On Friday, April 17, 2020, the School for Peace dialogue conducted another exciting meeting of its environmental justice course.

The meeting took place over ZOOM, lasting approximately 3.5 hours. It was attended by 8 Jews and 3 Palestinians and facilitated by Mazen Zoabi and Noa Barkai-Reid.

The first half hour gave the participants the opportunity to tell how the current situation was affecting their everyday reality. This was followed by a fascinating lecture on the Nakba by historian Dr. Adel Mana’a. He included his difficult personal family story and described the gruelling journey they undertook to return to their village.

The lecture on the Nakba allowed the Palestinian participants to raise ambivalent feelings about the continuing latency of the Nakba story in the national dialogue. The Jewish side also understood the complexity that the story of the Nakba is generally hidden and unknown to us. This has a great impact on the shaping of consciousness, the construction of identity and, of course, the narrative and the stories that we tell ourselves. The influence of this significant event on the joint history of Israeli / Arab / Palestinian society is felt everywhere till today, and naturally all the more so in a course based on dialogue around environmental justice.

The voices of those Palestinian participants who were not able to attend the meeting were sorely missed. We hope that in the coming meetings they will be able to rejoin us.

We were pleased, however, by the willingness of so many of the participants to continue to meet during this challenging period. This is especially important at a time when the media is able to ignore many burning issues.

In hope for a quieter and healthier time,

Noa Barkai-Reid,
Course co-facilitator.