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Kids know: Time for peace
Shalom. A one-word Hebrew prayer meaning peace. That’s even if the adults can’t bring it about in the Middle East. Maybe some day — soon day — it may come out of the mouth of babes.
Long back a first attempt to join Arab and Israeli children — from both sides of the border — resulted in 105 original paintings. It brought in 105 original canvasses. All had one theme — brotherhood.
How do I know? I reported on it in 1968. The then-international chairman of the Cultural Center for Youth in Jerusalem — named Dorothy Silverstein — explained it to me: “Arab and Israeli children were thrown together in shelters during the Six-Day War. Immediately after, August 1967, Israel’s minister of education conceived the idea for these future world leaders to then sit side by side in an atmosphere of love.
“Museums in Haifa, Nazareth, Tel Aviv opened doors to a thousand Jewish and Arabic youngsters — ages 7 to 14 — brought together for the first time in harmony in 20 years. They were given paint pots and invited to sketch, draw, paint on the subject of peace.”
Israel’s then Consul General Mike Arnon: “At the initial meeting there was no mention of communication through common language. But some inner impulse drove one little girl from the Jordanian village of Beit Safafa to place herself shyly next to another little girl who’d spent her whole eight years of life in a kibbutz.”
Tentative signs of communication slowly began. Forms, designs, paint spots appeared side by side. Alongside some dome-capped Arab house appeared a red-roofed Jewish home with a smiling face at the window. The Tel Aviv Shalom Tower next to a bedouin tent.
The works, at one time shown in NYC, included the painting “Friendship.” An Arab child behind a palm tree, Hebrew child behind another — hands extended in friendship.
Another, an 11-year-old boy in Judea’s hills, barbed wire rolled up, guns laid down, people exchanging flowers. Another, a youngster in Arab headdress breaking bread with his Jewish friend wrapped in a prayer shawl.
When the collection was shown in Jerusalem, Hebrew’s word “Shalom” on one wall, on another the Arabic word for peace, “Salaam.”
And a blessing on their heads — mazel tov, mazel tov.
Listen, some of this peace could be used right here. What New York City could use right now is a slogan to our politicians to stay honest: “Make laws — not license plates.”