Real peace in the Middle East must include teaching Israeli And Arab children the importance of tolerance and mutual understanding. Two women from Michigan recently launched a campaign to accomplish this lofty goal.

 Molly Resnick and Janet Aronoff have established an organization called "Mothers Against Teaching Children to Kill and Hate," or MATCKH, on a shoestring budget, and with a small corps of volunteers.

 This past summer, these concerned mothers traveled to Jewish summer camps throughout the country. They asked the campers to write letters to Palestinian leaders, urging them to stop using anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate material in Palestinian schools. Sadly, hateful propaganda is rife in the instructional materials used by these schools. The official textbooks used in the Palestinian authority school system portray Jews as evil murderers, describe the Holocaust as a hoax, glorify suicide bombers, generally incite children to take part in jihad, the Islamic holy war against Israel.

The letters that Jewish campers wrote appeal for peace and understanding, and for an end to bigotry and violence. They beseech Palestinian leaders to teach the next generation of children to reject hatred and killing. 

The MATCKH activists have knitted the children’s letters into huge "peace quilts" that have been displayed in various communities. During Sukkot, they were mounted on the walls of a sukkah named "Sukkat Shalom," at the Manhattan Day School, one of New York City’s largest Jewish schools. The quilt inspired these students to write their own "peace letters" to the Palestinian leadership, and those letters will soon be made into another peace quilt.