) and invisible (historical trauma, family and school lessons, socioeconomic inequities) borders between them.

So I look at our list with trepidation. Each time I click the “Find” button and the field is blank, I breathe a sigh of relief, because the world needs these young leaders. They set an example for all of us in resisting polarization, digging for understanding, working for justice, and refusing to be enemies.

My list also includes all the people who have supported the “Hands” as parents, host families, volunteers, and donors. The elderly couple who attended the Highland Park Fourth of July parade and were separated at the time of the shooting, not knowing if the other was alive. A Palestinian couple whose son was arrested and beaten by soldiers. The staff member whose family owned a café in Israel that was ripped apart by a suicide bomber. An ever expanding circle of people affected by violence.

But why restrict the definition of family to genetics or affinity? The names in the paper are someone’s daughter, son, mother, father, friend. They are someone’s hope for the future, just as the youth who come together through Hands of Peace are my hope for a more peaceful and just world. Every name, found by our database search algorithm or not, represents a life cut short or harmed by violence that has gone on for too long.

Almost no family in Israel, Palestine or the U.S. is unaffected by the violence that permeates our societies. My daily challenge is to care about each – American, Israeli, and Palestinian – as though they are a member of the family – my family, the Hands of Peace family, the human family. Because they are.

Written by Diana Kutlow on her 5th Anniversary working for Hands of Peace, which empowers American, Israeli and Palestinian youth to become agents of change.

Diana has a Master’s in Peace and Justice Studies from the Kroc School at the University of San Diego and is Director of Development for Hands of Peace, an international NGO with staff and programs in Israel, Palestine and the U.S.