As teenagers we usually don’t talk about racism as a serious matter, we tell racist jokes almost every day, and see racist graffiti in bus stations. We don’t stop and tell ourselves: “wait… this is wrong.”
On February 5-6 2010, an anti-racism weekend was held by the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and Agial, the Arab section of the movement. Members from all over the country came to the conference at Givat Haviva. Almost 2000 people came – Arabs and Jews – to talk about racism and put all the cards on the table.
We discussed ways to stop racism among other teenagers and talked about how it affected our lives. We put away all of our prejudices and for two days treated each other as equals and saw we could all live together in peace.
One of the main activities in the conference was making a huge “peace dove” by sitting on the grass in the shape of the dove and the word “peace” in Arabic and Hebrew. Then a plane passed by and took a photo of us from the sky.
The conference ended with speeches from the Arab and Jewish teenagers about the experience and with the “Megilat Hashomer,” a text written by the members of the group, which explains racism and suggests how to stop it.
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