Eric Yellin, 43, is a member of a group called Other Voice which was formed about a year a go. It’s a group of people from towns in Israel like his – Sederot – and other communities which are close to the border with Gaza. During his time with Other Voice Yellin made contact with Sameh Habeeb, whose work we've featured earlier.

Yellin on his work with Other Voice: 

“This group has been trying to create contacts and dialogue with people in Gaza…The moto of this group is to try to create some kind of relationship and normality with people who are seemingly and supposedly “our enemy”…What we try to do in our dialogue is not to get into an argument about who started or who is right because I think it’s very clear that violence just brings on more violence…I think that part of what we are trying to do is to try to see how even though there may be differences or there may be places where we might find ourselves arguing about political questions, we try to connect to the human question of how to help each other, how to connect through the things that are common…We find that there are many more common points in our lives than things that separate us. Unfortunately a lot of these common things are painful things: our fear, our suffering, our loss of dignity, our problem finding jobs, our problems with educating our kids because they can’t always go to school, and just a lot of uncertainty about our future in general.”

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