The greatest enemy to Hatikva ("The Hope," the name of the Israeli national anthem) is not the Palestinian national anthem. It is despair.

Despair is the most wretched affliction that mankind can experience. For man, especially in his youth, without a spark in his eyes, with no hope in his body and with a tongue spewing hatred, despair is a black hole that swallows all logic and leaves behind an ashen trail of radicalism and extremism.

In 1993, a man who was sick of listening to voices from the insulated American shore stirred from his shell. He decided to do something, and he took an active role in a conflict that was not his own. At his initiative, the expression "education for peace" took the place of national propaganda, which had called upon us to hate some enemy beyond some green line. John Wallach, the late founder of Seeds of Peace, believed with all his heart that "empowering future leaders" is not just another myth or false hope; it's a goal. He believed that youths are granted the power of never-ending curiosity and a desire to feel, to experience. They bring a vital energy that can propel the wheels of history, overthrow authorities, push for equality and totally change the status quo.

John understood the need to encourage future generations and to provide them with the tools to aspire to and achieve justice. His idea was to take young men and women out of areas of conflict and place them in a distant, neutral location where each could recognize the humanity in the other and discover what was hitherto obscured by a cloak of hatred. And so every summer, for 16 years now, young people from around the world who live in a reality of warfare, conflict and hopelessness come together at a typical American summer camp in Maine.

To wake up with an Egyptian, to brush one's teeth with a Moroccan, to eat with a Yemenite, to play Frisbee with an American, to converse with a Palestinian - situations that in our daily lives seem quite surreal, but for one summer in Maine are reality. Living side-by-side, with a mutual understanding that "here is another person," unfamiliar, different, yet worth getting to know and to love. Without fear, without borders and with no enemies. Just kids, pretty faces smiling, wearing green shirts upon which is written "Seeds of Peace."

Seeds of Peace has been my second home for almost six years now. Today, I am 21 years old. I've finished high school and completed my tour of duty in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Yet my longing for the symposiums, the idealism, the activism and, most of all, the hope has brought me back to the organization, this time as a counselor and an educator who can inspire future seeds of peace.

We always regarded Seeds of Peace as a microcosm of the conflict. Typically when a policy changes, thereby affecting the status of the peace process or the situation in the occupied territories, an argument would erupt and spread like a forest fire, until, slowly but surely, the blaze would be quenched by dialogue. During Hanukkah of 2008, we were caught in a real political inferno.

Operation "Cast Lead" received strong support from the general public in Israel. An overwhelming majority of the Jewish population agreed that military action was necessary and this support caused a crisis of confidence in Seeds of Peace.

The national Palestinian identity overcame the political barrier separating the West Bank and Gaza. Their pain had become national and total. And we, in turn, wept over images of broken Gaza; we were angry about the lack of a Palestinian readiness to compromise and we were all filled with confusion.

When the operation ended, we gathered up the broken pieces, raked our garden and contemplated how to re-plant the seeds.

Coping with hopelessness is the greatest crisis that can confront a young man or woman living in the Middle East. For beyond the belief in the strength of the individual to triumph over the demons within lies another vision filled with melancholy: that, in fact, our hands are tied and the gaps before us are simply too vast to bridge. But the way to overcome this crisis is to return to the strength of the youth, a bottomless, renewable supply of hope that can restore self-confidence.

Henry Miller said that "[n]o man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance." These words are a mantra for every man who believes that the right way to overcome obstacles is to give the leaders of the next generation the tools to direct them onto the path of hope, and to discover the spark of leadership that exists within. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry. We need a unique, creative project to emerge, one that teaches young men and women how to fish for themselves. I had such a program tucked away, where it waited for an opportunity to be implemented.

Parallel to the beginning of my work with the young people who participated in the continuing activities of Seeds of Peace in Israel, I began to work with even younger youth at the Jewish Agency's absorption center in Mevasseret Zion. Suddenly, education took hold of my life, and merging the two groups with each other in a unique educational project seemed like a perfectly natural act. On the one hand, first-generation Ethiopian children, charming and full of life, in need of interaction with veteran youth; on the other, a group of youth in need of stimuli for their leadership potential, an educational challenge and a way to give something of their own to others.

Soon the idea crystallized and became a program that we carried out last Passover. Young men and women, members of Seeds of Peace, wearing their green shirts, arrived in Mevasseret Zion in order to brighten up the day for children at the absorption center and to introduce them to universal values such as mutual respect and love of the other. At the six-day camp, activities were planned for 40 youths in two rounds, each lasting three days. They organized and conducted creative, original and engrossing activities on cultural and political issues.

As the one responsible for the project, I got to experience the camp from the inside out, examine the development of the volunteers, and discover how useful we proved as educators. Happily, I discovered that this show of humanity demonstrated the core of the "Seeds" mission: making new friends, ending fear of the other and helping others to also overcome this fear.

The realization that voluntarism was the very essence of our project inspired the youth to an even greater level of achievement. Activities were planned down to the tiniest detail, out of a desire to integrate abstract values and concepts with experiential pursuits. The volunteers understood that the success or failure of the camp depended exclusively on them and the effectiveness of the models they chose to carry out the project. The steering wheel was in their hands, and they navigated safely. They found that what they thought they could do and what they could actually do were two very different things. Each one played his or her part, offered his expertise and provided the group with his own qualities.

The key word here is synergy. A thriving community is more than the sum of its parts: It is a well-oiled machine, with each nut and bolt keeping the whole in smooth working order. Like a family, each person in our organization has a personal responsibility not to fear using his or her best strength, and a collective duty to fit in with the group and influence our way of thinking and how we achieve our goals. Leadership is more than who leads at any given moment; real leadership puts ego aside and grants individuals the power to influence the whole. A real leader knows how to work with his colleagues in order to achieve the best result.

Young people in the Middle East cope with many difficulties, but our greatest obstacle is the lack of faith in our ability to find a solution to the conflict. It is up to us to do whatever we can in order to maintain an environment that is healthy and full of hope, and to help the youth to discover leaders of their own so that they will also believe that they can change the wheels of history.

In Seeds of Peace, youth instruct youth to become leaders and, thereby become leaders themselves - because there is no other choice, because our future is shrouded in doubt, because this is our place in history. Youth are a force of nature and, through them, the hope that dwells in our hearts is kept alive. And despair, well, despair is the real enemy, the only enemy.

Translated from the Hebrew.