A 17-year-old Palestinian Israeli citizen named Asel Asleh is shot point blank by an Israeli policeman in an olive grove. He is buried in the green shirt he was wearing when he was killed, emblazoned with a silhouette of three people holding hands, leaving behind them three intertwined olive branches. It is the symbol of Seeds of Peace.
Seeds of Peace is an organization that brings teenagers from conflict regions all over the world to a summer camp in Maine to engage their presupposed enemies in political dialogue and see that they laugh, cry, and love alike. During my summer as a camper at Seeds of Peace in 2004, I was told the story of Asel, one of the most active “Seeds” to have ever graduated the program, and decided to set his favorite poem to music as a tribute. In the summer of 2007, while studying in Israel, I visited the Asleh family to share the music I had written for their son. Though they appreciated my visit, they showed no reaction to my music whatsoever. I left disheartened, but with a new resolve: to figure out how I could effectively use music for the cause of peace.
My opportunity came this summer as I returned to Seeds of Peace as a music counselor. Though the campers who attend arrive with mutually antagonistic identities and histories — indeed, they are carefully selected by their governments for their ability to defend national policy — every camper is welcomed as a new “Seed of Peace.” As Seeds, the campers can engage each other in dialogue about the issues that divide them, as well as develop friendships in the bunks and on the sports-fields, without betraying their identities back home.
Music is a powerful way that campers express their new identity. From the moment they first arrive, they are welcomed with a vibrant celebration of drumming and dancing, which many instinctively join. At the official beginning of camp, each delegation proudly raises its flag and sings its national anthem at the camp gates; but to finish the ceremony, the Seeds of Peace flag is raised and everyone joins hands to sing “I am a Seed of Peace.” As Elizabeth, an American Seed, put it, “Everyone has their national anthem, and they’re really proud of it, so if you sing the Seeds of Peace anthem, then everyone’s proud of the same thing.” When they sing together about their common experience as children of conflict, divisions begin to fade. “It unites us all,” affirmed Cameel, a Palestinian Seed. “Music involves everyone.”
Even for those who feel excluded at camp, music can make remarkable progress. Amir, an Arab citizen of Israel who felt caught in-between the Israeli and Arab spheres, lashed out by making trouble. But when his peers began to help him synchronize his beat with their own in a musical ensemble I led, his behavior changed completely. He began to take pride in the group’s performance as an achievement that belonged not only to others, but to him as well.
It is people’s investment in music that makes it powerful. Asel Asleh’s death meant something completely different to his parents, Palestinians, than it did to me, who had been inspired by him as a Seed of Peace. Moreover, my choral piece was written in a musical language they did not understand. But when music becomes a component of cross-cultural identity formation, it can be used to facilitate the expression of that community and empower its members. Even Seeds from Gaza, the region most hard-hit by recent violence, asked to be taught the Seeds of Peace song, because for them, it was a way to show the rest of camp that they were Seeds too.
As I return to Yale this fall to lead community sings, musical gatherings open to Yale students and New Haven residents, I intend to use music to bring a different group of strangers together. Through music, I hope that they too will be able to express their creativity and positive, communal resolve. Maybe they too will start to perform what we all want to hear: the harmony that will lead to a better world.
Micah Hendler is a junior Music and International Studies major in Calhoun College.
Read Micah Hendler’s article in the Yale Globalist »