We are trying to understand how young people imagine peace.
Please answer briefly (in two to three sentences) each of the following questions – and give only your personal opinion!
1. What does the word peace mean to you in the context of your own life?
2. What are the main obstacles to peace in the context of your own life?
3. What have you done so far to promote peace in your own country?
4. What can you do in the future to promote peace in your own country?
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(01 - male, Austrian group)
1. The word peace is for me a way to find inner harmony and outer understanding and serenity within my relations with others. Peace is a very big notion; it can be used to define a country, or a simple person. I always lived in relatively peaceful countries, so peace is something very normal for me.
2. Peace is most of the time restrained by the persons I have to deal with and myself. People in general have a tendency to privilege their own interest, which is for me the biggest obstacle to peace; Because someone is more likely to defend his interest whether than someone else’s interest, a lot of people are going to enter in conflict to defend their opinion/interest. This is what happens very often. Human greed is also an obstacle to peace.
3. The only activity I’ve been participating to is MUN (Model United Nations), a simulation of the United Nations in Milan. There, I had the opportunity to represent a country (Ecuador) and right a clause on a special issue (Protecting female labor force in Mexican maquiladoras).
4. In the future, I think that helping to reduce discrepancies in my country could be a solution. In every country, there is always a thing to do. Helping people to find a job, become a social worker, being voluntary... A lot of jobs enable to spread peace or to reduce inequalities.
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(02 - male, Austrian group)
1. Because I never knew war, peace is something very normal for me. I can’t understand the meaning of war, so I don’t understand peace. As for me peace is more like a collective happiness, a global understanding.
2. The human cupidity is one of the main obstacles. Also all the form of extremism is a danger for peace, if anything became extremism this can lead to fanaticism, and fanaticism lead to war. But those obstacles are only what I perceive of the world.
3. I have done nothing, nothing that can change something. When I was younger I made recycled paper in a sort of ecology exhibition I felt very important and helpful. Now I feel very small in front of the world, this kind of stops me in my peace fight.
4. The first thing that we can do for peace is being non-violent. I can help in all the humanitarians’ actions. The power of one is nothing , the power of all is strong.
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(03 - female, Austrian group)
1. The word “peace” means for me to respect people and to have the freedom to say, to think and to do what you want to. It also represents the way of living with each other without fights. Peace has for me almost the same definition as freedom.
2. Sometimes there are some people who are racists and against the immigrants. I think this is the biggest obstacles in this country.
3. I have resolved some conflicts and reacted as one of the students was mobbed.
4. After returning from the camp, I hope that I could continue in supporting peace in our country.
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(04 - male, Austrian group, *non participant*)
1. For me, peace is associated to war. Where there is no war, there is peace. I think peace nowadays is the status of a country and nothing more. Peace nowadays is not meaning enough, it should be about the happiness between one another.
2. Peace is like saying hello to your baker in the morning when you bought your baguette and giving money to the usual beggar going back home. I think peace in the context of my own life is serenity in my neighborhood and in myself. Now the obstacles would be our mood and our little problems in life, like the bill to expensive or even a bad mar. Those events would prevent us from doing a good deed in the day.
3. I think that it is difficult for a teenager to have done some thing at the scale of a country. This is why I don’t consider having done anything for peace AT THIS SCALE of course.
4. I think that it is impossible alone to bring peace for a country. The best way is by not provoking wars and having no army. But for everyone, to be in good conditions with your neighbor. This way the whole country will be at peace.
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(05 - female, Arab Israeli group *non participant*)
1. To meet new friends – Jews and Arabs, to learn together
2. To know much more each about other. To speak the other language so this way it is easier to understand each other.
3. I believe that it's very important for 2 sides to live in peace.
4. I would be a peace maker. Last summer I participated in kids4peace program in Boston and I'm continue this important program this year. I have a lot of Jews and Arab friends. I can speak English, Hebrew and Arabic.
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(06 - female, Austrian group)
1. The people are quiet. My family doesn’t have the entire problem that we have now. To be alone.
2. I am Asperger Autismus. It provokes problems of communication. My brother disturbs me a lot of time because he doesn’t understand my handicap.
3. Until now, nothing. But I go to peacecamp for this reason.
4. To be in an association like peacecamp. Learn how manage the things for to help. Listen and understand the people who suffer and to try to help them.
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(07 – male, Jewish Israeli group)
1. Peace means a life of sharing and living in harmony with the Arab population in our country and around us.
2. The obstacles to peace are the disagreements between our two cultures and our inability to listen to each other.
3. I participated in the “Reaching Out” program that the school organized in the 8th grade. We met with 8th graders from an Arab school and did all kinds of things together in these meeting.
4. I want to continue to meet people my age from all over the world and try to find ways to reach understanding and build friendly relations with them, and especially with the Arabs.
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(08 – male, Jewish Israeli group)
1. The word ‘peace’ means to me the way to an equalitarian society that supports the weak and respects the sides and finds compromises.
2. I believe that the biggest obstacle to peace is the erroneous thinking of the two nations regarding concessions. Peace should be made into the most important thing.
3. I have participated in a school project called “Reaching Out”. The purpose of the project was to put the conflict behind us for a while and promote real peace with Israeli Arabs.
4. I can help influence friends and people around me to accept different people who have different opinions and behave differently. I want to help fight ignorance and help people overcome their fear and hate as a result of lack of understanding.
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(09 – male, Jewish Israeli group)
1. Peace in the context of my own life means to be satisfied with myself, to be a peaceful person and to be aware of my abilities, who I am and who I am not.
2. The main obstacles to peace are my body and soul. Other always want to ‘improve’ my personality, which sometimes may be a good thing, and sometimes may be a bad thing. Sometimes you have to reconcile with the idea that there is good and bad in you.
3. I have never done anything so huge as to promote peace in my country. However, I will argue with people who have racist opinions. The reason that I want to participate in Peace camp is that I haven’t done anything to promote peace yet.
4. After I come back from Peacecamp I hope I will be able to talk about the importance of peace, especially in my country and post writings that support peace on social networks like Facebook, so other kids are exposed to the importance of peace, too.
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(10 – male, Jewish Israeli group)
1. The word ‘peace’ means a relationship of trust and friendship between two people, groups or states.
2. The main obstacles to peace are ego, the fact that people care more about themselves than about the lives of other people. The second obstacle is that people have different opinions and often disagree.
3. When I see a person with a right-wing orientation, I try to convince him by explaining my point of view.
4. In the future I could share my knowledge of the camp with other people and they to affect their way of thinking and maybe they will think differently about the situation in our region.
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(11 – male, Jewish Israeli group)
1. Peace means war and conflict to me. We talk a lot about peace at home and I hear many opinions. It helps me understand that there is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
2. The obstacles to peace are that in war people think that there is a wrong and a right side. If people were able to see the point of view of the other side, things would be better.
3. In the 8th grade I participated in a program alled “Reaching Out”. All the students of the 8th grade in our school met with 8th grade students from an Arabic school in our neighborhood. In addition, I play soccer with an Arab boy on my team and we get along very well.
4. I think it is important to educate and incorporate Arabs in society so that they become part of our country as equals. They are similar to us, the only difference between us is religion.
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(12 – female, Jewish Israeli group)
1. The word ‘peace’ means to me the possibility to sleep without worrying about wars and murder. “Peace” means stopping the hate in Israel and stopping the terror.
2. The main obstacles to peace are the inability of Jews and Arabs to listen to each other and ccoperate.
3. Till now I joined “Reaching Out”, a project whose purpose is to establish contact between Jewish kids from our school and Arab kids from a school in a village nearby. In addition, I went on a trip in the desert with a Druze family.
4. I would like to continue to work on better relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel.
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(13 – female, Jewish Israeli group)
1. Peace means a world without racism or war. Peace means that we listen to each other without yelling at each other straight away.
2. People don’t listen to each other and only thing that their own opinion matters. They don’t realize that they may have the same goals as the other side, because they don’t listen.
3. I participated in a special project last year, called ‘Reaching Out’. We met with Arab 8th graders from a school in a village nearby. We met 4 or 5 times and did all kinds of things together. At the end of the project we put on a play together.
4. I want to help the world understand that we can choose differently. I want to teach the next generation to make different choices.
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(14 – female, Jewish Israeli group *non participant*)
1. Peace means interactin with other people from other cultures and living together in harmony.
2. People aren’t open to toerh opinions and points of view of the other side. They just don’t listen to others.
3. In the 8th grade our grade level participated in “Reaching Out”. A program that brings Jewish and Arab students together in 6 meetings.
4. I intend to participate in demonstrations and movements that promote peace and will continue to educate the children that I am responsible for in the youth movement to the idea of peace.
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(15 – male, Arab Israeli group)
1. the word peace mean to me a lot of things like peace is freedom , peace is love , peace is something we must to go on with it like to learn things about the other side and to learn how to deal with them ! And peace will come when the tow sides will understand the problem in dealing with the other side !
2. the main obstacles to peace in the context of my life is that the other side don't listen to us and he not interested to understand our problem with them ! And they just want to be alone without other people in their land !
3. I have done a lot of things like I go with some friends to Jewish places and we trying to explain to them that we can live together and we can to be friends.
4. I will do a lot of things like I will make posters with Phrases aimed at peace and I will make a groups that aimed at peace and I will do other things.
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(16 – female, Arab Israeli group)
1. Peace means to me, to live in harmony with my environment, which to me that means to live my daily life in a state of blending with my fellow citizens. It means that I feel that I should be able to live my life freely. It means that I should be privileged to the same privileges that my fellow citizens enjoy, and It means that I should not have to worry of being killed by terrorist and pass by checkpoints whenever i want to visit my friends in the west bank which is just ten minutes away from my home. It means that though I must live in government laws and regulations that still I should be allowed to live in harmony with nature as best that I can. Peace is so much more than just agreeing not to hurt each other. It is a state where our hearts, minds, and bodies exist in harmony together.
2. The main obstacles to peace in the context of my own life is that people are not giving up on things or they're too greedy. people are'nt trying to get to know and meet the other side or sit and talk. people think just because the others are different in color, religion, or from a different country that they're enemies.
3. I have joined a couple of peace peace programs for example perece center for peace, ultimate peace, peace players, and seeds of peace i met new people talked to new people and discovered that even though we are from different counries and believe in different religions we still have a lot in common for example sports, shopping , and more.
4. In my opinion one person can't promote peace alone things cant change from one day to another, but dialogue between people can settle things and promote to peace step by step, and for me the only thing i think i can do is talk to others about the issue and solve problems in a non-violent way.
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(17 – female, Arab Israeli group)
1. The word peace mean to me is freedom and knowing self and then knowing those around you and then knowing and reaching.
2. The peace obstacles its the war its what we watch is the people that hates others.
3. I go to a special school that is arab and jews together i think its a big step of my life.
4. I will help to open minded and i will show the people the good things that every religion can do and to love each other because we are all equal.
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(18 – female, Arab Israeli group)
1. peace for me is living in a quiet and non-violent planet without racism and everybody being equal and having the same rights
2. in my opinon the main obstacles for peace is that people are so stubborn and judgementary that they would'nt even try to talk to the people that different from them for example different in religion, culture, color, and etc.
3. i participated in peace players program and made lots of jewish friends in school
4. one thing i can do to promote peace is to be non-violent and teach that to others, and continue to meet new people with different concepts of life.
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(19 – female, Arab Israeli group)
1. Peace for me is being able to sleep at night having sweet dreams of the future .
2. I believe the obstacles are not being able to forgive or accept.If we accept others as they are and acknowledge their right to be and if we forgive others for what they have done I think then peace and love will prevail .
3. I am in a school that focuses on the idea of co existence and it will be achieved as I said before by forgiveness and acceptance . I try my best to accept those who are different from me .
4. I will condemn any kind of violence and maybe I will organize a group called : "Forgive and Live :"
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(20 – female, Arab Israeli group)
1. Peace… 5 small letters but means much more than this peace is the love in the life it's the happiness that we're chasing for it's the freedom that everyone wish for it's the beauty in this world that everyone hopes to see.
2. There's a lot of obstacles in my own life because I live in Israel we have a conflict between the Arabs and Jews more like a conflict between the Palestinian and the Israelian which is a bad thing because they do not contact with each other, but if they will maybe one day we will get to a one solution.
3. I study in hand in hand school which is a hope for the peace in Israel because Jews and Arabs study and play and live together in the same area (school) and I used to go the YMCA for a peace conversations and making movies for the peace from our own free time.
4. I hope that I will promote in the future a peace foundation that supports peace in Israel and fight for the right things in this world and especially in Israel and maybe one day the world will become as one big and happy family.
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(21 – female, Jewish Israeli group)
1. Peace is a positive word that represents friendship, love and cooperation between two or more parties.
2. The main obstacles to peace are territorial issues and differences in religion and cultures.
3. In the 8th grade I participated in a special program whose aim is to bring Arab students and Jewish students closer together. The program is called "Reaching Out" and all the students at our school participate in it. We met with the Arab students, had classes together and put up a play together.
4. I can organize activities that promote the idea of peace among teenagers, who are the our future, to encourage tolerance and cooperation.
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(22 – male, Arab Israeli group)
1. The word Peace means for me a world without racism or war . peace means that we listen to each other without yelling at each other straight away .
2. I think the main obstacle is the past, very much people are caught in a trap of their own prejudices and traditions .
3. I study in hand in hand school which is a hope for the peace in Israel because jewsh and arabs study and play together in the same school . and I participated in a group of young jews and arabs that’s called “madatsem” .
4. I will to open a group of arabs and jewish sorrows and the aim to put the dispute behind us for a while and promote real peace between arabs and jewish in Israel . ___________________________________________________________
(23 – male, Arab Israeli group)
1. I think peace it’s the happiness and calm and quiet peaceful the we wants to see. Peace is the love in this world and no one really knows what it is peace unless he felt the ravages of war, it’s the conflict against the war. and a lot of people sees in peace more safe than war.
2. I live in Israel and I don ‘d feel belong and the language that I speak it’s not my first language and all the conflicts between the Arabs and Jews support the obstacles to peace and I hope one day it will over and Israel will become a peaceful place to live in.
3. I study in hand in hand school that supports peace and we learn and live Arabs and Jews together as one nation and I hope that one day the world will become better and a nicer place to live and love in.
4. I hope in the future I will get in to a pace communities’ that supports peace and Arabs and Jews will talk together and try to understand each other because after all we all are humans being . ___________________________________________________________
(24 – male, Arab Israeli group)
1. the word peace mean to me a lot of things, like when two other sides understand each other and they know how to deal with their problems.
2. the main obstacles to peace in the context of my own life is that every nation want their own favor and they want their own land alone without a deferent nation /
3. I did a lot of things… I play soccer and go out with other kids (jwish,arabs…) and I text some jewish teenagers like me.
4.I think I should tell other kids about my school, that arabs and jewish study together… and maybe that will change the idea about the other side.
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(25 – female, Hungarian group)
1. Peace means that I do not have to be afraid, when I am alone in our house at night. And that my parents do not have to worry about my safety, if I stay out later than usual, and vice versa. In a peaceful environment, you will not be insulted in anyway – neither physically, nor verbally.
2. In my opinion, nobody is born to be an absolutely bad and aggressive person. Their environment makes them become one. Childhood, family and financial problems are the most considerable factors.
3. I am too young to do anything significant, but if everyone contributes with little things, we can make a difference. I think that tension between people, even between teenagers can become dangerous and poisonous for their environment, so that’s why I have always tried to be friendly, or at least not to hurt anyone. When I see people I know having a heated argument, I also try and convince them to solve their problem in a peaceful way.
4. I will be trying to preserve peace in my nearest environment and raise my children accordingly.
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