LONDON (EJP)--- As an 18-year-old Israeli, it was the hardest decision Noam Shuster could possibly have had to make.

When her army call-up papers came - and with all of her friends preparing to put on the famous green uniform of the Israel Defence Forces - she took the decision to risk massive social stigma and refuse to serve.

Noam didn’t refuse conscription - considered a right of passage to adulthood in Israel - because she was frightened to put herself in the line of fire.

In fact, she had rejected her call-up, so she told an audience in north London last Sunday evening, because she had decided to become a conscientious objector.

Noam, now aged 22, was brought up in the Israeli village of Neve Shalom in the Jerusalem Hills - Israel’s only truly ’mixed’ neighbourhood, where Jews, Christians and Muslims all live, work and socialise together, away from the seperation and segregation so commonly seen in a fiercely divided land.

And, as such, this particular Jewish Israeli was brought up with the cast-iron belief that military force can never solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and only through dialogue and friendship can peace ever be achieved.

Controversy

So controversial was Noam’s decision to refuse to serve that even her Arab best friend from the village, a Christian teenage girl called Ranin Boulos, asked her if she really knew what she was doing.

Noam, however, was adament.

"For me, personally, joining the Army - after so many years of building something special in my village, with my friends - would have been like seeing everything I believed in collapse," Noam told an audience of 60 at a smart little semi-detached house in Hendon, north London.

"When it was time for me to go to the Army, it was Ranin who came to me and she told me: ’Listen, you know what you’re doing, right? All your friends are going to the Army, and every person in the rest of your life will ask you what you did in the Army, where you went in the Army.’ She understood how difficult it was for me to choose a different path, and she knows how difficult it is for me as a Jewish girl, as an Israeli girl. This made me even stronger in making my decision."

As a result of Noam’s decision to refuse conscription, she was eventually allowed to do just a few months of voluntary service and then discharged.

British tour

Her decision, as she explained passionately to the London audience on Sunday, shows in the most explicit way possible how she and her friend, Ranin, are anything but ordinary Israelis.

The pair are in England on a lightning two-week marathon lecture tour sponsored by the British Friends of Neve Shalom in an attempt to explain to anyone who will listen how their unique and extraordinary mini-society works - and how they believe that, at a time of complete deadlock in the Middle East, the type of co-existence their village practices is the best way to ensure peace.

Neve Shalom, where they live, is situated directly between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and is inhabited by 50 families - mixed between Jewish Israeli and Muslim and Christian Israeli Arab - learning, living and coexisting together. For Noam and Ranin, aged 22 and friends since they were small children growing up in Neve Shalom, or Wahat al-Salam as it is known in Arabic, such coexistence is completely natural - and the conflict that exists in the society outside completely alien.

"It is a small village, but we feel that we set an example for a lot of people in Israel and also outside of Israel," Noam, who today works at a Neve Shalom guest house before starting university, said.

"The reality inside the village unfortunately contradicts the reality in the surrounding areas of Israel.

"This is the only place in Israel where Jewish families and Arab families live there by choice. Mostly, there is total segregation between Jews and Arabs."

Realistic dream

Ranin, standing next to Noam, added that the Israeli Government either largely ignores the village, or deliberately drags its feet in funding its development - adding that it is only through foreign donations that it ever got its main road fixed, after several appeals to the country’s leadership.

Yet, this young Christian Arab, who is today a 3rd-year Media Studies and Sociology student at City University in London, is keen to dismiss the main charge levelled at her by the Government, and most Israelis - that she and her friends are idealistic dreamers, or hippies, with no grip on reality.

"We don’t ignore issues - we are very much aware of the political situation around us. We are very much aware of the reality," Ranin said.

"The only difference is that we choose to deal with it differently. We don’t run away from things - we just deal with them. We talk about them, rather than deal with them in a different way - the wrong way."
Neither, as some Israelis charge, does promoting integration like that seen in Neve Shalom mean a loss of identity or assimilation either, Ranin adds.

"We know our identity, we know what religion we practice, and we know our traditions and cultures," she said.

"A lot of people think that: ’Ok, you live in this village, and you forget who you are, you forget your identity, and everything is beautiful, you live happily ever after,’ but it’s not like that at all.

"We all know where we came from - we all know our history, our traditions, our culture, our religion.

"We practise religion freely - but at the same time, we are brought up in a way that doesn’t have to contradict with being part of a different culture, with different traditions, and a different language and religion. And this is how me and Noam grew up in our village."

Improve communication

Noam and Ranin have, for years, worked to try to improve understanding between Israeli’s Jewish community (approximately 80 percent of its six million residents) and its largely impoverished Arab community (20 percent).

Together, the pair have frequently helped to organise workshops bringing Israelis, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs together in a bid to help them understand each other.

It is only through talking, and breaking down prejudices and stereotypes, that the pair believe the conflict will ever be solved.

"The way we grew up makes us see things differently," Noam told the Hendon audience. "So when the media says: ’Where is our partner for peace?’ I say: ’It’s here - just look, and you will find it.’ Sure, we won’t end our sessions signing peace treaties. But we will leave with a much better understanding of each other than ever before.

"And we are young - we are the future decision-makers. Talking and understanding is everything."

While Noam and Ranin believe their tour is vital to promote a better understanding of Israel’s most unique community, it also serves another purpose - raising vital foreign cash for Neve Shalom.

To that end, the pair have endured the kind of punishing lecture circuit which would come straight out of most public speakers’ worst nightmares.

In the last seven days, they have already had high-profile speeches to give in front of liberal and reform Jewish denominations, Amnesty International UK, numerous schools, both state-run and private, the School of African and Oriental Studies, a church, and have also done interviews with regional and local newspapers as well as the BBC. In the coming week, they still have dates with schools in both London and Oxford, another church, and even a reception at the House of Lords.

The funding and publicity drive is crucial because the Israeli Government "hates us," Ranin tells the Hendon audience, and provides little financial help to improve infrastructure.

"But in a way, I like that," she adds.

"It only convinces me even more that we’re right, and we have to carry on doing what we’re doing."