Local ‘Woodstock’ aims to unite Israelis, Palestinians for peace
Six activists look to change the conversation and think about a shared future, with three days of music, art and discussion in the desert
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
When the event Woodstock for Peace brings together some 3,500 people on December 26-28 in Shitim, a desert enclave outside Eilat, it will be a gathering of those calling to end the war in Gaza, using art and discussion as their forms of activism.
The three-day confab will include musical performances from artists such as Achinoam Nini, Dana Berger and Yael Deckelbaum, Arab rapper Samekh ‘Saz’ Zakout, Shye Ben Tzur, Omer Goshen, entrepreneur Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed on October 7, violinist Yair Dalal and others.
It will include art activities and yoga classes, as well as ongoing discussion circles about personal expression, ecology, spirituality and peace.
The event, with a website in Hebrew, Arabic and English, is meant for a mixed audience of Arabs and Israelis.
“We know it won’t be evenly split, half Arabs and half Jews,” said Adar Stern, one of the six organizers. “It will be an event that has Palestinians, and we’re making a big effort to make that happen.”
Holding the event in the desert reaches the Bedouin community as well, said fellow organizer Noa Osefya, and at least three Bedouin communities will be represented.
The two women and their fellow organizers are longtime peace activists who have come up against despair and hopelessness in the year-plus since the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and the ongoing war in Gaza.
Stern, a self-described hippie who lives with her partner and young child in Mitzpe Ramon, spoke of her sense of loneliness and anguish in the months since the attack.
She, along with her fellow organizers, sought out a way to return to peace conversations in the wake of the deaths and destruction in both Israeli and Palestinian societies.
A peace rally in early July offered a respite and a return to that world, and pushed Stern to think of a way to bring the peace camp back to its initial goals.
“I didn’t really know much about the original Woodstock, but I liked the idea of using music as a tool against war, and not waiting for the war to be finished and only then talk about peace,” she said.
When she met Noa Osefya and their other fellow organizers, they started talking and thinking and “started to dream,” said Stern.
“I was out of energy by the time I met Adar, and I was angry at my friends and against the narratives and organizations bigger than mine,” said Osefya, who studied at Kibbutz Ketura’s Arava Institute several years ago, where she met and became friends with Arabic speakers, an experience that made her look differently at the idea of a shared future.
“Organizing this event is about my hopes and dreams too, and it’s in my hands; I have some kind of responsibility here,” added Osefya.
Woodstock for Peace will be a place to talk about the system and for changing realities, she said.
As all six organizers have been involved in peace movements and organizations, they knew that many Palestinians wouldn’t feel comfortable coming to an event organized by Israelis.
“Some Israelis call October 7 a kind of Holocaust, and Palestinians think of the last year as the genocide of their nation,” said Stern. “We’re trying to leave both of those narratives behind, and look toward something else.”
Stern said they stopped calling it a hippie gathering, but rather a gathering of the people in this land, both Arabs and Jews, who don’t want to despair.
“It’s all kinds of tribes, it’s like a wedding,” she said, “filling up with people and music, people who want new narratives.”
Stern said she doesn’t care if either Israelis or Palestinians don’t like what she’s doing.
“We’re aware that it challenges a lot of people,” she said. “We’re not scared of the criticism. We want to grow from it. But we’re not free until everyone is free, and we have terrible things happening on both sides.
“We’re doing what we can with our tools,” added Stern. “The effect is waves of hope. People have said to me, ‘I didn’t think we were allowed to use the word ‘peace’ anymore.’ So let’s sit around a campfire and at least talk about it.”
The organizers are raising money through the website to make attendance more affordable — tickets cost NIS 570 ($160) for one adult ticket and NIS 280 (around $78) for a child’s ticket.
Other optional tickets include a donation toward the event to make it accessible to all, said Stern.
