Native Israeli Adina Shapiro was born and raised in a religious and vehemently nationalistic community. So how did she become a teacher of Hebrew to Palestinians and co-director with a Palestinian of the Middle East Children’s Association?
Before the mid-1990s, Shapiro had traveled many times through Bethlehem. But she never stayed to visit. “I didn’t go in there,” she said, of the West Bank Palestinian town, “but I went through there with army escorts.”
Then one day, she saw an advertisement in an English-language tourist newspaper for a Hebrew instructor to teach at a Bethlehem school. “Out of curiosity,” Shapiro decided to apply for the job.
But that wasn’t the only reason, explained Shapiro to an audience of about 20 people attending an Israel Task Force open meeting — a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations — held at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Halfaer Building on May 1.
Shapiro said that after the assassination of Prime Minster Yitzchak Rabin by Jewish fundamentalist Yigal Amir in 1995, she was “quite shaken.” At the same time, the significant support for Amir’s act in her community compelled her to act, and to break the national religious stereotype. “That was how I ended up [teaching Hebrew] in a Palestinian school.”
An ‘eye-opener’
Shapiro’s good will initially could not repress her mistrust of Palestinians when she first began teaching in Bethlehem.
“[I kept] looking over my shoulder for the knife” after entering the Bethlehem school. Instead of knives, Shapiro said she saw “normal … little kids.”
The principal of the school “asked the students why they wanted to learn Hebrew. Some said they wanted peace [and] to know the language of the other. One wanted to be a doctor [and] to treat all people.”
“One kid,” Shapiro continued, “said, ‘Sometimes the Israeli soldiers come to visit me in my home and I don’t understand what they are saying.’ Now, I know the soldiers aren’t making a courtesy call…. He was scared of the soldiers…. It was an eye-opener….”
The teaching stint lasted two years. During that time, Shapiro began to organize meetings between Israeli and Palestinian students, a difficult task “because I had to be Palestinian for the Israelis and Israeli for the Palestinians.”
Shapiro’s efforts to foster educational ties between Israeli Jews and Palestinians took off after Palestinian educator Dr. Ghassan Abdullah of Ramallah “saw that I was committed” and decided to lend his support. Abdullah became the other co-director of MECA.
By 1996 MECA was a reality. It describes itself as “the only Israeli/Palestinian organization in the region dedicated entirely to children, teachers, curricula and institutions, drawing participants from a wide range of geographic, religious, political and socio-economic backgrounds.”
MECA has a staff of 40 Palestinian and Israeli educators. Before the outbreak of violence in the West Bank and Gaza last September, 300 other teachers used to meet as regularly as possible in “neutral areas.”
The program is a “hybrid Israeli-Palestinian” initiative that helps teachers not only learn how to address the Arab-Israeli conflict to their students, but also to focus on ways to “improve pedagogic skills” and relations between both sides.
Since the “al-Aksa Intifada” erupted in September, Shapiro believes MECA’s work is more important than ever. Meetings have been difficult, but there is still daily communication between the teachers via telephone and e-mail.
“Look what happens when we don’t focus on education,” she said in reference to the violence. “There was peace taking place on the diplomatic level, but not on the ground. Education must be addressed.”
Members of the audience were keen to address the subject of education, specifically, the incitement against Jews and Israel said to be rife in the Palestinian education curriculum.
“I am usually asked this,” Shapiro said. “I think it is important and I have looked at some Palestinian textbooks and there is truth to the [accusation] of incitement.” She added that there were also problems with Israeli textbooks, but “not as much” as in the Palestinian curricula.
Shapiro combines full-time, unpaid work for MECA with attending Hebrew University’s law school. Her visit to Milwaukee was just one stop on a national fundraising tour, but one with added meaning.
One of six children, Shapiro, 26, is also a granddaughter of former Milwaukeeans Marvin and Jane Klitsner, who now live in Jerusalem.
While here, she visited her great-grandmother, Anna Traxler, 108, at the Jewish Home and Care Center, and her aunt, Ruth Traxler.
MECA’s work received honorable mention from UNESCO’s Prize for Peace Education program last year.
Financial supporters of MECA include the Helen Bader Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, USAID, UNESCO and private donors.
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