Forum
In recent months any calming of the conflict seems to have become an extremely remote prospect. At the same time, even now institutions in Israel are continuing their work towards reconciliation. Three representatives of such institutions travel to Berlin for a forum on civil society’s requirements for peace.
Avital Benshalom, Principal of one of the few Arab-Jewish primary schools in Israel, Mohammad Darawshe, Director of the Givat Haviva Educational Center for Jewish-Arab understanding, and Donja Banai, Deputy Chair of the Freundeskreis Givat Haviva Deutschland e.V., talk of their experiences in education both inside and outside schools. Shaul Setter, Director of Studies for the Masters Programme Policy and Theory of the Arts, introduces the “Critical Lab”: in which faculty and students at the Bezalel Academy of the Arts in Jerusalem seek an approach in the arts and sciences that will critically explore the violent present. Iyad AlDajani, Project Co-ordinator of the “Academic Alliance for Reconciliation in the Middle East and North Africa” at the Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies, will also speak on reconciliation as a transformative praxis.
After lectures followed by brief questions, there will also be an opportunity for conversations with the experts in smaller groups in order to learn more about their activities and the effects that terror and war have on their work.
Before and after the event, the “Reflexes & Reflections Library” in the Upper Foyer invites visitors of this event to read in-depth and visit the photo exhibition “Overlaps” by Ali Ghandtschi.
Please be mindful of our code of conduct for freedom of expression and respectful exchange.
Iyad AlDajani – Researcher on reconciliation
Donja Banai – Jewish scholar and Deputy Chair of the Freundeskreis Givat Haviva Deutschland e. V.
Avital Benshalom – Head of Jewish-Arab Hagar Elementary School
Mohammad Darawshe – Head of Givat Haviva Educational Centre for Jewish-Arabic Understanding
Shaul Setter – Lecturer and Writer, Literary Scholar
Friederike Weidner – Dramaturg
Ademir Karamehmedovic – Junge Islam Konferenz-Netzwerk
Franziska Göpner – Anne Frank Zentrum
Iyad AlDajani was born and raised in East Jerusalem in a Palestinian family. He is Director of the Ph.D. programme for Reconciliation, Conflict Transformation, and Peacebuilding Studies and Executive Director for the Academic Alliance for Reconciliation in the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Jena. His research focuses on overcoming violence, religious peacemaking, and reconciliation through applied internet communication technologies.
Donja Banai is a Jewish scholar who has been engaged for many years in educational work to combat anti-Semitism, with institutions including the Bildungsstätte Anne Frank and the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland. She has also worked at the International School run in Israel by the Jewish-Arab peace organisation Givat Haviva and is now Deputy Chair of the Freundeskreis Givat Haviva Deutschland e. V.
Avital Benshalom has been the Principal of Hagar Bilingual School in Be’er Sheva, Israel for the last 6 years. She leads the largest Jewish Arab community in the Negev desert in southern Israel. She focuses on bilingual and binational education in the context of divided societies, peace education and multicultural education.
Mohammad Darawshe is the Director of Strategy at the Givat Haviva Center for Shared Society in central Israel. He is considered a leading expert on Jewish-Arab relations and has presented lectures and papers at the European parliament, NATO Defense College, World Economic Forum, and Club de Madrid, US Congress, Herzliya Conference and Israel’s Presidential Conference. In 2009 he served as a member of the national committee which drafted Israel’s Coexistence Education policy. He is a Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, researching national minorities.
Shaul Setter is a lecturer and writer in the fields of art, literature and theory, and head of the Master’s Program in Policy and Theory of the Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He researches and writes on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Israel/Palestine and Europe, and is currently editing a special issue of the journal “Theory and Criticism” on the Israel-Gaza war.