Salim Munayer is director of Musalaha; the office is based in Talpiyot, Jerusalem.
Musalaha is a non-profit organization that promotes and facilitates reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, based on the life and teaching of Jesus.
Those involved in this ministry have their work cut out for them….I intentionally met with Salim in 2013 as I was researching reconciliation movements in the Israeli- Palestinian context.
This time Gary could also meet, and Salim gave us an update. With general increasing polarization in this region, the work is uphill.
Being personally aware of the intensity, sadly, of the polarization even within the Christian churches on the Israel/ Palestine issue, I recognize that Salim is a brave man to continue this work, and i understand that he does it in the strength of the LORD.
Salim expressed appreciation for the encouragement our visit gave him. Check out their website to see the broad spectrum of people groups they are involved with….and some amazing almost unbelievable stories of reconciliation!!
http://www.musalaha.org/
Dalia Landau is the co- founder and Director of Open House in Ramle, a peace education centre in Ramle, Israel. We were privileged to meet with her for dinner in her home town, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem. We spent 4 hours together….and basically were asked to leave as the restaurant was closing at midnight….otherwise we may still be there together 🙂
I am adding an excerpt from the paper I wrote after meeting Dalia in 2013 and visiting Open House in Ramle:
“Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence
Bashir Al-Kharyi was born in al-Ramla in 1942. In July 1948, his family was forcibly evacuated from their home by the Israeli army, who were waging a war of survival following the Arab world’s rejection of the 1947 U.N. partition plan and the existence of a Jewish state. The Al-Kharyi family fled to Ramallah.
Dalia Eshkanazi was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1948 and came to Israel as a baby with her parents, as they left war-ravaged Bulgaria for a better life. The Eshkanazi family bought a house in Ramle – the empty one belonging to Bashir’s family.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Bashir came from the Ramallah area to visit his former home. Dalia, then age nineteen, opened the gate and invited him and his cousins to enter the home. Their families began a relationship which continues today.
When Dalia inherited the house from her parents in 1985, the two families decided to make it a peace education centre. In 1991, The Open House Centre in Ramle, Israel was founded by Dalia and Yehezkel Landau with support from Bashir Al-Kharyi and family. “The house remains the home of two families, symbolizing Israel/Palestine as the homeland of two nations.”
The Open House runs affirmative action programmes for Arab children and their families through an Arabic pre-school, as well as joint reconciliation groups, summer peace camps and inclusive activities for both Jewish and Arab Israelis, children, youth and women. Yehezkel Landau, an observant Jew, interprets the ministry at Open House theologically:
Recalling the two Divine attributes that are the criteria for consecrated living in God’s Holy Land (Genesis 18:19), I would say that the first program area, which addresses the discrimination experienced by the local Arab community, reflects our commitment to mishpat, justice; while our mixed activities are meant to keep hearts open and caring, as a practical model of tzedakah, compassion.
Gary and I visited Open House in Ramle, and were so encouraged to see a happy group of preschool age Arab Israeli children (Christians and Muslims), playing in the yard, along with some parents and the teachers. One Palestinian Christian woman who worked there shared with us the intensity of reconciliation work: “at times, my whole life feels conflicted .” Yet, later that day, when she returned from a multi-faith meeting with two other women leaders, she glowed with enthusiasm: “we are starting a new women’s reconciliation group in two months!”
I was also very blessed to be able to meet with Dalia Eshkanazi Landau in Jerusalem; we spent an evening together, during which we shared our personal faith journeys with one another, and also wondered if we may be distant cousins! ( my mother’s maiden name was Askanazy). My husband, Gary, and I, spent a Shabbat celebration and dinner in her home, along with their long-standing friends, two Grandchamp Sisters, Protestant nuns (who live by the rule of Taize), who seek to bless the Holy Land by their physical presence and through prayer.”
For more information on Dalia’s interesting work and its ongoing story, please check out their website:
http://www.friendsofopenhouse.co.il
Bernie Dichek is a good friend of a friend of mine in Vancouver, and during my visit to Israel in 2013, he kindly arranged for me ( and then Gary also) to stay in his daughter’s apartment near the beach, and showed me around south Tel Aviv, his work with Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees and introduced me to some of his film and literary work as well as his personal views.
“Canadian born and bred Bernard Dichek writes about film, social issues, business and international development. He currently is making a documentary about Israeli development projects in Africa. A previous film, ‘The Kalusz I Thought I Knew’, about his father’s hometown in Galicia has been shown at film festivals around the world.”
He is an author for the Jerusalem Report: check out his website.
http://www.jpost.com/Author/Bernard-Dichek
I should also mention that a group that Bernie works with in South Tel Aliv was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize!
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-group-formed-to-shelter-asylum-seekers-among-nobel-peace-prize-contenders-1.6530233
It was good to catch up with Bernie and hear his perspective as an artist and writer. Similarly to others we met with, he mentioned the situation here was becoming more polarized. Again, he expressed gratefulness for our continuing interest in the incredibly difficult and seeming intractable conflicted situation in this part of the world.
It seems people here appreciate being remembered by us from afar, and draw encouragement, even from brief visits like this, as they continue to live and work in this land in their chosen vocations!
Dalia Landau kindly arranged for us to meet with Yossi Kelin Halevi. He “is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative.” Yossi is a journalist and writes and speaks regularly in Israel and USA. He also heads the Board of Open House Ramle. See his website for more info and links to his current newspaper articles.
http://www.yossikleinhalevi.com/
…and he graciously gave us 1 1/2 hours out of his busy schedule to share his heart and hopes for the future in the increasingly polarized situation here. We met over a light supper in a cafe in the German Colony. Dalia had (unknown to me!!) passed on an article i wrote for a Vancouver paper in 2015, and he gave me his honest feedback, explaining where i was naive ( and commenting to Gary privately that “Sabeel is poison”). Yossi did express that he appreciated what were new insights for him in what i had highlighted concerning movements in the Protestant church community who are trying to work for reconciliation with the other side, specifically some in the Jewish Messianic community. Wow, what an honour to have time with Yossi, and to share our hopes and dreams, some of our personal stories and faith journeys.
I was so inspired by his book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, which I happened to read in 2012 at the start of my one year reading preparation for my 2013 sponsored trip here. And Gary and I both read Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation. We had hoped to meet him in 2013 but at that time he was out of the country.
His most recent publication for New York Times:
JenniEliz 