PEACE with Penny SEASON 3: Penny S Tee Interviews Kher Albaz, Chairman of the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation-Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development or AJEEC-NISPED, an Arab-Jewish Peace organization.
AJEEC-NISPED has such a wide range of projects and have been working diligently on Peace between Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Bedouins for over 15 years, and they’ve also worked to help many developing countries worldwide train young leaders in Africa, Haiti, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and more!
They have had 250 volunteer year programs, have 1,500 Volunteers aged 13-25 and they have 6,000 members in their youth organization. We will concentrate on their work in Israel, between Arab-Jewish partnerships, especially with the Bedouin community. Did you know that Bedouins are also citizens of Israel? However, they are also some of the poorest people in the country due to many factors that we’ll discuss not least of which having to change from a nomadic culture to a Westernized civilian structure.
Change of any type is always difficult, but such an extreme cultural change for an entire group of people, takes lots of time and effort. Jewish Israelis and Bedouins working together, is one way to work on Peace. Transformation of many types have always intrigued me, perhaps being Jewish it’s somewhere deep in my genes. I don’t know. After all, as a people, we certainly have had to change throughout the centuries many times given our many burdens and opportunities we’ve faced. I can see how similarities in challenges can help the other as well as expand each perspective, don’t you?
Given the recent clashes, these types of interactions and information becomes more essential than ever. We hope you enjoy our conversation.
May You Live in Peace, שלום and سلام
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