Grassroots Panel at the Taos Peace Week

Dear friends and family,
I’m writing to invite you to an open a panel and discussion on Thursday, the 28th  which is the Grassroots Jerusalem Day of the Taos World Peace Week. The panel will take place at the Rio Grande Hall room #1 at the Taos Convention Center at 10am.

The panel will be geared toward open discussion.  We will not shy away from discussing challenging issues and preconceived notions.  I would like to welcome members of Another Jewish Voice, New Mexico and the Taos Jewish Center, as well as everyone who has strong opinions and passionately cares about resolving this ever escalating conflict.  I hope that together we can come up with workable strategies.  This discussion provides an opportunity to learn how we can be involved and influence the outcome of today’s hardships. 

We are honored to host these participants who have traveled far to be with us:

Ilan Fathi is the director of educational programs for Breaking the Silence, a group that organizes tours to Hebron and surrounding area.  They have developed various programs to educate people about the high price of the ongoing conflict– physically, morally and environmentally. Ilan also works with Ta’ayush, an Arab-Israeli humanitarian organization.  Meeting with Arab families who knew him as an Israeli soldier, he enjoys meeting them without wearing a uniform or carrying weapons, just human to human.

Fareed Bitar is a poet and a social worker. He was born in Jerusalem in ’61. For the past fifteen years, he has worked for the AIDS department in New York City. Fareed writes from the heart – about how he feels about his homeland, the pain and suffering of his people and proposes real solutions between the Palestinians and the Israeli’s.  In 1996, he edited a book of poetry about love and beauty, Treasury of Arabic Love: From the time of Jahiliah to the present. He also produced FATOOSH, a CD that narrates personal and collective experiences dealing with the ongoing bloodshed and war in the West Bank and Gaza for the past 60 years. He is currently working on a book that is a collection of his poems that deal with nature, love, war and peace. Fareed hopes to reach out and touch American audiences, by offering them eyewitness accounts of three wars.

Hilia Tsedaka is the founder of the Jerusalem Communities Network (Mosaic).  By working with education, culture and tourism, the group hopes to ease tensions between Jews and Arabs, between religious & secular Jews, and between new immigrants– Ethiopian, Russian, as well as older ones. Mosaic wants to create an economically thriving Jerusalem that is safe for everyone.  Hillia received an honorary mention from MIT for her work.

Miriam Stanley is an American Jew with a Yeshiva background, who has family living in Israel. She is part of Farid Bitar’s Fatoosh Ensemble.  She has performed in NYC, Tel Aviv,and Metula (a town in northern Israel). She has read at several colleges in the United States. Her love of Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) is strong, but she opposes the policies of the current Israeli government.  “I believe this as much as I believe in the book of Exodus”.  She understands that compassion and justice are intrinsic to Israel’s survival.  She believes that Jews and Arabs are relatives and that this “family fight” is ancient, tragic, and solvable.  For this reason, she is empathic to both sides of the conflict.

I will be facilitating the panel.  I am a former Israeli soldier, co-founder of Breaking the Silence and the director of Grassroots Jerusalem, a group that is creating a “map” of the many grassroots organizations already working on the ground. Grassroots Jerusalem hopes to coordinate efforts towards justice, human rights, social and environmental sustainability because a realistic peace must address these issues. 

I currently live in El Rito, New Mexico. I believe that there is a strong connection between the communities in northern New Mexico and Jerusalem politically, historically and spiritually.  Hoping to see you at the Taos World Peace Week. 

Many blessings,

Micha Kurz,                                                                                                                                                                 Director