NAZARETH, Israel — Mohammad Darawshe lives just outside Nazareth in Israel. While his town is not under attack, his family has been.
His cousin was among the hundreds killed by Hamas militants at a music festival in southern Israel.
"He was a paramedic and he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Darawshe said, "and it could happen to each and every one of us."
On Wednesday, Darawshe met with President Joe Biden during his visit to Tel Aviv through his work with the U.S. embassy. He told 3News the president shared this about his late cousin: "He said that it seems that he has good blood that allowed him to sacrifice himself just to maintain his humanity. He said you have good blood in the family."
Darawshe is a part of the leadership team at Givat Haviva, a civil society organization working to mend the strained relationship between the Jewish and Arab communities in Israel. And he's doing so with help from Northeast Ohio, traveling to Cleveland once or twice a year to meet with friends and work with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.
"We have a number of very good friends in Cleveland, mostly from the Cleveland Jewish community, that actually do understand the need to build a shared society between Jews and Arabs in Israel," he explained, "and they've been helping us with a number of projects."
Some of those projects include swapping Jewish and Arab teachers and other school-based initiatives, hoping to emphasize a shared homeland.
"For this program actually, we won the UNESCO prize for peace education," Darawshe said. "We pair two classrooms — one Arab, one Jewish — for three years, and they meet for one day every month to study together."
Though his family has lived in Israel for generations, Darawshe admits he's felt afraid and oppressed because of his Palestinian background, as says other Palestinians have been targeted.
"More than 200 people arrested over the last couple weeks, including seven lawyers that just post on their social media just a prayer against the war, and suddenly they get taken and arrested," he told us. "We are an Arab minority living inside the state of Israel, that for the Israeli Jewish public, the majority relate to us as an extension of the Palestinian enemy."
Still, he's hoping for peace, and a final end to the war.
"Living in this kind of situation, what legacy do we leave to this new generation that is emerging right now?" he asks. "It's the same thing that we inherited: We inherited a war zone, and we're going to be giving them the inheritance of another war zone. It's like the failure of a lifetime."
