"Free Mind", a magazine with distribution all over Germany, has just published an article about The Way to Happiness peace activities we have in Israel and in the Palestinian authority. 

 

Here is the text of the article translated to English.

 

PEACE MISSION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

All alone, without any protection, with a minimum of food supplies and a few brochures – but with a big dream in front of them ... Read how small steps combined by Israelis and Palestinians create a big effect. 

Equipped with a roadmap, two cucumbers, a few pears, sandwiches and a camera, Osnat and Rita, two girls from Tel Aviv, consult their map. Knowing they were going beyond the limits, crossing roadblocks and unknown roads, they still harbored second thoughts but “somehow the car started moving and we were on our way,“ says Osnat, soon approaching the roadblock to be welcomed by soldiers with machine guns aimed at them.

Osnat and Rita are part of a grassroots movement calling itself The Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East, a group consisting of both Palestinians and Israelites operating on both sides of the borders. Young and energetic Danny Vidislavski, the originator of the program, started the activity three and a half years ago, after he witnessed on TV the beginning of the intifada¹ (riots) in October 2000.  With spirited vitality he soon got volunteers on board to share a dream. 

Their vision: stop the violence in the Middle East by bringing about mutual understanding between the two people. Easier said than done in a conflict lasting thousands of years where nobody dares to remember who was the first to offend his neighbour. “The big question was of who will be the first to stop reacting and punishing?” states 29-years-old Danny, earning his living as a business consultant, while investing the majority of his time into the project.

While media splash the news of suicide bombers, blood, gunners, riots and extremist groups and fan the flames of hatred and intolerance, the group set out and went to work.

It started by lecturing in schools, kindergartens, universities, clubs, political gatherings, churches and even prison. They began teaming up with Palestinians across the border who shared their dreams. The project swelled to over 100 active volunteers from both Palestine and Israel working hand in hand. Their tool for the major part is a modern non-religious morale code² booklet entitled “The Way to Happiness”, a work based on common sense. “The booklet had a worldwide distribution of about 62 million copies and I heard stories on its use in zones of conflict and war. I read it and I knew it was the tool we needed as it had a universal appeal independent of religion or politics,” stated Danny.

A Truckload of Courage

It sometimes does take courage, a whole truckload of courage at that, to confront the odds, antagonism or in one instance even bullets when members of the group were threatened at gun point during distribution in Nablus (under Palestinian Authority).

“I tried to remember the few prayers that I knew in the past when I stepped into the place while 30 pairs of hostile eyes were staring at me”, recounts 44-years-old Shuki Mizrachi after the iron doors clanged closed behind his entering the Nitzan penitentiary to confront tough, sober looking prisoners. Nevertheless, an exhilarated Shuki left the gloomy walls having succeeded to turn the bitter smiles into glints of hope. Shuki is a lecturer in the Association as well as its president, besides being a successful businessman in publishing and banking.

Hundreds of heart-warming responses from people of all walks of life and from both sides of the border keep the group motivated. They meet, exchange experiences and assign tasks according to each person’s ability.

Their big and little daily deeds have not gone unnoticed and the group started to enlist the help of lawyers, professors, newspapers, religious leaders, police, getting encouragement from members of the Knesset³ and political personalities from Palestine.

Stories of their activities crossed borders or even continents receiving positive reactions from Jordan, Egypt, Dubai, Lebanon, Cameroon, Ethiopia and even in far away places such as India, Wales, Germany, Canada and the USA.

Swamped with requests from both sides

“Hello, my name is Sami Yusef Abdul-Hamid. I like to have five more booklets for my friends. Please contact me as soon as possible and good night”, a young Arabic boy’s voice sounds from the phone answering machine at the group’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“We are getting hundreds of requests from Arabs, Israelites, Jews or Muslims who call us for more booklets or want to communicate with us.  The other day the owner of a jewelery chain in Tel Aviv, which distributes the booklet to all their employees and customers, called to tell us that a few days after starting the distribution, the head office received an envelope with 300 shekels⁴ and 4 strings of beads with a letter saying the person stole them 2 years ago and she understood that being honest was required for true happiness”, says Danny.

To manage the growing amount of requests, the association organized volunteers to swiftly dispatch the booklets to anyone asking for it.

Reaching 2 Million Homes

The members delivered hundreds of lectures to students and teachers and distributed a total of 2,000,000 booklets in both Arabic and Hebrew in occupied territories, refugee camps, hospitals, schools, universities, through newspapers, businesses and into thousands of homes in Israel such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Kefar Saba, as well as Gaza, Hebron, Beit Lechem, Nablus, Salfit, Jerucho in Palestine

Changing the Course of History

Can a booklet make the difference and change the course of history?  Zeinab Habash – the General Secretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Education thinks so and recently stated in a public address: “The Way To Happiness” represents my beliefs, it talks about equality, justice, freedom, peace, tolerance and good behaviour. 

“Even during this last intifada¹, and for the first time in my life, I saw Israeli Jews, young and old men and women, who risked their life to support, help and defend Palestinians. I also saw many Palestinians do the same thing for them.”

“It gave me a big hope for achieving peace and happiness,. And although the way is still long, the book is making change. I’m not dreaming."

Peace in the Middle East? An unreachable dream? Maybe. But Danny and his team know with their daily actions they have done a few more steps to increase the mutual understanding, which they hope maybe will make the difference.

FreeMIND interviewed Danny Vidislavski, the initiator of these activities.

FM: What made you believe so strongly and commit yourself so enthusiastically to this cause?

Danny: As a business consultant I have seen how the conflicts and fight is destroying the place, business and economics are suffering. There are less tourists, unemployment is increasing – everyone is affected.

Not to mention life under daily threat. When we go to a coffee shop or restaurant with friends, we are alert and watch everyone entering. When relatives are traveling by bus to their work place, we are afraid for them hoping it will not get bombed.

And I know the Palestinian citizens have similar fears. They cannot go out for 3 weeks because of a closure or curfew.

I have seen that signatures on peace contracts are not worth a lot. It is the people who make the difference. Thus I decided to do something which I call ‘Peace between individual people’.

Then I got calls from Shlomi and Amir, two friends and they both told me the same thing. ‘Danny, there is a special booklet called the Way to Happiness that  was used in troubled areas such as South Africa at the end of the apartheid, the riots in Los Angeles, In Bosnia, Chechnia. You should do a campaign with this booklet.’ The same evening I knew I had the answer to the situation – a tool for both citizens for both countries.

FM: Israel, as has Palestine, has suffered from the conflict. You are Israelis. Do you meet a lot of resentment working together with Palestinians?

Danny: Sure. Since the intifada started, to be an Israeli and saying that you are in connection with Palestinians is not a smart choice. This isn’t popular. We meet a lot of resentment from different sources, but, and this is the happy part of it, I can see the more we distribute the booklets and doing our activities, the more the resentment are lessening. People change their mind and even started to cooperate with us.  However we still have resentment and attacks from a few extremists who fight anything that is bettering people’s lives.

FM:  Are you a religious or political group?

Danny: No. We are nonreligious, nonpolitical, opened to anyone, from any religion, race or gender.  There are religious Jews, rabbis, Christians, Muslims, Bedouins and more among our members and supporters.

FM: Do you truly believe that a small booklet could make a change in this case, which has centuries of conflict? The problems seem to be ever present and with modern weapons this conflict has become more vicious.

Danny: Unfortunately you cannot stop a fire with more oil and burning wood – it just doesn’t work. You need something else to stop a fire – water to calm it down. And this is what the Way to Happiness booklet does – this is water calming down the fires.

I am not a believing guy – I believe nothing unless I see it in my own eyes. So although I have heard many good things about this booklet’s effects all over the world, I didn’t believe it. I decided to try it. And I can tell you that the results are far far beyond what I have been told.

This is very simple. We have here about 6,500,000 Israelis (about 1,300,000 of them are Israeli-Arabs) and about 3,000,000 to 3,500,000 Palestinians. What we are doing is changing the mood of these people. This is hard work since this is done one by one – but I came to the conclusion that this is the only way it can be done. Peace you should make one by one and this booklet does it the best – it just changes the people mind’s to the better: less violent, less impulse for revenge and so forth.

FM: You distributed millions of copies, you produced posters. How are all these activities financed?

Danny: Our activity is made possible by the good will of many many people.  First of all each member of our team, on top of actively working, is donating  for the activity. Some even help with their offices, some make cars available and so forth.

Secondly, we get donations from good people and associations all over the world, for example from the US and Germany.

But most important we have a group of “guardian angels” in the USA, a sister organization founded at the same time as we started in Israel. Ron and Joan Lonstein, two Jewish ladies decided to do something about the situation and they formed a group of ex-Israelis, American Jews and as the time moved on, ex-Palestinians, Muslim people from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia joined the efforts.

This team called the “Association for Peace and Understanding in the Middle East” is working with us on a daily basis and these great men and women dedicated their lives to our mutual mission for Israel and Palestine. The majority of our funds comes from them. They do activities every week for raising more donations and without these great people we could nearly do nothing.

FM: You work a lot with people who are not decision-makers. For example you lecture to thousands of children. Why schools and why children?

Danny: Yes, sure.  A child that is truly happy – is a child who is much, much, much, much less violent, if at all! That kind of child has a much more reduced tendency to fall in the trap that our Minister of Education calls "the modern devil" – the drugs problem.

I always valued the issue of education. We all witness the daily difficult problems in our state: drugs, murders, crime, unemployment and above all hovers the "intefada".

If we look deeper into things we see that there is something, not functioning well and the way to treat such fundamental illnesses in society is to treat it in the beginning of the way – i.e. with children and youth. As it is written in the booklet in the chapter 'Love children and help them': “Today's children will become tomorrow's civilization”.  “They need love and help to make it” – and that's exactly what we are trying to accomplish. 

FM:  Danny, where do you go from there?

Danny: I have a dream for my people and for the Palestinians. I can see the day when there will be peace and that day is pretty close.

Excerpts from reader letters

“…The booklet made me stronger from within.” -- Karim from Haifa.

“This book can bring a world change if people will use it. People will understand from the book that the way to happiness isn’t by greed, but by mutual help” -- Ben Zion – Holocaust survivor, Givataim.

“I think that the violence everywhere in our country and in the world can vanish because reading the Way to Happiness booklet enables people to be more tolerant, learn to accept the other, the different and from there to understand that we are all equal as human beings. All is possible once we understand that one has to change one self and not the other. Not to say that the situation is bad but to ask how is it possible to do it differently and the answer comes by itself…” -- Alexandra Shemes

“Hello - Two days ago I received the book “The Way to Happiness” and I would like to thank you and tell you that I liked its content very much. I think that the idea of distributing it is a great idea. I am history and geography teacher. I like the subjects in this booklet and I get a lot of knowledge from it. Therefore, I would ask you to send me 12 to 20 copies, preferably in English. Thank you very much.” -- Sa’ad Chasibun, Kafar Kanna

“This booklet touches actual sensitive subjects relating to life. Life is cruel and this booklet touches the solution. And says what to do and how to improve my personal life. I never thought orderly at what’s written at this booklet. Every subject is carved by the blood of truth. It is worthwhile to apply what is written in it.” -- Kalim Ayala

“It is a booklet that can take a hold of a lot of people. It has no mystic or religious inclining, it has truths that will touch a lot of people, religious people too. It fits everyone, no matter if Jewish or Arabic.” -- An owner of a company who asked for 40 booklets for his employees

“Our distributor in Gaza started to give booklets to people in the streets of Gaza – he distributed 7000 booklets this way. On his way he saw 2 policemen (Palestinians) and gave them the booklets. They liked it very much and invited him to drink coffee with them in the police station. The Chief got his copy too.”

“I was in bad condition and the booklet gave me hope for the future, for myself and for my country. I was in despair, and the booklet gave me self confidence.” -- Rag’a from Majdal Kerum.

“This is the strongest thing ever made – the bible of life.” -- Ofer from Rishon.

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DEFINITIONS:

1. Intifada: the Palestinian uprising (beginning in 1987) against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip

2. Moral code: a code of good conduct laid down out of the experience of the race to serve as a uniform yardstick for the conduct of individuals and groups.

3. Knesset: the Israeli Parliament (Hebrew word for assembly)

4. Shekel: The Israel currency. 1 Shekel is equivalent to 0.18 Euro

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