Under the title "Hope instead of hate", the Peace Academy also held two discussion events with the Middle East reconciliation organization "Combatants for Peace (CfP)" in Rhineland-Palatinate in 2025. Since 2006, CfP has been connecting Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who are seeking a common path to reconciliation and shaping the future in the Middle East - away from violence, discrimination and rejection. In Kaiserslautern on October 11, the Peace Academy worked together with CampusKultur at RPTU and the Protestant church district of Kaiserslautern, which also provided the premises in the "Alte Eintracht". In Mainz, we were guests at the Leibniz Institute of European History in the city center on October 12.

After introductory words from Dr. Gregor Walter-Drop, the managing director of the Peace Academy, and Pastor Andreas Kuntz from the Johanneskirche Landau, who had originally established contact with CfP, Sulaiman Khatib, one of the co-founders of CfP, and the much younger Carly Rosenthal, who is responsible for the organization's public relations work, spoke. Both spoke in a very personal way about their lives, which have taken completely different paths - the son of a very old Palestinian family from the Jerusalem area here and the Australian-born daughter of a family of Holocaust survivors from Hungary there. Against the backdrop of very different but very incisive experiences in their lives, both felt that the conventional conflict narratives of their respective environments were misguided. Both broke out of the dominant thought patterns and met in an organization that takes a completely different approach and whose highest principle is mutual respect and acceptance - not least for the perspective and suffering of others.

There was hardly anyone in the room who was not touched by these stories and the way in which the guests came together. They showed how it is possible to think about the conflict in the Middle East from the perspective of shared humanity in such a different way than we usually hear in Germany and that there are and have always been people there who are prepared to take a completely different path together.

We very much hope to welcome CfP back to Rhineland-Palatinate in 2026 and will let you know in good time!