Chen Alon

Chen Alon is an Israeli lecturer, activist, and cofounder of Combatants for Peace. Alon is the Theater Director of the movement. He was nominated, along with Palestinian Combatants for Peace co-founder, Sulaiman Khatib, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Alon served for four years as an officer in the Israeli Defense Force, upon his release he served 11 years as an operations officer in the reserves. Later he became a "refusenik," and co-founded the group "Courage to Refuse," a group of former IDF officers and combat soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories. As a result, he served time in jail. Alon currently works as Theater Director and lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

Childhood Alon's grandfather immigrated to Palestine at the turn of the century because of his Zionist ideals. He was the only member of his family who was not killed in the Holocaust. As a result, Alon grew up with the understanding that Zionism literally saved his family from destruction. for his participation in IDF activities in the West Bank and Gaza. He said he was "sent everywhere and did everything. The most difficult thing were the arrests." At that time he described his position: "We are all front-line combat soldiers, Zionist patriots and willing to defend their country and fight against any real aggression against the state of Israel, but we are not willing to humiliate and starve and expel and repress three million people." Alon said that he had realized, after some incidents during his military service in Bethlehem at the beginning of the second intifada, "that our presence was only to get a few more people killed or wounded, to keep the war going on. The occupation for me is many, many horrible details, of curfews and sieges and children who can't go to school - all these things that make the big picture in the occupied territories 24 hours a day."

Combatants for Peace In 2005, he and other IDF "refuseniks" were approached by a group of Palestinian former fighters. Together they formed the group, Combatants for Peace, a joint, grassroots nonviolence movement, dedicated to ending the Occupation and bringing peace and security to both Israelis and Palestinians. The movement has grown and today has hundreds of members and thousands of supporters. The Combatants speak to nearly 3,000 people per year, hold a joint annual Memorial Day ceremony, which attracts over 4,000 people and is live-screened across the world, run tours in the West Bank, and hold dialogue and reconciliation groups. They also have a theater group, which Alon directs, that uses theater to build bonds and overcome trauma.

The documentary film Disturbing the Peace depicts the founding of Combatants for Peace, and profiles several of its founding members including Alon. This film, directed by Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young, was awarded the first ever Roger Ebert Humanitarian Award in 2016, a recognition for films that exemplify humanity and empathy.

Theatrical work Alon began to study theatre at an acting school after his army service, and was subsequently professionally involved in repertory theatre. An important theatrical influence was the playwright Hanoch Levin. He has introduced his model into Combatants for Peace, which often use theater as a means of nonviolent protest and reconciliation work. Alon has described how the actors confront the guards in this kind of situation by "mirroring how they look" in order to "shoot embarrassment on them".

About the Theatre of the Oppressed, Alon has said, "I think it’s a form of knowledge, which is able to avoid, bypass or subvert obstacles such as the resistance to new ideas, the resistance to feeling for the other or identifying with the other. They are all things that prevent us from being transformed. The Theatre allows us to take an action and to observe ourselves at the same time, to put ourselves in the shoes of the other or to embody another person: I truly believe that these qualities of the Theatre are transformative."