Between the two of them, Tal and Ido Dekkers have translated 2,000 TED Talks into Hebrew. Photo: Courtesy of the Dekkers

The Open Translation Project has a global family of over 18,000 volunteers. But for the Dekkers — living in Sde Warburg, Israel — the OTP family isn’t a figure of speech. They’ve made translating TED Talks into Hebrew a true family affair.

Husband and wife Ido and Tal Dekkers have worked on more than 2,000 translations between them. Ido, the most prolific translator in the OTP program, has brought 1,800 talks into Hebrew and Tal has worked on 200. And while their two daughters, May and Adi, are still improving their English enough to do their own translations, they’ve caught their parents’ TED mania too, and help review their translations. May, who’s older, has also helped her father work on several TED-Ed lessons.

TED-Ed lessons are a particular favorite for the Dekkers. “I like translating everything, but especially TED-Ed lessons,” says Ido. “I think they’re very important, because I’m able to use them [with my daughters].”

In fact, it was his daughters’ education that first inspired Ido to start translating TED Talks in 2009, in hopes of getting both talks and lessons into May and Adi’s classrooms. The girls have introduced many of their teachers to TED, and talks and lessons are now used regularly throughout their school. While some teachers already watched talks on their own, it hadn’t been a part of the classroom experience until the Dekkers advocated for it.

The Dekkers have spread their fandom beyond school as well. “We like to tell everybody about TED,” says Tal. This is important for friends and neighbors, but not so much at work. Tal has a graphic design studio and Ido is a web developer — so they estimate that 90% of their colleagues are already familiar with TED.

They’re a couple who has watched an astonishing number of TED Talks, and the Dekkers call some of the most popular talks of all time their favorites. Topping the list: Sir Ken Robinson’s “How schools kill creativity” and Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My stroke of insight.” Tal also felt hugely inspired recently by Chris Hadfield’s “What I learned from going blind in space.” But for them, the ultimate joy is translating talks that are on-topic for their fields. Tal loves to translate talks on art and design, while Ido says, “I like the technology stuff.”

And the Dekkers hope to someday help translate TED.com pages, so that they are available beyond the English-speaking world. (They’re waiting on the technology to do this bit, and we’re working hard to build it.)

With all the time and dedication that the Dekkers give to the OTP, the question pops to mind: Do they sometimes need to take a break from translating?

Tal says that, on the contrary, especially living in Israel — where the political situation this summer was all-consuming for many — translating TED Talks is a welcome reprieve. “The translating thing is a bit like a pause in our real-life situation,” she says. “It is like a break. We like doing this.”

Trita Parsi spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 in June about the fact that, historically, Israel and Iran haven’t always been at odds. Below he comments on the latest enmity between the two. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

At the UN General Assembly last week, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned the U.S. that they were being fooled by Iranian promises of nuclear concessions in peace talks, calling Iranian president Hasan Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But the real threat, suggests Trita Parsi, isn’t between Iran and the rest of the world but between Israel … and Israel.

Trita Parsi: Iran and Israel: Peace is possible In today’s talk, Parsi explains that despite their seemingly irreconcilable ideological differences, throughout their history both Iran and Israel have forged alliances when it was strategically advantageous. In other words, he says, “Enmity is not inevitable.” Parsi’s talk is especially relevant this week, following the first direct contact between an American president and an Iranian leader in over thirty years — and Israel’s subsequent condemnation of any real negotiation.

In Foreign Affairs last week, Parsi — who is the president of the National Iranian American Council — suggested that Israel should stop being uncompromising and learn to love the U.S.-Iranian peace talks. As he wrote: “Israel should moderate its rhetoric and stop encouraging Congress to undermine diplomacy through additional sanctions.” He suggests that Israel stands to gain much more from cooperation than petulance.

The TED Blog wanted to know what such cooperation would look like for Israel, so we asked Parsi to expand on last week’s article.

First of all, Parsi said over the phone, we wouldn’t see any direct friendly contact between Israel and Iran anytime soon (as he points out in his talk, a strategic partnership between the two in the ’70s was kept a secret), but what is achievable at this moment is reduced hostilities on both sides. On Israel’s part, it could be most helpful, early on, by not being unhelpful. “At the first stage,” says Parsi, “before you can actually create any positive relationship, you have to end the active animosity.”

Second, it’s in everyone’s best interest that Israel be at the diplomatic table rather than commenting on the action from afar, says Parsi. Iran might need Israel’s help to make a deal with the U.S., while Israel should be involved to ensure that it has a say in the agenda. And of course U.S. President Barack Obama, who has a critical friendship with Israel, wouldn’t want to make a deal with Iran that could be deemed anti-Israel. It’s a non-zero-sum game.

Would the U.S. ever actually break from this friendship? Says Parsi, “If Netanyahu adopts a posture in which he is essentially unappeasable and there’s nothing Obama can do to make Netanyahu happy, then at some point the U.S. is going to strike a deal without caring what the Israeli side says.” Though this may seem unlikely, Parsi believes it could happen if the American public is faced with military conflict, even in spite of the longstanding friendship between the U.S. and Israel.

Some, including Netanyahu, might argue that the potential for military confrontation with Iran is precisely why the U.S. should be wary — that the danger of Iran’s nuclear program is too great. Parsi shrugs off these claims, saying that while there is genuine danger in Iran’s program, Netanyahu has been “wildly exaggerating” them. Whatever danger exists, he says, “There’s really no solution that is superior to a diplomatic [one] based on inspections and verification.” Nor does Parsi buy the argument that Israel would seem weak or conciliatory if it stood aside: “The number of unnecessary conflicts that have started because of some weak leader fearing that he’s going to come across as weak is staggering. At this stage, that type of reasoning, which unfortunately does exist, I find unfitting for leaders.”

Eli Beer stands beside one of the “ambucycles” that he and other United Hatzalah EMTs ride. These Israeli volunteers are both Jewish and Muslim and provide medical care no matter what the ethnicity or religion of the patient. Photo: Courtesy of TEDMED

In today’s talk, Eli Beer explains how United Hatzalah, his organization of ambucycle-riding volunteer emergency medical responders, has shaved critical minutes off of the average emergency response time — first in Jerusalem, then throughout Israel, and now in several countries around the world. Eli Beer: The fastest ambulance? A motorcycle

The core mission of United Hatzalah (which is Hebrew for “rescue”) is saving lives. But the organization performs another kind of rescue as well: from the sharp social divisions that so often pervade life in Israel. In United Hatzalah, Jews and Muslims volunteer their services side-by-side, dedicated to the common cause of improving emergency medical care. The organization’s volunteers provide assistance no matter what the nationality, religion or ethnicity of the person in need of help. In this way, United Hatzalah serves as an exemplary model for all of Israeli society. In June, Beer and Murad Alyan, who runs a Muslim unit of United Hatzalah, were awarded with the Goldberg Prize for Peace in the Middle East.

In his talk, Beer discusses the congested roadways that delay ambulances from reaching their destinations. But The Jerusalem Post reports that traffic isn’t the only time concern — in parts of East Jerusalem where tensions are especially high, official Magen David Adom ambulances require police escort to enter. The volunteers of United Hatzalah aren’t bound by this rule, and the organization has also taken care to address safety issues at their root: Resident Muslim volunteers personally introduce Jewish volunteers from outside the area, so that a wide range of United Hatzalah members can become familiar neighborhood fixtures and a welcome sight in the event of emergency.

Ronny Edry: Israel and Iran: A love story? In this same vein of courageous refusal to accept a would-be enemy is Ronny Edry’s Israel loves Iran Facebook campaign, described in his talk from TEDxJaffa. Edry, a graphic designer, inadvertently sparked a wildly popular antiwar social media campaign with a poster that read, “Iranians: We will never bomb your country. We love you.” Soon, thousands of people had created their own posters, sharing messages like “Israel loves Iran,” “Iran loves Israel” and even “Palestine loves Israel.”

Though not administering lifesaving medical care, Edry and those who followed his lead took a determined stand against violence and hatred. As Israelis and Iranians came forth with personal messages of peace, they forged bonds that defy the prevailing adversarial narrative. In a CNN special, Ethan Zuckerman (watch his talk on opening your online world) writes that the campaign’s value is that “it replaces the faces of leaders with the faces of ordinary people.”

Aicha el-Wafi + Phyllis Rodriguez: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship But it’s in the wake of personal loss that the ability to reach across enemy lines has its most poignant power. In a profoundly moving talk, 9/11 healing: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship, two mothers appear together on the TED stage: one whose son was killed in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, and one whose son was sentenced to life in prison for his role in it. Rejecting the easy path of blame and vilification, Phyllis Rodriguez and Aicha el-Wafi recognized a commonality of loss, and built a friendship to guide them on the far more difficult road to understanding.

“We have to try to know other people, the other,” says el-Wafi. “Your heart must be generous. Your mind must be generous. You must be tolerant — and you have to fight against violence.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Today on the TEDGlobal stage, two days before election in Iran, political scientist Trita Parsi argues that the Israeli-Iranian conflict is resolvable because its nature is geopolitical, not ideological. To illustrate, Parsi quotes an Israeli prime minister: “Iran is Israel’s best friend, and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran.” These words were spoken not by pre-Iranian Revolution ministers Ben Gurion or Golda Meir, but by Yitzhak Rabin, in 1987, when Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive and using his worst rhetoric against Israel.

Today, when we hear threats of war and other high rhetoric between Iran and Israel, we think it’s rooted in one of those unresolvable conflicts as old as the region itself. This is simply not true, says Parsi. Jewish and Iranian friendship goes back to 539 BC, when the Iranians liberated the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity. A third of them returned to Palestine to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem — financed by the Persians. A third of those Jews stayed in Babylonia to become today’s Iraqi Jews. And a third migrated to Persia, where they became today’s 25,000 Iranian Jews — the largest population in the Middle East outside Israel.

So where did Rabin’s statement come from? It reflected decades of security and intelligence collaboration between the two states, born out of the perception of common threats: Both of them feared the Soviet Union and strong Arab states such as Egypt and Iraq. And the collaboration was reinforced by Israel’s Periphery Doctrine, Israel’s security strategy of creating a balance of alliances with non-Arab states in its periphery. But the Shah wanted to keep the relationship secret, and Rabin wore a wig whenever he visited Iran in the 1970s.

Did this clandestine cooperation change with the revolution of 1979? Parsi says that in spite of clear ideological enmity, the geopolitical collaboration lived on behind the scenes because those common threats still existed. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Israel, fearing an Iraqi victory, lobbied Washington to sell arms to Iran, climaxing in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

But with the end of the Cold War in 1991 came the end of Iran and Israel’s cold peace, says Parsi. Israel and Iran’s common threats disappeared with the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the weakening Arab states. The balance of power shifted, and Iran and Israel became two of the most powerful states in the region. They began viewing each other as rivals and competitors. This reconfiguration of the geopolitical map is the root of the enmity we see playing out today.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

While Iran reached out hoping to improve relations with the US, the US did not respond, preferring to isolate Iran. It was around this time that Iran began to support Palestinian Islamist groups and opposing the Oslo peace process, believing the US would isolate them regardless of policy. Parsi quotes Martyn Indyk of the Clinton administration as saying the Iranians had not gotten it entirely wrong — the US believed that the more peace between Israel and Palestine, the more Iran would be isolated, and the more isolated Iran became, the more peace there would be.

But even in the worst of times, Parsi notes, all sides have reached out to each other — Netanyahu in 1996 to see if the Periphery Doctrine could be resurrected, and a few years later, Tehran sending a proposal to Washington to see whether relations with Israel could be improved. Both bids were rejected. “All sides have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” says Parsi.

All this is to say that when it served their security interests, Israel and Iran have proven willing to cooperate. More important, geostrategic interests have always prevailed over ideological conflict. This is good news, says Parsi, because it means that neither war nor enmity is a foregone conclusion.

But, Parsi warns, some want war, framing the conflict in an analogy in which Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is Hitler — an analogy Parsi says is aimed at eliminating diplomacy. “When you eliminate diplomacy, you make war inevitable.” But we can place our hope in the fact that this conflict is only a few decades old in a history of 2,500 years. Solutions can be found to a geopolitical conflict. And after all, he says, quoting Rabin, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with your enemies.”

Trita Parsi’s talk is now available for viewing. Watch it on TED.com »

Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry has always loved posting images on Facebook, most of them garnering just a few random likes from his friends. But on March 15, he posted an image that got a different kind of reaction. The image showed him holding his young daughter, an Israeli flag in her hand. In comic book-style bubbles, the text on the poster reads, “Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We [heart] you.”

As Edry explains in today’s talk, filmed at TEDxJaffa, Israel and Iran have been on the brink of war for years. Still, he was shocked at how quickly his message of love made its way around the internet. “Later on in the night, I woke up and went by the computer and I see all these red dots on Facebook. I see many people talking to me, most of them I don’t know,” says Edry. “A few of them were from Iran. In Israel, we don’t talk to people from Iran.”

Messages from other Israelis poured in, requesting that the same poster be made with their image on it. Meanwhile, heartfelt emails from Iran poured in.

“Iranians started to respond with their own posters. They have graphic designers. What? That’s crazy,” jokes Edry. “They’re shy, they don’t want to show their faces, but they want to spread the message. They want to say the same thing. Now it’s communication. It’s a two-way story. It’s Israeli and Iranian sending the same message to each other. We are two people who are supposed to be enemies.”

Soon, CNN picked up Edry’s campaign.

“When you see the Middle East, it is only bad news,” says Edry. “Suddenly there was something happening that was good news … We’re showing a new reality.”

Edry’s poster gave rise to the Facebook groups “Israel Loves Iran” and “Iran Loves Israel.” Similar pages were also created for “Palestine Loves Israel” and “Israel Loves Palestine.” Others embroiled in conflicts across the globe picked up the idea too.

To hear more of the amazing reactions to Edry’s online campaign, watch his talk. Below, see more of the posters, as well as photos of other actions designed to diffuse tensions in Israel through imagery.

Edry’s graphic designer friends set up a shop to create posters for fellow Israelis. Here, a sampling.

Here, some of the images created by Iranians.

Above, images from Edry’s latest — and perhaps bolder — campaign, called “Not ready.”

Edry’s work reminds us a lot of TED Prize winner JR’s “Face to Face,” which he calls “the largest illegal photography exhibition ever.”

In 2007, JR and collaborator Marco shot stunning — and often funny — black and white portraits of Israelis and Palestinians who do the same jobs. Their oversized images mingled together, pasted on the walls that separate Israel from Palestine. JR says that the project came about when he and Marco traveled to the region, examining why the two cultures cannot get along.

“These people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families,” reads the project website. “A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he is endlessly fighting with him.”

The exhibit aimed to give a face to the other side.

In 2011, JR established Inside Out, a global art project that allows anyone around the world to upload images and get large poster-sized print-outs for actions with a social purpose. With Inside Out, JR once again headed to Israel, spending two weeks traveling through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem with a giant photobooth in a mobile truck. Participants stepped into the truck and took portraits. Then, they were able to paste up their posters instantly. Again, the idea of this project — called  “Time is Now, Yalla!” — was to personalize the conflict.

In the port city of Haifa, another initiative brings people together through art. Beit Hagefen, Haifa’s Arab-Jewish Cultural Center, kicked off the Coexistence Walk during their “Festival of Festivals” — a tradition begun in 1993 when Ramadan, Christmas and Hannukah overlapped. Each year (the tradition continues even if the holidays do not coincide), different artists from diverse backgrounds come together over a common theme and use the streets and buildings as canvasses. The idea: to foster unity. Some of these artists come from families with one Jewish and one Arab parent, so these efforts for peace are especially meaningful.

The Festival of Festival attracts 200,000 people annually,  75% of them visitors to the city. This event has become a pinnacle of multiculturalism in the region. The executive director of Beit Hagefen tells The Jerusalem Post, “It’s easier to bring people together around art and culture and not debates.”

These initiatives also remind us of how , in 2005, street artist Banksy made a splash when he headed to the West Bank Barrier. There, he created nine paintings — one showing a window with a scenic mountain in the background and another showing a white horse peaking its head through the wall.