Dear Anthony
Thank you for your moving words .
I am living in Rome already since 2002 , but -maybe you remember -I am israeli and this new war -one in a long line of endless wars - is troubleling me very much ,because it is pushing any real possibility for peace even further away and only increasing the abbiss of hate ,suffering and distruction -on both sides . Well in my country you are not suposed to critizize war when the war is still ongoing and " our boys " are still fighting and defending the space infont of all our "doorsteps" . Well the tunnel buisness is a very frightening one and missiles all hours of the day accompanied by sirens isn't fun ....but these are only the result of a devastating situation which got worse and worse over the years ... and will keep on worsening if things go on the way they do right now . ..... hell ,it seems nobody ever learned from the past ,specially those not who go into politics . Belive me ,I know what I am talking about ,since I am quite a bit older than you and have been through a lot of wars already in Israel ,besides growing up with war tales by my mother -a holocaust survivor . On both sides children are getting traumazzized for life - loosing for ever their so needed childish naivity that everything and everyone is good -now they learn to be suspicious, defiend and they aquire a whole bunch of prejustices ,besides the hate and the suffering . If there would be no war everyone would enjoy peace and happyness . Everyone would be able to go everywhere as he pleases enjoying diffrent countrysides ,diffrent cultures ,diffrent food ,diffrent traditions and everyone would be "richer" in his experiences and grow as a person and have a wider understanding --and at the end even realize that in general there are more things which connect us and are similar than things which divide us . In a war one side always tries to overpower the other --in such an unequal situation real peace can never grow . In hebrew peace is "shalom " ( which is also used as greeting when people meet ) In written hebrew mostly vovels are left out and only consonants are written and when reflecting on the meaning of a word we go to the root letters which in this case are the same as the word complete (shalem) and there is always a connection among words with the same root letters -so : SHALOM -SHALEM tells us that peace is a situation were everything is complete /whole -nothing missing for everyone . ( שלום -shalem / שלם shalom : rootletters ש.ל.ם )
Peace can only be when we all treat everyone as equal and the only way to ashieve this, is through education ........ our job !!!!!
It is quite a pitty we never sat down to talk about this ,because in my school in Jerusalem ( the Adam school on Emek Refaim street ) we did a very sucsessful project together with an arab school from a nearby vilage and I recomend this short video "flowers of hope " which is dedicated to the memory of the arab headmaster ( he was a very couragious man doing this project with us - ---politics ) who had passed away shortly after the conclusion of this video .
Anthony - keep on doing the things you are doing and the way you are doing them --you are a very special person and a great teacher .
thanks for your postscript
Rina