Dimitry Shvartsman recently stood before a classroom and told a group of rapt teenagers what it felt like to attend the funeral of one of his closest friends. His friend, who was 14, was killed on an Israeli bus, a civilian victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber.
“To sit there at the cemetery and see how a mother buries her child,” he said, his voice shaking. “It’s very hard.”
He also passed around numerous photographs of exploded buses, reduced to metal skeletons, surrounded by body parts and blood.
The students barely had time to digest his presentation before Hurriyah Ziada started to speak. She told the same group how it felt not to leave her house for an entire month because of an Israeli-imposed curfew.
“You can’t leave your house until further information,” she said. “You don’t know when you can go outside again. For one month, I only saw soldiers and tanks shooting from my window.”
She then passed around photographs of buildings reduced to rubble.
Shvartsman’s family immigrated to Israel when he was 4 from Ukraine, and he now lives in the Israeli town of Afula. Ziada lives in Ramallah, on the West Bank. Though both have vastly different views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they learned to listen to each other, see each other as human beings and even become friends at the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine. Late last month, they told their stories to 12 different classrooms at Berkeley High, Albany High School and Marin Academy.
Their 10-day visit to the Bay Area was initiated by two high school seniors who are active in Jewish Youth Community Action (JYCA), an East Bay-based social action group for Jewish teens.
Sara Shor, a senior at Berkeley High, first had the idea to bring an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian teen here, since she felt that the media doesn’t always give a clear picture of the Middle East conflict.
She spoke to her friend Lev Plaves, a senior at Marin Academy who lives in Berkeley, who immediately agreed to help. Through a contact at the Institute of International Education they received a grant to pay for the plane tickets. They did additional fund-raising from their friend’s families. The students received home hospitality, so expenses were minimal.
And if the students at Albany High School had little expertise in the Middle East conflict, they were clearly moved by listening to people who lived it every day, and were only a little older than they were.
“You will be going to college soon,” Shvartsman told the class. “I’d rather go to college, too. But I will turn 18 soon, and I have to join the army. I need to help defend my country.”
The students had many questions, including how they came to be friends, and how their parents and friends felt about them going to such a camp. This question was extended to Ziada later as well, since she was being hosted here in Jewish and Israeli homes.
Noting that her brother is in jail for fighting against the Israelis, Ziada said, “My mother supports me going to Seeds of Peace. She has already lost one son. She understands that Israelis also feel sad when they lose a son or daughter. She believes in peace.”
Though their visit was difficult, telling the same sad stories repeatedly through their visit, the teens also got to have fun. Their hosts took them to Telegraph Avenue and ice skating, Ziada’s first time.
Shvartsman had a funny experience when an Albany High student approached him to speak Ukrainian, and Ziada reported that her experience in the United States was amazing. Though talking about her life so much was a bit draining, she said, “violence is not the way. But just by talking, I feel I’m fighting for my country.”
Albany High junior Louisa So was especially taken with the teens. After listening to them, she commented, “Two teenagers can argue but still stand next to each other, but adults and leaders of the world can’t.”
And Emma Franklin, a sophomore at Marin Academy, said that in two of her classes, she and her fellow students couldn’t stop talking about the Middle Eastern teens.
While Franklin is Jewish, she has never been to Israel. Hearing the Seeds of Peace teens speak was a totally new experience.
“In the U.S., we oftentimes only get the Israeli perspective,” she said. “I feel this has opened my eyes a lot. I have a completely new perspective of the conflict, as I think I understand it on a more personal level.”