“Today, we are going to be speaking Arabic only – English is banned,” Professor Nasser Isleem tells the 23 students in his beginning Arabic class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He hands out their graded midterm exams.
Shai Tamari, a first-year Rotary World Peace Fellow, gets 94 1/2 points. “There’ll be peace after all in the Middle East,” he jokes. A Jewish man born in Jerusalem, Tamari hopes that by studying global history with a specialization in conflict resolution and Arabic, he’ll be able to help find a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Tamari says he grew up in a society that taught him to feel superior to Palestinians. But as a child, he never understood why he was supposed to feel that way. “I always felt something wasn’t quite kosher to hate Arabs for a reason I didn’t understand,” he says.
It’s 4 p.m. on a Friday. Tamari is pretending to be a conflict consultant advising Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. He stands at a lectern in front of his international conflict management class. The 21 students seated in front of him are his team. Their job is to figure out whether Tamari should advise Haniyeh to persuade Palestinian officials to recognize the state of Israel.
After he gives an overview of the problem, Tamari talks about the obstacles that might color his thinking. “Because I was raised in Israel, I was raised with walls in my head,” he says. “That’s why it’s important for me to talk to people who are not Jewish.”
At 18, Tamari began his mandatory service in the Israeli military. “I wanted to go into it,” he says. He had a hard time adjusting, though. As an only child, just sharing a room with other soldiers was something of a shock. But his eventual disenchantment with the military stemmed from a more serious factor. “I realized I didn’t want to hurt people,” he says. “I don’t have the ability to confront someone with a weapon.”
During his first month in uniform, members of Tamari’s unit were ordered to man a checkpoint just outside their base in the West Bank. They were told to allow all cars to pass. At one point, a car with a Palestinian license plate drove up.
“One of the soldiers from my unit walked to the center of the road, lifted his rifle, and aimed it at the driver,” Tamari says. “The driver slammed on the brakes and stopped a few meters from the soldier. Neither of them spoke. The soldier then lowered his weapon and let the driver resume his journey. As the soldier returned to the side of the road, he wore a grin on his face. What bothered me most was that I did not speak a word. I was shocked. Until that time, I never thought Israeli soldiers abused Palestinians.”
After three years in the army, Tamari became a civilian again, uncertain about what to do next. He moved to Australia and earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism. Halfway through his studies, however, he realized he wanted to change paths. He knew he wanted to work to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2006, he obtained his master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
“I found my passion,” Tamari says. “This is my way of changing a small piece of the world.”
How you can help
Fellows such as Tamari are largely funded by Rotary districts that contribute to the six Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution around the world. Get involved in The Rotary Foundation’s educational programs, or e-mail us for more information.