Givat Haviva update

This month Givat Haviva Executive Director Yaniv Sagee set out on a challenging trip to the US to recruit supporters and partners for Givat Haviva’s far-reaching efforts to create a Shared Society in Israel. Yaniv writes from there:
“It’s been 20 years since I taught my last history lesson as a teacher at Megiddo High. This week I went back to teach history at the Hebrew Charter High School in California.

Dear Friends and Partners,
Another month passed, in which it seemed like we at Givat Haviva live in two parallel worlds: in the world “outside” the sky is dark – terror and fear along with incitement and reciprocal injury lead to radicalization and mistrust of any Jewish-Arab partnership; in “our world,” here at Givat Haviva, there is very intense activity of partnership and education, Arabic and Hebrew studies, empowerment and development of Arab society, creation and development.

Dear Friends of Givat Haviva,
A surreal reality surrounds our work. On the one hand, the sky is dark – a murderous attack in Tel Aviv was carried out by a neighbor – a resident of one of the communities that is a partner in our efforts to build a shared society in ​​Wadi Ara. The day after the attack, the Israeli Prime Minister incited against the whole of Arab society, and later in the month the Israeli government (through legislation) and the right-wing “Im Tirtzu” movement (through an attempt at “shaming”), pursued a campaign hounding the left-wing organizations and those intellectuals and cultural icons of Israel who do not share the government’s views.

2015 was a confusing year. On the one hand, the difficult and complex reality of relations between Jews and Arabs following escalation of the conflict, legislation in the Knesset, the government’s moves against the Islamic movement, etc., and on the other hand, a flowering and expansion of the range of our activities at Givat Haviva, in both quality and quantity. A year of breakthrough in the scope of our activity and at the same time a year in which the walls in the heart between Israel’s Arabs and Jews grew even higher.