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Special Guest Anael Harpaz

Special Guest Anael Harpaz, born in S. Africa and living in Israel, Poet, Author of upcoming childrens book on peace and nonviolence. She will share her profound personal journey of transformation and share what she witnessed working with young Israeli and Palestinian women during her time with Creativity For Peace, a camp that immerses young women and girls from Israel/Palestine in sharing, NVC, creative arts, deep expression and understanding.

Anael, In Her Own Words...

Anael Harpaz
I am a person who grew up in a land of separation- South Africa in the fifties, and at the age of seventeen left the apartheid I hated only to go to another country of deep separation, Israel, without even being aware of this separation, because I only knew my narrative as a Jewish child born soon after the Holocaust. I grew up hating Arabs and Germans - had I met any? No, but this was my cultural conditioning!

About twenty years after I had immigrated to Israel, I started on my spiritual path and took part in a workshop on suffering. I had lost a baby and wanted to heal the terrible pain I was feeling. I had no idea that the workshop was taking place in Nablus, in the West bank. For the first time I met Arab people and I met their suffering! This was a life changing moment for me.

I felt that all my life I had been standing on thick glass, I knew what I so deeply believed, who my enemy was and what I was fighting for- in a moment someone dropped a big hammer on the glass....my whole belief system smashed into a million pieces! It took me years of work on myself, and much courage to move from a person full of hate to a peace maker. In 2003 two American friends and I started a peace organisation for teenage girls from Israel and Palestine called Creativity for Peace.

I worked there for nine years and amongst other things facilitated the compassionate dialogue which is part of the program. I learned so much from these courageous young woman who have chosen the path to peace and now being here in the States for a while, where I am on a writers retreat, have come to a place where I see that violence is not only in the war zones in this world. It is in the schools, in poor areas, there is domestic violence, we are showing our children violent movies and computer games where the solutions are to kill each other.

I have written a children's story about Billy Bully....a child who is a bully because all he experiences is violence- hurt people, hurt people....the story is called Billy's Wake Up Dream. It is about his journey of 'waking up' to see that there could be a different reality....that peace starts within....

NOTE: Anael's book has just been accepted into Kickstarter.com so look for it there and support her work! The book will include a "peace pillow" that will be exchanged with children all over the world.

Susan Partnow and The Power of Compassionate Listening, Restorative Circles and Bringing Peace into Everyday Practice.

Susan Partnow is passionately committed to grassroots citizen action,

Susan Partnow peacemaking, dialogue and community building. She facilitates processes that transform conflict and promote co-intelligence - all arising from a deep belief that we can and must 'listen our way to wholeness' and find our essential humanity through connection and dialogue. For decades, Susan has helped create grassroots networks that work collaboratively and compassionately, from the founding of Families for Peace in the early 80's to Global Citizen Journey in 2003. Susan has joined delegations of The Compassionate Listening Project to the Middle East, Peace Trees Vietnam, and the Citizen's Train to Washington D.C. Along with local partners in each country, Susan led Global Citizen Journey's inaugural trip to the creeks area of the Niger Delta where they built friendship, leadership, and the area's first library. Subsequent Journeys included Ghana 2006 where they built an Orphanage/Community Center; Burundi 2008 where GCJ helped a women's' cooperative buy land, seed and tools; and most recently Liberia 2010 and 2011 to launch the Liberia Peacebuilder Initiativeby training a group of extraordinary, diverse Liberian leaders as trainers in Compassionate Listening, Restorative Circles and reconciliation, as well as facilitators of Open Space and World Café. She is currently working on a project to bring Restorative Circles to a women's state prison outside of Seattle as an empowering, transformative way to bring healing and reduce violence in the prison.

http://www.compassionatelistening.org/

http://www.partnowcom.com/

by Andrea Brenneke, Tikkun Magazine, February 1, 2012

On August 30, 2010, a Seattle police officer shot and killed John T. Williams, a First Nations wood carver, while he was walking down a sunny downtown street with the tools of his trade — a piece of wood and a small carving knife. The officer got out of his car, walked toward Mr. Williams with a drawn gun, and yelled three times to “Put the knife down!” Seconds later, he fired four times, killing him. The officer later testified he felt threatened by the knife.

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