08 December 2010

Seeds of Peace Take Root in This Friendship

By Wendy Grossman
Special Correspondent

Washington — When Joseph Katona and Omar Dreidi first met, they hated each other.

“We were fighting over the same girl,” Katona says.

In summer 2004, the boys were campers at Seeds of Peace — an organization that brings teens from conflict areas around the world to a summer camp to foster trust, understanding and communication.

The Seeds of Peace summer camp is located in the U.S. state of Maine, and the focus is on developing leadership, communication and negotiation skills — critical skills needed for peaceful coexistence. Since 1993, Seeds of Peace has graduated thousands of teenagers from a variety of leadership programs, youth conferences and regional workshops.

When Katona, then a Jewish kid from Los Angeles, and Dreidi, then a Palestinian kid from Ramallah, returned to camp the next summer, they were both annoyed that they were assigned to beds beside each other.

“He gave me a dirty look,” Katona says.

But on a three-day hike, the teens had an intense discussion about peace in the Middle East. Dreidi described what life was like growing up in the West Bank.

“He got really upset,” remembers Katona, now 22. “He said, ‘I’m trying to be tolerant, but people cannot meet me halfway.’ He stormed away and went into the woods. I followed him and that’s when our friendship began.”

When camp was over, the teens spoke regularly on the phone. During a break from school, Katona went to visit Dreidi.

“My father ... was not so keen on me going to a part of the world the State Department had a travel advisory against,” Katona says. “But Omar’s family all said, ‘Come. It’s safe.’”

Katona had travelled to Israel before — but never to the West Bank.

“It’s a big deal,” says Dreidi, now 22. “I sent a lot of e-mails to his parents promising that I’m not going to put Joey in a place where there’s even a 1 percent chance of danger.”

In the end, Katona’s family traveled with him.

“My cousins who live in Israel think I’m the biggest moron and weirdo for wanting to spend time in the West Bank,” Katona says. “I used to teach tennis in South Central [Los Angeles] and heard gunshots in the middle of the day. I felt a lot more unsafe there than I did in Ramallah.”

Katona applied early to the University of Virginia. While at Seeds of Peace, he filmed a video of Dreidi playing soccer and sent it to more than 100 different universities.

Dreidi was accepted by several schools. But his parents told him that even with the partial scholarship he was offered, they couldn’t afford to send him to school in the United States.

Katona thought it was incredibly unfair that he could go to whatever school he wanted and Dreidi couldn’t. On the phone one night, he promised Dreidi he would raise the money to cover the rest of his tuition.

“He said, ‘I’m going to make it happen,’” Dreidi remembers. “I started crying. When he said that, I felt like he was really a true friend to me. He really doesn’t care about where I’m from.”

Dreidi earned a half-scholarship to Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Katona initially estimated that he would have to raise about $10,000 per year. He thought he would ask five families to give $2,000 each.

Unfortunately, he underestimated. And he was shocked to learn that a lot of his Zionist friends and relatives didn’t think sending a Palestinian boy to school in the United States was a high priority in hard economic times. Many didn’t want to contribute.

“People were really apathetic,” he says.

And some doubted Katona would be able to keep his promise to his friend.

“I had no idea how he was going to be able to do it. I thought it was a completely unrealistic goal,” says Katona’s sister, Lindsay, who worked as a camp counselor at Seeds of Peace in 2005, the summer the boys became friends. “One year [of college tuition] seemed unrealistic — let alone four years.”

Katona spoke to officials at Dreidi’s school, and sent tuition money on a rolling basis.

He spoke to friends, family, fellow students and local synagogues. Raising money for Dreidi was like a full-time job, he says. Contributions ranged from $11 from a Fulbright scholar to $5,000 checks.

In the end, Katona raised about $96,000 to cover his friend’s tuition and to help with additional expenses like airline flights and mobile phone bills.

“It was really hard,” Katona says. “But at no point did I think of giving up.”

Throughout college, they talked and texted about professors and coaches and girlfriends.

“Any problem I have, I talk to Joey about it,” Dreidi says. “He’s always there for me. When he took a semester off and went abroad, I felt like it was a year.”

They spent holidays together, and celebrated Katona’s 21st birthday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During Dreidi’s commencement ceremony this spring, the president of the college publically thanked Katona and declared him an honorary graduate of Earlham.

“It was so cool,” Katona said. “I had no idea this was going to happen.”

When the boys were students, they both wanted to live in the same city after graduation. They got their wish.

Now, Katona is working as a litigation paralegal at corporate law firm Covington & Burling in Washington. Dreidi is taking graduate classes at Georgetown University in Washington, studying professional sports management.

He is also working for the Washington Wizards professional basketball team doing research and scouting. In addition, Dreidi spent the last three summers back at Seeds of Peace working as a camp counselor.

“The experience is so intense and emotional and transforming for everybody — campers and staff. It’s a very consuming camp,” says Leslie Lewin, executive director of Seeds of Peace, who was a counselor when Katona and Dreidi were campers. “He wanted to help create this experience for other, younger, new Seeds of Peace participants.”

Inspired by Katona, Dreidi is raising the money for his graduate school tuition himself.

Every few weeks, Katona receives an e-mail from someone inspired by what he did for Dreidi who wants advice on how to do the same thing for another Arab student.

“I never asked him for anything and I owe him for this for the rest of my life,” Dreidi says. “He helped me big time. I don’t know where I would be right now without him. The person I am right now is because of his help.”

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)