Seeds of Peace

Founder of Seeds of Peace

John Wallach was an award-winning author and journalist. He founded Seeds of Peace in March 1993 to provide an opportunity for the children of war to plant the seeds for a more secure future. The program focuses on Arab and Israeli teenagers from ten nations in the Middle East, but has also brought youngsters from Cyprus, the war-torn Balkans and other regions of conflict to its unique coexistence program.

Seeds of Peace has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine and on ABC, CBS and NBC network programs, including Nightline with Ted Koppel, 60 Minutes with Morley Safer, Sunday Morning, The Today Show, Good Morning America and on CNN, PBS and NPR. From 1997-98, Wallach was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, which published his book The Enemy Has A Face: The Seeds of Peace Experience.

He was a teaching fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation. His awards include honorary doctorate degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Southern Maine; his selection as Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine; a UNESCO Peace Prize awarded in November 2000 and the Legion of Honor presented by His Late Majesty King Hussein of Jordan. In congratulating him, President Clinton said:

"Your commitment to spreading the message of tolerance, justice and human rights has helped so many people. You have indeed planted the seeds for peace in the generation that will one day be leading our world."

From 1968 to 1994, John Wallach was the Foreign Editor of the Hearst Newspapers, which syndicated his articles through The New York Times News Service. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he was seen regularly on PBS' Washington Week in Review, on many CNN programs, on NBC's Meet the Press and other network news shows.

In 1980, he was named the BBC's First Visiting Foreign Affairs Correspondent and was a regular contributor to NPR, BBC and CBC. Among the stories he broke during his journalism career are the Iran-Contra affair, for which he received the National Press Club's highest honor (the Edwin Hood Award), and the CIA's covert mining of Nicaraguan harbors. John Wallach also received the highest diplomatic award from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, two Overseas Press Club awards and the B'nai Brith Humanitarian Award for helping publicize the plight of Soviet dissidents.

He was the founding editor of WE/Mbl, the first independent weekly newspaper in Russia, and was the creator of the Chautauqua Conference on U.S.-Soviet Relations, for which he received the 1991 Medal of Friendship, the highest civilian award, from President Mikhail Gorbachev. President Jimmy Carter also presented him with the Congressional Correspondents Award for his coverage of the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian Camp David Accords.

John Wallach co-authored with his wife, Janet, three books: Arafat: In The Eyes of the Beholder; Still Small Voices and The New Palestinians. The Wallachs have two sons: David, author of Make Love Not War (Little & Brown) and Michael, a graduate of Cornell University and creator of Teaching Peace, a multimedia toolkit for high schools in the Middle East and the developing world.

John Wallach died of non-smokers lung cancer on July 10, 2002. He was 59 years old.

Click here to read a letter from John's son, Michael, about his father.

Click here to read selected speeches from the memorial service for John Wallach held at the United Nations.

Click here to read the Congressional Record tribute to John Wallach from Rep. Joe Knollenberg.