Seeds of Peace
Bunking With the Enemy

By Fabio Botarelli

For the last three summers I've gone to a sleepaway camp called Camp Schodack, in upstate New York. I spent eight weeks there last summer living with 29 other guys in one cabin. During the days we'd have activities like swimming, sports and photography.

One adjustment at sleepaway camp is living with so many different people without much privacy. Everyone in the bunk as well as in camp must learn to tolerate one another. That can be hard sometimes, and one day during the seventh week of camp I lost it.

I was the neatest kid in my bunk and Dan, one of the bunk leaders, was the sloppiest. One day he ordered me to clean his area. I was offended because he was a year younger than me. He was bossing me around and it was his mess.

"I did my job," I told him. "Now do yours." Instead, he leaned over my bottom bunk and shouted at me. I stood up and told him to get some self-esteem points from someone else.

Other kids told us to resolve our fight by having a wrestling match. We got out our angry feelings through the moderated wrestling, and afterward, we made up and didn't fight again.

Sleeping With One Eye Open

Dan and I didn't get along because we were polar opposites with personal differences. The organization Seeds of Peace takes the shaky situations of sleepaway camp a step further by bringing kids from warring nations to a sleepaway camp in Maine for three weeks each summer.

Founded in 1993, Seeds of Peace aims to promote peace by bringing together young people from opposite sides of international conflicts. These countries include Israel and Palestine, Serbia and Bosnia, and India and Pakistan. Some American teens attend the camp, too. I interviewed two of them, Zachary Ruchman, 17, from Greenwich, Connecticut, and Ilana Blumenfeld-Gantz, 18, from Harrison, New York.

"Imagine being thousands of miles from home in a strange country, deep in the woods, on the edge of a lake, in a bunk surrounded by kids who are supposedly your sworn enemies!" said Zach. "A lot of people sleep with one eye open the first night because they are afraid that somebody else will actually cause them bodily harm."

Exposed to One Side of the Story

The guys in his bunk came from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. Before Zach, who's Jewish, embarked on the Seeds of Peace summer camp in Maine, he viewed the conflict between Israel and Palestine from a fairly pro-Israel point of view. "My parents have always taught nothing but tolerance," he said, but he grew up exposed to only one side of the story.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is long and complicated. Both groups claim the same land. When Israel became a country in 1948, the Arab Palestinians who lived there fled the Jewish nation. Over the years, there were several wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

The Israeli teens who attend Seeds of Peace have grown up with Palestinian suicide bomb attacks in Israel. The Palestinian teens have grown up with Israeli army attacks in their towns and villages. Today, Palestinians have their own territory and government, but Israel still controls much of the area.

Facing Fears Together

At the Seeds of Peace camp, teens from opposite sides of the conflict bunk together. In many ways it's like a regular summer camp with communal meals, cabin chores, sports, music and dance. But the heart of Seeds of Peace camp is the daily dialogue session.

About a dozen teens from different sides of a conflict region (like the Middle East or India and Pakistan), along with two trained facilitators, form each dialogue group. The dialogue sessions are calm at first, said Zach. But after a few days, "the sessions are increasingly louder and yelling occurs almost constantly. Each Seed is so intent on proving his or her point that nobody listens to anybody else."

"It's not uncommon for a group to spend 149 of the 150 minutes arguing nonstop," said Ilana. "But we learn how to leave the disagreement behind us when we walk out of the session. Often, the arguments bring us closer with our newfound friends."

Members of a dialogue group have to work together outside the sessions in challenges that build up trust. "This way, members of the group build a stronger bond because they work together to achieve a physical goal and overcome mutual fears, like falling off a tire swing 20 feet in the air," Ilana said. (They're harnessed in but it's still scary, she said.)

After about a week and half, the frantic arguments in the dialogue groups transform into rational discussions. "It's as if there's an incredible amount of anger built up from living in conflict and it all needs to be released," said Zach. "When it's all gone, it's replaced by reason and tolerance."

Friendship Replacing Hate

Both Zach and Ilana called Seeds of Peace an amazing experience. "I was floored by the friendships I watched form between people who had been literally taught to hate each other," Ilana said.

Some of her closest friends are from camp, including a Muslim Egyptian boy and a Jewish Israeli girl. "I learned so much from my friends at camp, but most of all, I learned what it means to look beyond stereotypes," she said.

"I am a more tolerant, more patient, more caring, more respectful person as a result of my two summers at Seeds," said Zach, who still talks to many of his friends from the camp.

He noted that on the highway on the border of Maine and New Hampshire there's a sign that reads: "Maine: The way life should be." At Seeds of Peace, he said, "We take that motto to heart. For three weeks at camp, life is the way it should be as we try to resolve our conflicts on a personal level through dialogue and coexistence." That may work even better than wrestling.

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