Virtual Peace Education

Overview & Synopsis

This article is based on the convictions that peace education is the basis for any sustainable non-violent relations between parties in a conflict, and that virtual peace education is almost the only feasible way to practise peace education in an open violent conflict as is the current Israeli/Palestinians one. Moreover, virtual peace education has an independent rationale that justifies its merits as an additional model of peace education, in a post-conflict process of healing and among parties in societies torn by rifts and problems. This article includes highlights of the Israeli peace education experience from the early twentieth century until the present stage that is characterized by virtual peace education. It contains a basic taxonomy of virtual learning and virtual peace education that is followed by offering the arguments for and against it as based on the observations of researchers and on concrete occurrences in Israeli/Palestinian experience. The article concludes with a reference to a case study of the higher education course "From war culture to peace education" as elaborated by the author for ODISEAME--the European Middle East Virtual University, and a proposal to establish a virtual international peace school. (Contains 6 notes.)