Meet the 2018 Goldin Global Fellows

The Goldin Institute is proud to introduce the inaugural class of Goldin Global Fellows. The 2018 cohort is comprised of 20 caring, capable, and impassioned individuals across 16 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North and South America who came together to learn and work collaboratively over 16 weeks as a community of practice.

2018 GOLDIN GLOBAL FELLOWS FELLOWS

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Learn more and apply for the Goldin Global Fellows

by Travis Rejman

Gather Platform Launched

Speaking at a July 17 celebration for the launch of Gather, the Goldin Institute’s online fellowship for community leaders around the world, Raymond Richard, Executive Director of Brothers Standing Together, a not-for-profit organization based in Chicago, Illinois, USA, said that he had already received the IPad preloaded with the Gather software and was looking forward to signing in for the first time later that night. Even more than that, he had great ambitions for his collaboration with the other fellows.

[quote]“I look forward to (signing in) and sharing my experiences so we can come up with new and better solutions to problems of poverty, violence and homelessness. I’m excited.” -- Brother Raymond Richard, Gather Fellow[/quote]

The inaugural Gather Fellows includes 20 community leaders from 16 countries, from Cameroon to California, USA, including the manager of an orphanage in Kenya and a peace and reconciliation specialist in Colombia, a rape survivors’ advocate in Kentucky and a young lawyer in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia. Each participant has received a small stipend and an IPad loaded with communications software specially designed for Gather.

Over the next 16 weeks, the Gather fellows will proceed through an on-line curriculum of discussions, exercises and workshops all designed to help them learn from each other, build on their collective assets, and devise concepts for sustainable, community-driven social change. Divided into modules with associated exercises and regular virtual meetings, the Gather course and specially-designed software incorporate the accumulated wisdom of nearly two decades of successful international collaborations facilitated by the Goldin Institute.

At the celebration of Gather’s launch, held at the historic House of Glunz in the city’s Old Town neighborhood, the Goldin Institute’s Founder and Board Chairperson, Diane Goldin, accompanied by fellow Board Member Mimi Frankel, thanked the whole staff before praising the hard work, dedication and leadership of Executive Director Travis Rejman. Travis, for his part, reserved particular appreciation for the late nights invested by his curriculum writing and software development teams in creating a platform that is as innovative as it is intuitive. Gather is the culmination of the Goldin Institute’s efforts, Travis explained.

[quote]“How do you connect leaders from around the world? We’ve been working on that question since the day we started.”[/quote]

Raymond launched BST in 2009 to decrease neighborhood violence and contribute to a safe environment for children and families. A mentor, activist and public speaker today, Raymond struggled with criminal activity, substance abuse and homelessness for decades. He was incarcerated for various crimes six different times, and spent two years living on Lower Wacker Drive, a series of subterranean tunnels underneath the city’s Loop, the downtown business district. But after he was released from prison the final time, Raymond resolved to turn his life around. It wasn’t easy. In Chicago as throughout the United States, returning citizens – as Raymond describes those emerging from incarceration – face significant discrimination and legal restrictions to accessing jobs, housing and education. But Raymond studied hard and obtained his high school diploma, participated in public meetings such as community policing programs, and worked odd jobs. He simultaneously became a mentor to other returning citizens as well as at-risk young people, drawing on his past experiences to provide practical guidance and warn against the dangers of recidivist criminal activity.

As BST’s Executive Director, Raymond has participated in events and attended conferences across the country, all while working to build their capacity to receive contracts from government agencies and private companies to provide returning citizens with work experience and essential income.
His accomplishments and never-ending responsibilities notwithstanding, at Gather’s inaugural celebration, Raymond said he was looking forward most of all to learning from his peers in other countries, knowing that together, they can accomplish more than on their own.

“Everyone of us is better than any one of us,” he said. “I’m honored to be on the team, honored to be in the Gather program.”

by Ethan Michaeli

How to survive the tough path of life

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by Super User

Donate your woolens this winter

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by Super User

Haiti Update: Moving Women to Safety

On behalf of KOFAVIV, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims, I want to share this update and our appreciation with the global network of partners of the Goldin Institute. Thanks to your support, I am pleased to report that we have successfully moved more than twenty women who were under immediate threat to safety.

Sadly, there has been a rapid uptick in political and gang-related violence in Port au Prince and across the Caribbean over the last few weeks. In Haiti, communtities and neighborhoods that are already disadvantaged, like Martissant and Grand Ravine, were hit the hardest. As usual, this violence disproportionally effects women and girls. As a known center for victims of sexual violence in Haiti, our office was inundated with women and girst seeks refuge from the violence and sexual assualt. Given that the violence was wide-spread and our lack of space for all of these women at our offices, we needed to take emergency action to relocate the women and girls seeking refuge with us.

[quote]With no good options for providing safe houses in Port au Prince, we turned to our partners in the Goldin Institute's global network for support in taking quick action to move these women and girls to safety outside the city. Thanks to your support, more than 20 women and girls are now safe.[/quote]

Today, I wanted to share some of their stories with you. Please note that we have obscured the faces and names for safety.

I am 70 years old and I have lived in current neighborhood since 1982 with my 6 children. My oldest child was in the hospital for a life-saving surgery for her kidneys. On my way home from the hospital, bandits appeared with gunmen shooting in front of me as I neared my home. The bandits had just left my house.

I have 4 kids and I live in Grand Ravine with my husband. Now I'm going to do everything for the kids because bandits in the area have shot their dad while there was a massacre in the Great Ravine. When it happened, I was going to to the market to sell hypolite fire logs. While I was there, the bandits came to the market with their weapons and I worried about my kids so I ran home. I can't stay at my house anymore and I can't sleep at night. I have a baby boy in my hand; I could not find a safe place to go with them until I found KOFAVIV. They helped me find a place outside the city to take my kids until the violence ends.

I take care of 6 children by myself because their father died. I went to the streets to pick up plastic bottles to sell so I could care for my kids. Bandits with weapons came to my house and broke all that I had in the house. They beat me, and ever since then then I have a sore stomach because of a big kick in my stomach. I left home because I don’t want them to come back and kill me with the children. At first I was able to sleep with my kids in a friend's house but, I wasn't able to be in the house when she wasn't there so we'd have to be on the streets all day. We needed a new place to stay.

I live in the Grand Ravine with my 2 sons. Every day and every night I had to move to a different home. Children are crying because I'm running with them. Every time we turned around the area became incomprehensible to me. These bandits have no fear of the police and the day is full with shooting. With these bandits in Grand Ravine, its only a matter of time before we're going to be raped and tortured. The bandits even call my phone as they go into my home. Because I was making a living by doing laundry at my home, now I can't find a place where I can afford it. KOFAVIV helped me find a new place for now.

My name is Marie and I'm from Grand-Raven, where I grew up since I was small. I have been subjected to many acts of violence in the area. I have 2 children, one son and one daugther, who live with me in this very difficult time. Bandits in the area of killed my husband and violated my sister. These villians also tried to attack me, but I escaped with only the clothes on my back. My child cannot go to school because he is hiding with me. The bandits are still using my home as a base.

My name is Roselène I'm 33 years old. I have a child living with me and mysister in the neighborhood called Village of God. I have been subjected to extensive violence in the area because of these bandits who came to my home. They violated my sister and tried to violate me too. They beat me and I am in the streets now, and I cannot return to my house.

While these women were all subjected to violence and fear that will be difficult to heal from, thanks to your support they have been removed from this immediate danger for now. With your continued support, we will bring them back home when the violence is under control and help them rebuild their lives.

Thank you to everyone who made a donation, especially Sam Cardella and our friends at World Wings, for making this emergency rescue possible.

by Malya Villard-Appolon

Volunteers Double the Impact of Grant from Lush Foundation

When our team in the Philippines received the grant from the Lush Cosmetics Foundation, they made a commitment to install 16 water pumps serving at least 3,500 students in Maguindanao. Thanks to the additional support from a crowdfunding campaign led by Board member Akif Irfan and the tireless efforts of a network of volunteers in the Philippines, our team more than doubled the impact we were expected to achieve.

This past year, the Philippines team exceeded all expectations by providing 36 water pumps at 35 different schools reaching a total of 5,884 students in five different municipalities across Maguindanao.

This is a remarkable acheivement anywhere, but especially difficult in the area of ongoing conflict where we work that this year flared into multiple indicidents of violence and a declaration of martial law. In our region, nearly three out of every four people lacks access to safe drinking water and children are especially hard hit and routinely become ill from contaminated water. This project brings water to schools in part so that children can stay healthy and in school and not travel great distances to retrieve water for their class, regularly losing precious classroom instruction time.

In addition to the direct service of installing water pumps at schools, our has been involved in a wide rage of meetings, events and forums throughout the year, especially around Peacebuilding and the "Bangsamoro Basic Law" legislation designed to reduce tensions in the region. In addition, the team expanded the partnership with the World Food Program to promote hygiene and sanitation for students, teachers and in food preparation.

There are many stories of children and schools whose lives were impacted by the access to safe drinking water that support from Lush made possible, but we are particularly proud to share an update about the five water facilities in Barangay Bugawas, Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao. Barangay Bugawas is a vulnerable and conflict-affected community where most of the residents have historically supported the aims of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that is in an open and often violent conflict with the government. These communities have been engaged in the volunteer efforts to bring the water pumps to schools in this region and have coordinated their actions and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with leaders from both sides of the conflict, demonstrating that it is possible to work together to solve problems in ways that build momentum for peace in the region.

by Susana Salvador-Anayatin

Continuing the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence

In recent weeks, the threats to the Commission of Women Victims for Victims team (KOFAVIV), and the women whom they serve have only become more treacherous in the face of increased gang violence, and shootings. Nearly two dozen women have been assaulted in the brewing climate of political instability with half that number still stranded at KOFAVIV's office space awaiting relocation to safer environments.

[quote]"Emergency support from the Goldin Institute is the only way we can get these women out of harms way right now. Fights between armed groups have been going on for some time, but this week is worse than normal. We know there are many more women are unable to come to our office or get taken by us to hospitals."[/quote]

Fourteen years since co-founding Haiti’s Commission of Women Victims for Victims, or KOFAVIV in its Creole acronym, Malya Villard is now living in Philadelphia, having been forced to leave her country for her own safety. The longtime Goldin Institute Global Associate has now received a “Green Card” allowing her to live and work in the United States legally, but even with that good news, her heart and mind still long for Haiti and the work of KOFAVIV.

Based now in Philadelphia, Malya's access to verifiable information isn't as consistently available as before but she remains in touch with the team in Port au Prince daily. In effect, KOFAVIV is now operating a under a siege with no obvious relief in the near future. "It's always a matter of securing attention for our condition and monies to ensure safety and support for affected women," she explains. "The struggle is about holding those committing the violence and shootings at bay, away from our women. The kids are always the ones who suffer the most in these times."

The most recent global headlines from Haiti have been focused on ever-widening sex scandals involving aid workers with Oxfam UK and now Save the Children implicated in the sexual exploitation of civilian Haitian women and girls to whom the aid workers were supposed to provide humanitarian assistance. Against that unseemly backdrop, the remaining staff and leaders of KOFAVIV continue to provide security and also respond to survivors of sexual violence.

Though thousands of miles away, Malya has not ceased to be a resolute spokesperson for KOFAVIV and advocate for the well-being of Haitian women. From her perspective, the last six months in particular have been especially challenging. “Things are not going too well,” Malya notes by phone one early Saturday morning before going to work in Philadelphia.

[quote]“I may not be there in person with my sisters, but we are on the phone constantly. We coordinate every day. Women are still being victimized, and struggling for everyday survival.”[/quote]

A signature program of KOFAVIV are the male security patrols, trained and gender-sensitized men who go out in teams in urban and rural areas as well as pockets of displacement throughout the country to provide safe passage as well as accompaniment to Haitian females. The program started in partnership with the Goldin Institute shortly after the 2010 earthquake. “They’re still being trained and are motivated to do the work,” observes Malya. “The male patrols and the KOFAVIV staff are working. Though the men are most often without any funding, they continue to train, patrol and remain active in the community because they still have families, and family members who are risk of assault, or worse.”

As the humanitarian and development situation in Haiti has drifted further from the public conscience over the past several years, so has the stream of monetary assistance. “The money we used to receive just isn’t coming in anymore,” she laments. “Our only support, consistently, is from the Goldin Institute.”

The Goldin Institute gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of our partners like the Flordia Chapter of World Wings International who help empower the work of Global Associate Malya Villard Appolon and her team at KOFAVIV.

According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, four out of five people who seek help at its Pran Men’m clinic in Haiti are survivors of rape and sexual assault. An average of 80 sexual violence survivors are seen there per month. Only since 2005, the year of KOFAVIV’s founding, has rape been a crime in Haiti.

Just as reliable lines of communication are still elusive across that nation, KOFAVIV’s team is managing to operate without office phones, though the organization still maintains an office and can use online video communication services. As female victims of sexual violence, assault, and other interpersonal crimes still come to KOFAVIV for assistance, the team now uses their personal phones to receive messages and coordinate the response. Additionally, KOFAVIV team members proactively go to the hospitals and do intake themselves for people coming for treatment and aid, then transport them back to the KOFAVIV offices for continued support.

As Malya identifies them, the three main struggles impacting KOFAVIV and organizations like it serving Haitian women at risk of violence are: lack of financial resources; often unreliable communications via phone and Internet; and a lack of physical space to house victims.

Despite the obstacles, Malya and her colleagues insist they cannot stop.

[quote]“I was one of those victims. I was a victim, two of my children were victims, and we didn’t find our justice. So, I nor my agents at KOFAVIV will not stop until we find justice for all of the women we help.”[/quote]

by Jimmie Briggs

Whose Streets? Connecting Ferguson and Chicago

When Sabaah Folayan arrived in Ferguson, Missouri, just a couple of weeks after the police shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, her plan was to conduct a public health study. A Los Angeles native who was then in a pre-med course at Columbia University, Sabaah quickly realized that tensions were too great to focus solely on conducting academic research. Ferguson’s residents were then engaged in ongoing protests against police brutality, and where national news media devoted their coverage to episodes of violence, Sabaah saw that the protestors were coalescing into a broad-based movement calling for deep social change. Instead of returning to med school, she decided to make a documentary film that would record this critical moment.

Speaking to the audience in Chicago about the process of documenting the movement in Ferguson, Sabaah noted:

[quote]“Once we got there, it was apparent that it was not the kind of environment where we could ask people multiple choice questions. We were there to be witnesses.”[/quote]

On March 5, the Goldin Institute co-hosted a screening of “Whose Streets?” with the non-profit organization Young Chicago Authors and their annual poetry slam competition “Louder than a Bomb” at the headquarters for the Chicago Teachers Union. “Whose Streets?” premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, was picked up for distribution by Magnolia Pictures, and made its theatrical debut in August 2017.

The film depicts the lives of the young activists who were personally transformed even as they fought for social justice in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting, focusing especially on Brittany Farrell, a 25-year-old registered nurse and mother of a young child. The film follows Farrell as she plays a prominent role in the large October 2014 marches that attracted like-minded protestors from around the country and organizes other demonstrations as well, including one on a highway that briefly stops traffic and results in her arrest on felony charges. While she awaits the court proceedings, Farrell marries her girlfriend – an act celebrated as “revolutionary love” by other activists – and continues to work on public protests against the discriminatory policies and practices of St. Louis-area police and other local government officials.

After the screening, the audience was treated to a performance from poet and musician Tasha Viets-VanLear, just one of the many up-and-coming artists who have participated in “Louder than a Bomb.” Sabaah then engaged the audience in a discussion about the film and conducted small group exercises reading selected texts. She explained that “Whose Streets?” is intended to be a “healing experience” that would counteract the negative images of Ferguson that were produced by the mainstream media.

“Our number one goal was to have a film that would bring beauty and dignity back to the community,” she said. “The corporate message was that (Ferguson residents) were criminals, that they were thugs and that all that was happening was looting and destruction.”

“Whose Streets?” indeed presents an alternative vision of Ferguson, Missouri, through a cohort of young organizers with an emerging sense of political consciousness and solidarity with others around the globe facing racial, religious and political persecution. As a film that reveals the personal lives of its activist subjects, it a template for a new generation committed to reshaping society. Sabaah was herself inspired by her time in Ferguson, becoming one of the principals in the Millions March NYC in December 2014, when tens of thousands marched on that city’s police headquarters to express their outrage over the failures of separate grand juries to approve charges against the police officer who shot Michael Brown as well as the officer who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold in New York that same summer.

“No one is going to bring justice to the oppressed people of the world,” Sabaah told the audience during the exercise. “We have to be our own defense.”

by Ethan Michaeli

"Community Parliaments" Launched in Uganda

Last February, Goldin Institute’s partner in northern Uganda, YOLRED, piloted its first “community parliament” in the villages of Bwongatira, sub-county, parish of Punena/Lukoid; as well as Lamogi sub-county, Gurguru Parish.

“The idea for this came when we were doing the music therapy program," explains Charles Okello, logistics officer and organizational co-founder. YOLRED’s music therapy program for ex-child soldiers and conflict-affected civilians was highlighted at the beginning of the year by the Associated Press, in a story later run by ABC, the New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets.

[slide] [img path="images/YOLREDCP0.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP1.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YolredCP2.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP3.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP4.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP5.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP6.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP7.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP8.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP9.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP10.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP11.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP12.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP13.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP14.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP15.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP16.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP017.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [img path="images/YOLREDCP018.jpg"]YOLRED hosts Community Parliament events throughout Northern Uganda[/img] [/slide]

As Charles and other YOLRED members fanned across the Gulu District where YOLRED is headquartered to identify the issues residents most sought to have covered in the parliament, a handful of specific concerns were consistently expressed. Among them were stigma experienced by former combatants with the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army); sexual violence; gender inequality; educational disenfranchisement of ex-child soldiers; land rights challenges; and, the refusal of health services to returning combatants.

[quote]"We at YOLRED were also seeking to achieve peaceful alternatives to the various forms of conflict in northern Uganda. By coming together in a 'community parliament' where various opinions and ideas for change can be surfaced, everyday citizens can learn about the challenges endured by victims of the LRA, and end stigmatization." -- Charles Okello[/quote]

Each of the community parliament sessions drew approximately 100 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were women. The gatherings took place in February and March.

In addition to the civilian participants, journalists, Local Councillors, Community Vice-Chairpersons, victims’ advocates, and Parish Councillors also attended as well.

In mid-March following the two pilot community parliament sessions, YOLRED sponsored a school debating competition at the District Council Hall of Gulu District, including four regional schools. The question of when the community parliaments will continue is a looming question.

“In the due course of doing the community parliament, participants were very excited,” notes Charles Okello. “The exchange was recorded and played on radio stations in Lakody, which could then be heard by people all over the region. People liked it and want more, and if possible most want us to have them once or twice a month. When the next community parliament happens is hard to tell because of the resources to do it are not at hand, so as I speak now we are unable.”

by Jimmie Briggs

Goldin Institute Returns to Israel and Palestine

Mehari Reuven is an Ethiopian Jewish teacher, writer and journalist who was incarcerated as a “prisoner of Zion” in his birth country. Released after a year during which he was tortured and witnessed the murders of other prisoners, he escaped from Ethiopia and became an international advocate for his people, playing a key role in their modern-day exodus to Israel. In his new homeland, Mehari resumed his role as a teacher, but found the Israeli students disrespectful and undisciplined, and ultimately quit to write books and produce radio programs in his native Amharic. On a radio station specially created to inform new immigrants with hour-long broadcasts in Russian, Persian, Arabic and other languages, Mehari wrote and narrated an award-winning series educating and encouraging his fellow Ethiopians to participate in Israel’s democracy and resist the discrimination they faced all too often from religious and government officials.

Tsionit Fatal Kupperwasser is a career Israeli military intelligence officer whose parents were born in Baghdad, part of a large Jewish community that had thrived in Iraq for millennia but had to flee in the wake of pogroms which targeted them after Israel’s establishment in 1948. In an effort to reconnect with her family’s severed past, she wrote a novel about her ancestors’ lives in Baghdad, which was discovered by a publisher in Iraq, translated into Arabic, and published to wide acclaim in that country: Tsionit’s Facebook page today is filled with messages in Hebrew and Arabic from her fans in two nations that are technically blood enemies.

Palestinian activist Issa Amro leads Students Against Settlements, a grassroots group of volunteers who organize nonviolent protests to demand an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. Issa is based in Hebron, a Palestinian city that has an enclave of Israeli settlers protected by hundreds of soldiers, and his activities have frequently brought him to confrontations with soldiers and settlers as well as with Palestinian authorities, who are suspicious of his non-violent tactics and relationships with international groups as well as of his independence.

[slide] [img path="images/GIIP1801.jpg"]Dr. Chaim Peri and the team at Yemin Orde are building innovative models for education and youth empowerment.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1802.jpg"]Mr. Sam Bahour in Ramallah is leading economic development in Palestine and believes job creation is peace building.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1803.jpg"]Graffiti on the separation wall leading to the checkpoint returning from Ramallah.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1804.jpg"]Paying our respects at the Kotel and the Qubbat al-Sakhrah.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1805.jpg"]Street art in Tel Aviv.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1806.jpg"]Walking to Jaffa.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1807.jpg"]Busy street in Ramallah featuring a Star and Bucks.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1808.jpg"]Dear friend and advisor Yoni Reuven keeps us up to date on the Ethiopian Jewish cCommunity.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1809.jpg"]Honored to meet with the Israeli Ambassador to Ethiopia, and former Chicagoan, Belyanesh Zevadia.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1810.jpg"]Graffiti on the Separation Wall outside Banksy Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem.[/img] [img path="images/GIIP1811.jpg"]Issa Amro explains how Dr. Martin Luther King's non-violent strategies inspire his work in Hebron.[/img] [/slide]

These were just some of the people we met this winter when I traveled through Israel and Palestine with the Goldin Institute’s founders, Chairperson Diane Goldin and Executive Director Travis Rejman. Diane and Travis have long worked with both Palestinians and Israelis previously and wanted to check in with their old friends and colleagues, build new relationships and take a snapshot of a region which is much in the news. I was happy to help organize the trip, both in my capacity as the Goldin Institute’s Senior Advisor and because I happen to be writing my next book about Israel, to be titled “Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel.”

The title refers to the Twelve Tribes of ancient times, a querulous confederation who demanded that the Lord send them a monarch to rule over them, according to the Tanakh. But I won’t be examining modern equivalents to the ancient tribes. Rather, my book will explore how modern tribalism within Israel defines the conflict with the Palestinians, with consequences that radiate throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Israel today is divided between religious and secular, and between those Jews of European background and those whose ancestors were from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as between Jews and Muslims, both those who are citizens of Israel and those under military occupation in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

I was born in the United States, but most of my family lives in Israel and I’ve traveled there many times, including several trips specifically for this book. On our journey, Diane, Travis and I traversed the country by bus and car, from hip downtown Tel Aviv to the labyrinthine market in Jerusalem’s Old City, from the mountains overlooking the Sea of Galilee to the desert around the Dead Sea. Having worked in war zones in Uganda, Colombia and the Philippines, they felt resonance in Israel and Palestine with other global hotspots, in the Israeli military checkpoint to enter the Palestinian capital of Ramallah, the high concrete wall that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and the young Palestinian men in black t-shirts throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers as we drove past.

The people we met with – Mehari, Tsionit, Issa and dozens of others – did indeed help us get a picture of Israel and Palestine at this particular moment in time. But more than that, they helped us understand exactly what modern tribalism is, how it is affecting every nation around the world, and, most importantly, what can be done to reach out across the gap and embrace putative enemies.

by Ethan Michaeli

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