Meditations on Violence

Profile: Aliza Becker & Saffiya Shillo

Our guest speakers on Monday, December 15, 2003 were Aliza Becker & Saffiya Shillo.  In May of 2001, Aliza Becker and Saffiya Shillo co-authored a Declaration of Peace which was signed by American Palestinians and Jews and published in major Jewish and Arab newspapers in Chicago. They are both Chicagoans deeply involved in creating and sustaining dialogues towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

Saffiya Shillo's lifelong involvement with the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict has culminated within the last three years to intensive Palestinian/Jewish dialogue on the prospects for peace in the Middle East. In July of 2003, she worked as a facilitator of Hands of Peace (a sister organization of Seeds of Peace) bridging the gap of humanity and fostering coexistence between Israeli and Palestinian youth participants. She presents and organizes successful dialogue groups between Palestinian and Jewish young people and adults in the Chicago area. Shillo is a lifelong resident of Chicago who also lived in Ramallah for three years. Currently, she serves on the Executive Board of the Palestinian American Women's Society in Chicago and is also a member of the Board of Directors of Arab American Family Services, a social service agency providing for Chicago's Arab and immigrant communities.

Aliza Becker is the Executive Director and a founding member of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. Brit Tzedek is a national organization of 12,000 American Jews deeply committed to Israel's well-being through the achievement of a negotiated settlement to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is the author of Citizenship Now: A Guide for Naturalization (Contemporary Books, 1995). Becker comes from a long family line of activists in the Labor Zionist movement hailing back to the early 1900s, and many of them live in Israel. Concern for the welfare of her large Israeli family led her to found the Chicago-based Jewish Peace Forum in the Fall of 2000.