Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation week

As part of Santa Clara's Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation this week, Len and Libby Traubman are holding a dialogue on campus today. The pair are part of an Israeli-Palestinian discussion group from the Peninsula that has been around since the 90s, where Palestinians and Jews come together at someone's house to talk about the conflict. It's more difficult than it sounds, and the fact that they have been going strong for a decade is a positive sign, even if it is half a world away from Israel.

I bring this up because I met Len and Libby last week at another dialogue meeting -- a San Francisco church hosted two members of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a one-of-its kind half-Jewish, half-Arab village that promotes coexistence between the two sides in Israel. Len and Libby were two of about 25 people in the church who discussed the conflict and the village, which is called the Oasis of Peace in English.

I was at the meeting because I visited the Oasis of Peace in December, which I am currently writing about for my senior journalism capstone. It was pure chance that Len and Libby were going to be at Santa Clara the next week. I talked with them afterward and they were looking forward to coming to campus.

Here is the Web site about their dialogue group: http://traubman.igc.org/global.htm
And the site for the Oasis of Peace: http://nswas.org

— Jeremy Herb