Michael Lame grew up as an American Jew whose parents had nothing good to say about Arabs. It wasn't until Lame started making friends who were Arabs that he realized Arabs weren't all bad. He became an attorney—a highly paid one at that—and, like most Americans, kept up with the hostilities in the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s.

And then he had a radical idea:  " . . . after 25 years of reading the papers, I got tired of waiting for some great leader to come and save us. The thought occurred to me: What if ordinary people got involved to resolve the conflict? And I just figured I'd commit myself to this nonpartisan approach to conflict resolution. I got into this because no one else was doing it."

So in 1983, Lame gave up his career and started facilitating the first of dozens of seminars in Israel and other places in the Middle East. The goal was to bring opponents together in the same venue and discuss issues. He would moderate the discussions and hope for fruitful results. In time, Lame started his own foundation, The Foundation for Mideast Communication, which fosters these direct face-to-face communication between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the United States and Canada.

It hasn't been an easy journey. Lame soon depleted his savings and went into debt. He was not always welcome where he traveled and was  pelted with stones at a PLO refugee camp He admits, "This is not the kind of work you take up if you're worried about threats." Even when he isn't threatened, he's often not trusted. As a friend pointed out, "He's been accused of being a CIA agent, a PLO agent, a Mossad agent. So far the only thing they've left out is the KGB."

And, aside from people not trusting him, what's the general climate in the Middle East? Lame acknowledges that it's "poisoned by fear, hatred, mistrust, and communication." Hence, his efforts: He's determined to bring people together through his seminars, if for no other reason than nothing else seems to have worked.

"There's plenty of room to argue and to disagree," he maintains, "and you don't even have to be nice about it, but we also have a strong commitment to keep this forum a neutral meeting ground. Lots of people talk in the Middle East, but very few people listen. This meeting place where we can agree to disagree is so important, especially because it could work anywhere.

Update:

In 2009, Lame founded and became the owner and president of Re-Think the Middle East which, similar to its predecessor, promotes new ways of addressing Arab-Israeli, Palestinian-Israeli, and Iranian-Israeli conflicts. He works as a management consultant and organizational trainer throughout the world and has taught at both Columbia University's Business School and UCLA's Graduate School of Management. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.