Words, images by Ian Vorster
As Israeli beekeeper Yossi Aud drives toward Agrippas Street from east of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, he says, “I would get afraid of the situation whenever I visited the Arab communities in East Jerusalem.” He was referring to his first few visits from West Jerusalem to train Arab women in the craft of biodynamic beekeeping. “My family was always very angry with me for where I’m going, because they were really afraid for me,” he adds with a chuckle. The laugh seems to echo with a sense of what he has overcome.
Aud is the founder of Bees for Peace. The program puts its shoulder to the wheel to save the global bee population, in the process building bridges between women of different communities, nations and religions. It skews towards connections between people who are inherently different to each other — whether by upbring, background, neighborhood or ethnicity. “We work to create relationships between people who wouldn’t otherwise meet, or who live in opposing conflict zones and who are even hostile to each other.”
Looking east from the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley to the old city of Jerusalem with the Tower of David and the Dome of the Rock in the center.
By braiding together rooftop gardening, beekeeping and boutique honey production in the biodynamic way, Bees for Peace empowers the Arab women of East Jerusalem — of which 75% are unemployed — and elevates their status in families and societies. Aud describes biodynamic beekeeping as the harmonious and wondrous way of living which inspires communities to adopt a hive’s approach and the bee’s behavioral patterns into their own lives. “Anyone who comes in contact with the bee is charmed, and the bees produce abundance and healing in the world, and all their products are healthy and medicinal.”
The biodynamic way teaches that when people learn to work for the bees’ welfare, sensitivity and gentleness is developed, which then translates into daily life. The aim is to minimize stress and allow the bees to develop naturally. Proponents insist that biodynamic beekeepers neither “have” nor “keep” bees but simply provide them with “a clean place to live.” They try to follow the Demeter International Standards of Beekeeping and Hives Products. In this way says Aud, bees teach humans to act for society, to live in co-existence, to let go of stigmas, and to help human beings get closer to themselves, others, the land and the world.
Aud founded Bees for Peace Israel to encourage cooperation between Christians, Muslims and Jews; and Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians. The initiative emphasizes the empowerment of women from traditional homes — whether Muslim, ultra-religious Jewish or other disempowered populations — who usually don’t work outside the home or mingle socially with outsiders.
A young Arab woman explains how the Sinsila Center has developed a seed exchange program that encourages communities to plant and grow together.
“I’m even now sometimes afraid, and Tariq is also afraid of what is going on in there,” adds Aud. Tareq Nassar is Aud’s Arab partner and the founder of the Sinsila Center for Urban Sustainability, a community beekeeping operation in the heart of East Jerusalem. “There is a lot of suspicions, but I always remind myself that for one bad thing done in the dark there are dozens more good things done because we are friendly there, we talk to people, and we get good reactions.”
Sinsila is located on the terraces of the East Jerusalem Central Library and is dedicated to educating, inspiring, and empowering local communities. Its goal is to heal the urban environment by providing local and sustainable solutions. It aims to have a multidimensional approach in order encompass healing of the city, community work, urban planning, economic empowerment, sustainability, and ecology. Sinsila is a community space with a café and numerous courses, cultural events and workshops, and it has a women’s cooperative created around honey and bee-related products, hydroponic gardens, and tours and events that encourage ecotourism.
The first time Aud visited an Arab home to teach the woman of the home hive management, a little boy saw his arrival and yelled out, “Mom, mom, the Jewish man is coming, the Jewish man is coming to our house.” When Aud hosts Arab women at his West Jerusalem home, it is the first time any of them have been in a Jewish household. Bees for Peace engenders never-again opportunities like these.
Aud sums it up, “People tell me sometimes that I am stupid, that I take too much risk. Yes, but I prefer to take a risk, otherwise it’ll never work. So, this is my way, and this is also the way of Tareq.”
October 7
Not every non-profit or ecotourism outfit enjoys the opportunity to have its mission tried by fire quite so acutely as Bees for Peace. It is one thing to work for cooperation between hostile communities in peaceful times, but when HAMAS massacred an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages during its Kubla – Khan – type pillage and plunder raid, the Israeli government declared war on Gaza, and Bees for Peace was put to the test.
At first the operation came to a complete standstill. Tensions between many Arabs and Jews went nuclear. Aud notes, “During the first two months of the war, everything was locked down. We all the time was near the house, going from time to time to the bomb shelter because we have rockets flying around half of the country and to near my house. So, the first two months we actually stopped the life.”
Bees for Peace also had projects that connected Arab villages and Jewish kibbutzim up near the Lebanese border, but northern Israel remains under lockdown. “Until now, they’re not living at home. It’s seven months already. And the forest is burning because of all the fires started by the rockets and bombs and so we don’t know what happened with the bees.” Around 2% of the population or 200,000 people remain evacuated, which equates to roughly 700,000 of the US population.
Yossi Aud.
Return to East Jerusalem
Aud says that during his first few visits back to the Sinsila Center he was always uneasy. “It was not a good feeling.” But when East and West Jerusalem staff were finally able to meet, the relationship slowly began to regenerate. Aud puts it down to the biodynamic way of beekeeping and what that means for them — the hive working well together for the greater good. “There was a lot of suspicions from both sides, but now we are back together. We are feeling good together, we are working together. It really continues.”
According to Aud, who leans left, before the war, Israeli Arabs were invested in Israel’s future. They felt part of what was happening in the nation, including the suffering, the working together for a better future, volunteering, supporting the military, even joining up to fight. Things are more unpredictable now.
The Bees for Peace-Sinsila Center team. Left to right standing: Yossi Aud; Tareq Nassar, Director Sinsila Center, ??. Seated: Maryam Odeh, General Manager; Hanan Amasheh, Plaemaking Project Manager.
The fight for peace
It would be easy to see male bees or drones as parasites. They don’t produce honey. They don’t sting. They don’t protect the colony. The smaller female workers feed and protect them. So, what purpose do they serve?
The primary focus for a drone is to mate with the queen. He leaves the hive when the conditions are just right and waits high above the ground in what beekeepers know as drone congregation areas. When the queen flies into the area and is noticed by a drone there’s a chance of a mating encounter, which is why the males are so pampered. During this activity, hundreds or even thousands of drones will compete to mate with a queen. They don’t fight. They simply see who can fly closest to the queen to mate successfully, of which around 10 to 20 typically are.
Aud says that drones have a very strong job in the hive. Besides fanning it to maintain the optimum temperature they are important for genetic diversity. As he encourages a young female Arab beekeeper to hold her hand still in front of a hive so that a bee can feed on a dab of honey, he says, “We are breaking stereotypes and stigmas with the biodynamic way of beekeeping. The stereotype of what an Arab or Jew is, and the stigma of what role a female plays in her community.” Bees for Peace is teaching Muslims, religious and non-religious Jews, Christians, black and white how to “create goodness in the world” as together they learn and earn from the bees.
The word “earn” is an important part of the equation. “Honey is money” serves as an early catchphrase as each home’s income slowly climbs, but at some point, the husbands become engaged — whether to clean up a rooftop and introduce pots to plant a pollinator garden, or to visit a beekeeping class with his wife, as Bees for Peace toils at the coalface of conflict, more and more men are drawn in, and slowly, with the rise in income comes a sense of fulfillment, purpose, and yes … peace.
See in the gallery below are images from the area around Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehudah Market and the historic Agrippas Street.
The Mahaneh Yehudah Market was established in 1887 by three businessmen – a German protestant and two Jews – and has undergone several rejuvenations since then through both the Ottoman rule and under the British Mandate. The area is a short walk or tram ride from the old city’s Jaffa Gate which is also shown.
Agrippas Street is one of the oldest and busiest Jerusalem byways. It used to be a path that crossed land owned by an Arab who didn’t enjoy the presence of Jews so he tried to prohibit them from using it. Until one night in 1875 when Jews from nearby newly established neighborhoods worked until dawn to turn it a public thoroughfare. The new road became known as BILA – an acronym for the Hebrew phrase “overnight” or “been laiyla.” It was later changed to Agrippas, possibly because 2,000 years previously King Agrippas II paved the city’s streets with marble.
