An Example of Intercultural Relations Trumping War?

...probably not quite, but see what you think, anyway [with thanks to the Univ. of SoCal Center on  Public Diplomacy's link to http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/nations/israel/2013/01/14/Israel-Arab-belly-dancers-flock-Israeli-festival_8072984.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WhatsNewInPd+%28What%27s+New+in+Public+Diplomacy%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher# ]:

Israel: Arab belly dancers flock to Israeli festival

Running in Eliat Jan. 16-19

14 JANUARY, 17:27

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(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, JANUARY 14 - Proving that art transcends conflicts and boundaries, dancers from Turkey, Egypt and Jordan will participate in the annual International Belly Dance Festival taking place January 16-19 in the Israeli city of Eilat, on the Red Sea.

The festival will feature some 950 dancers from Israel and 30 other countries across the world, Ynetnews.com reported.

Festival organizer and world-renowned belly dancer Orit Maftsir said there had been no cancellations on the part of foreign participants in spite of the recent Israeli military operation in Gaza. The highlight will be the arrival of dancers and teachers from Arab countries ''who are not afraid to come to Israel and vibrate their hips for peace,'' Ynet wrote.

''Beyond the cultural relations the festival creates between the region's countries, it also helps strengthen relations between the people,'' the manager of the Club Hotel chain, which is hosting the festival, told Ynet. (ANSAmed).

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Peace

Last night my husband and I watched the latest "Portlandia" episode. Weird, anything goes, as usual, but seeing the streets and hearing the sounds of the Oregon coastal destination took us happily back to a wonderful Labor Day vacation. Not quite satisfied with a half hour of weirdness, we surfed to our local PBS station, which was re-airing Episode Five: Tradition (1957-1979) of "Broadway: The American Musical" [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/about/episode- descriptions/ ]. Watching the snipets of "West Side Story," "Fiddler on the Roof," "Funny Girl," "Annie," and other shows got me thinking about the beauty and grace of American Jewish culture, about all the gifts with which it has enriched this country and the world. I cried especially hard when Barbara Streisand (Fanny Brice, FG) sang "People" in the foreground, with Omar Sharif (Nick Arnstein, FG) watching her from a distance. By the time Joel Grey was shown singing "Through My Eyes" to his gorilla/true love, mocking Jews in "Cabaret," I was in why-do-we-still-not-have-Middle-East-peace land. Soon thereafter, when Mel Brooks noted that his career has been in large part about making America and the world laugh at Hitler (e.g., "Springtime for Hitler" in "The Producers"), I realized that we won't have the political will to make peace, not war, in the region until we can make sense of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a conundrum that European and American powers enabled as much as Arabs and Israelis. We need to accept these mistakes, laugh at them with sorrow leavened by anger and hope. We need to do this through shared cultural traditions -- poetry, religious rites, singing, dancing, art, fashion -- we need to create joy so powerful that miraculous moments of peaceful coexistence over-power the long years of conflict. Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim figured this out together http://www.knowledge-is-the-beginning.com/Daniel_Barenboim_and_Edward_Said.html ]. Individually, Arabs and Jews who live in the same communities figure this out every day. When we celebrate the shared culture we will show us that Arab-Israeli peace is possible. We need Jews and Arabs to share cultural traditions globally to show our mutual respect and love. We need to create more love to understand and absorb the pain of the Palestinians and the Jews and the Syrians and all the rest. Through our tears, we can learn to laugh, together. I hope. Maybe not in my lifetime, but someday. The hurt, the waste, are just too great.