Micha Kurz
Micha Kurz
Founder and Director
West J-m coordinator
Micha Kurz was born and raised in Jerusalem. He was active in the National Youth Movement for over ten years, where he trained teenagers to work as leaders in their local communities. He worked extensively on leadership programs with new immigrant communities in Israel, mainly with youth from Ethiopia and the Caucasus. He was one of the first to implement a leadership training curriculum with Bedouin youth. At nineteen, he joined the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) as a combat soldier and attained rank of Master Sergeant. After an honorable discharge from the army he co-founded “Breaking the Silence”, an organization of former Israeli soldiers speaking out about “our service in the Occupied Territories and the moral price, the degradation of spirit, we have had to pay on both societal and personal levels while serving our nation in the Occupied Territories “. He has met with grassroots activists around the world and learned the importance and effectiveness of local community organizing. Traveling in and out of the occupied territories he has begun mapping the vast grassroots social justice and environmental sustainability efforts in and around the Jerusalem area. He believes these grassroots efforts are ultimately linked. He plans to weave a common vision with the communities working on the urgent issues.
Interview on Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/3/israeli_activists_criticize_us_house_for
Interview on GRITtv, with Laura Flanders:
http://blip.tv/file/2828179
“I was brought up to love Jerusalem, I knew the city inside-out like the back of my hand. I would take my youth groups from around the country on tours of the old city, to boast its beauty and my knowledge of it. It wasn’t until my army service that I discovered half a city I knew nothing about! I realize today, I still have much to learn about my home-town and the people who live on the other side of it.”
Jerusalem is not a unified city today, it is quite obviously the opposite. Those who struggle within the political structures and ways of thought are ultimately bound to run into an impossible wall. Those who transcend their dividing differences, to meet at the common grounds of shared values for Human rights, Justice, Social and Environmental Sustainability and a truly unified city, are those who are providing the fertile grounds of possibility. The Israeli and Palestinian grassroots leaders introduce the possibility of Jerusalem at its highest potential, at a moment when it is at its lowest.
Contact:
Phone in Taos NM, U.S.: (1)(575) 779-1302
Po Box 488
Questa N.M., 87556
Phone in Jerusalem, Holy land: (972)(0)547-451-912
