20,000 Dialogues

20,000 Dialogues is a nationwide campaign to bring people of different faiths together using films about Muslims to stimulate discussion and promote understanding. It brings the concept of interfaith dialogue into the hands of ordinary people who want to make a positive difference. 20,000 Dialogues is a Unity Production Foundation (UPF) project in cooperation with Connecting Cultures, LLC.

Resource Link: http://www.20000dialogues.org

Ariga

This site provides invaluable information about organizations that promote cooperation between Israelis/Jews/Zionists and Palestinians/Muslims/Arabs. Opened to the public in 1995, Ariga was the first web-based source of news from Israel emphasizing the peace process. Ariga is an open platform, unaffiliated with any specific group.

Resource Link: http://www.ariga.com

Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra

The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra's Klinghoffer Dialogue Project used opera to engage the people of Brooklyn in dialogue on the effects of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians on their community.

Resource Link: http://www.brooklynphilharmonic.org

Building a Common Future: Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue

Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo County, 2001.

An 11-page how-to brochure of principles, rationale, guidelines, and answers to often-asked questions about Sustained Dialogue. This freely downloadable PDF document was prepared by the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo, California, which has been going strong for over a dozen years and has inspired many other Jewish-Palestinian living room dialogues to launch across the country.

Resource Link: http://traubman.igc.org/dialoguehow.pdf

Compassionate Listening Project

The Compassionate Listening Project is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering individuals to heal polarization and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict. The Compassionate Listening Project teaches powerful skills for peacemaking in families, communities, on the job, and in social change work locally and globally. Their curriculum grew out of our many years of reconciliation work on the ground in Israel and Palestine. They adapted their trainings and began to teach in the U.S. in 1999, and now offer trainings and workshops worldwide for everyday peace-building.

Resource Link: http://www.compassionatelistening.org

Dialogue at Washington High

Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group, San Mateo, California, 2007.

This 43-minute DVD shows a Jew and a Palestinian modeling how to connect with the "other" beginning with personal Story. Tenth grade high school students then engage each other in dyads with a new quality of listening, and the diverse youth speak about their new way of communicating. Len and Libby Traubman are distributing DVDs of their films ?“Dialogue at Washington High?” and ?“PEACEMAKERS: Palestinians & Jews Together at Camp?” at no charge to whoever will use them.

Resource Link: http://traubman.igc.org/vidschool.htm

Dialogue, Conflict Resolution, and Change: Arab-Jewish Encounters in Israel

Mohammed Abu-Nimer. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999.

Through a critical examination of Arab and Jewish encounter programs in Israel, the book reviews conflict resolution and intergroup theories and processes which are utilized in dealing with ethnic conflicts and offers a detailed presentation of intervention models applied by various encounter programs to promote dialogue, education for peace, and democracy between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

Discourse Categories in Encounters Between Palestinians and Israelis

Shoshana Steinberg. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. Volume 17, Number 3. March 1, 2004.

The discourse in encounter groups between Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens was analyzed to investigate factors that promoted or hindered understanding between conflict groups. A typology of seven categories, ordered on a scale from monologues that do not meet to affective and cognitive understanding, was used. A histogram presented percents of speech categories per encounter. Qualitative and quantitative methods exposed factors influencing group processes. Changes in speech categories were chaotic, as opposed to linear. Analysis showed an interaction between the pressure of the conflict reality outside and the internal group process. This article addresses the theoretical question of the goal of intergroup encounters.

Resource Link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m13m047642345842/

Face-To-Face at Arm's Length: Conflict Norms and Extra-Group Relations in Grassroots Dialogue Groups

Amy S. Hubbard. Human Organization. Fall 1997, 56:3., 1997.

Research has shown that internal relations in small groups are affected by members' relationship to the external world and the extent to which groups focus their efforts on extra-group relations. This article describes the conflict norms used to manage intra-group relations by members of a grassroots dialogue group in the U.S. whose members - US Jews, Palestinians, and others - came together to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Five Stages of the Public Peace Process

Harold Saunders. Conflict Resolution Center International Newsletter, January 1998, pp 20, 23., 1998.

A two-page essay outlining Harold Saunders' five stages of a public peace process which leads to reconciliation and collaboration. The stages are: deciding to engage, mapping the relationship together, probing the dynamics of the relationship together, experiencing the relationship by thinking together, and acting together.

God & Allah Need to Talk: A Film for Healing and Reconciliation

Ruth Broyde-Sharone, filmmaker.

Following the devastating events of 9/11, filmmaker Ruth Broyde-Sharone saw an urgent need to document the efforts of courageous Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Los Angeles who are determined to bring healing to a fragmented nation. The film illustrates how interfaith dialogue, community outreach, and even dinner conversation can be harnessed to dissolve fear and suspicion and, ultimately, to create a path towards true reconciliation. God/Allah is always talking to us, but are we talking to one another?

Resource Link: http://filmsthatmatter.com/videos.html

Identity and Victimhood

Diane Enns. Questions for Conflict Management Practice Berghof Occasional Paper No. 28.

This paper asks how we can acknowledge and empower victims of ethnopolitical conflict without nurturing an identification with victimhood that could sabotage their own political agency; an important question for both conflict management practice and academic emancipatory discourses. Through a discussion of the merits and limitations of dialogue groups in Israel/Palestine, the author argues that effective and preventive conflict transformation practice needs to develop both psychological and political approaches to help victims move beyond victimhood.

Resource Link: http://www.berghof-center.org/uploads/download/boc28e.pdf

Imagine Coexistence: Restoring Humanity After Violent Ethnic Conflict

Antonia Chayes and Martha L. Minow, Editors. Jossey-Bass, 2003.

In the last decade, the world has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of ethnic conflicts worldwide. But what do nations that have been in bloody conflicts do when the shooting stops? How can people who have been engaged in terrorist genocidal wars ever return to a situation of peaceful coexistence? Imagine Coexistence is a groundbreaking program that grew from the joint initiative and conference sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Harvard University, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Imagine Coexistence seeks to enhance prospects for coexistence and break the destructive cycles of intergroup violence.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787965774.html

Initiatives of Change

Initiatives of Change is an international network open to people of all cultures, nationalities, religions and beliefs, who work towards change, locally and globally, by starting with change in their own lives. Founded in the 1930s as Moral Re-Armament, Initiatives of Change supports such programs as Hope in the Cities and Agenda for Reconciliation.

Resource Link: http://www.initiativesofchange.org

Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy

IMTD was founded in 1992 by Ambassador John W. McDonald and Dr. Louise Diamond. The mission of IMTD is to promote a systems-based approach to peacebuilding and to facilitate the transformation of deep-rooted social conflict through education, conflict resolution training and communication. The Institute is based in Arlington, VA, and has more than 1300 members in 31 countries. IMTD is supported by a wide range of key personnel, associates and interns.

Resource Link: http://www.imtd.org

Interfaith Encounter Association

The Interfaith Encounter Association is dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East through interfaith dialogue and cross-cultural study. We believe that, rather than being a cause of the problem, religion can and should be a source of the solution for conflicts that exist in the region and beyond.

Resource Link: http://www.interfaith-encounter.org

Intergroup Dialogue: Deliberative Democracy in School, College, Community and Workplace

David Schoem and Sylvia Hurtado. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

A comprehensive overview of intergroup dialogue which includes 12 in-depth case studies, critical perspectives and the foundation of dialogue in democratic theory. Each of the case studies, which are drawn from leading organizations in the dialogue field, present the program's rationale, an account of its successes, and evaluation data.

International Institute for Sustained Dialogue

Directed by Harold Saunders and formed in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation, IISD promotes the process of sustained dialogue for transforming racial and ethnic conflicts around the world. Sustained dialogue (SD) is a systematic, interactive, open-ended political process to transform conflictual relationships over time. SD focuses on the dynamics of the relationships that underlie conflict and block its resolution.

Resource Link: http://www.sustaineddialogue.org

Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue E-Newsletter

The Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group.

Len and Libby Traubman keep hundreds of people inspired and updated on Jewish-Palestinian dialogue efforts around the world through their e-newsletter and website.

Resource Link: http://traubman.igc.org/messages.htm

Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group of San Mateo, CA

Len and Libby Traubman have been organizing Jewish-Palestinian dialogue in the San Francisco Bay area for over a decade. Their website features a 'how to' page on initiating Jewish-Palestinian dialogue groups, as well as many great articles and links. The Traubmans have spawned many similar, yet diverse groups in the Bay area, and their ideas have spread into new cities and campuses.

Resource Link: http://traubman.igc.org/dg-prog.htm