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Hagit Ra’anan
My name is Hagit Ra’anan and I am an Israeli living in the Greater Tel Aviv Area. I have been working for peace for many years.
My work has nothing to do with any shade of politics. I come as a human being to support other human beings who are willing to help themselves.
In my view there is a tremendous amount of fear in the Middle East, in Palestine and in Israel. The Palestinians are the 'Jews' of the Arab Nations. Nobody really cares about the Palestinians or the Jews.
My understanding is that we need to be together and support each other, it is the only choice we have. In order to do so we need to release the fear of the two societies.
Until October 2000 my main mission was to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. I would visit refugee camps and listen to the people. I used to take Israelis to Gaza for weekends. My main desire was for the Israelis and the Palestinians to see each other as equals, as one, as what we really are.
Since the painful event of September 2000, the second Intifada, I cannot formally visit my friends there. This is a big loss for me. After my personal loss twenty years ago, I fill in as the mother of all children on earth.
There are many children in Gaza Strip and in many of the cities and refugee camps in the West Bank who call me Yamma (Mommy) or Sitta (Grandma). At this time my main service is humanitarian assistance: helping people, visit injured Palestinians at the Israeli hospitals, bringing clothes, food and medicine, whatever I can possibly do to ease the situation.
Being aware that fear rules, during the last ten years I have composed an educational program called Culture of Peace. Born and living all my life in the Middle East (Israel), it is very clear to me that we should invest our entire energy to compassionately acknowledge the fear.
We should then release the fear by getting to know each other and recognizing our own reflection in the other, by opening our hearts and being the unconditional love that we really are.
The program is mainly for young people and teachers and it contains different creative activities to reactivate the Inner Peace and Unconditional Love.