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Honestly, on October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas's horrific assault on Israel, with 1,200 dead, thousands wounded, those rapes, and 251 hostages taken, if I had told you that, in response, almost one year (yes, one year!) later, Gaza itself would lie in utter ruins -- mosques, churches, schools, hospitals all destroyed -- infrastructure bulldozed out of existence (as is also happening on the West Bank), at least 41,000 Palestinians dead (and many more possibly under the rubble of that tiny 25-mile strip of land), god knows how many wounded, and children devastated in too many ways to even imagine, or that the war Israel launched against Hamas in response would now be spreading all too horrifically, thanks to exploding pagers, walkie-talkies, missiles, and bombs, to southern Lebanon, some of which would also be left in "smoldering ruins" (with hundreds, possibly thousands more dead, including once again children), and the possibility that, by the time Helen Benedict's latest piece is posted at TomDispatch, Israel might already have begun an invasion of that region (as it has), or that the war started on October 7th might be threatening to spread to Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and who knows where else in the Middle East, or that the U.S., which has been reinforcing its military personnel in the region (now at almost 50,000) and has an aircraft carrier strike group there, might even join the fighting, or that in those grim 12 months, Israel would have become a pariah state, I doubt you would have believed me for a second.
And yet here we are.
Fortunately, today TomDispatch regular Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University and the author most recently of the novel The Good Deed, offers us voices from Israel and Palestine of a sort we normally don't hear in this all too violent world of ours, Israelis and Palestinians who actually have the urge to break the cycle of revenge and engage in some process of genuine reconciliation. Just having Israelis and Palestinians talking together about how to create a better world is, I think, deeply moving. Tom
"What Should I Do With This Pain?"
Bereaved Israelis and Palestinians Use Their Grief to Advocate for Reconciliation and Peace Together
With the first anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel approaching, the death toll in Gaza climbing to more than 41,500, and Israel inflicting ever more extreme violence on the West Bank and now on Lebanon as well, something very different happened recently in a poky classroom at Columbia University. Two young men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of whom had lost people they deeply loved to the conflict, came to speak not about fear and anger, revenge or oppression, but about reconciliation, friendship, and peace.
One of them was Arab Aramin, a 30-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem whose little sister, Abir, had been shot and killed in front of her school by an Israeli soldier. She was 10 years old.
The other was Yonatan Zeigen, a 36-year-old Israeli who grew up on the Kibbutz Be'eri near the Gaza border, where his mother, the renowned peace activist Vivian Silver was killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Both men are fathers, both thin and lightly bearded, and both are members of the Parents Circle, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of 750 bereaved people working together to end the cycle of revenge that has so scarred their lives. They and other members of the group were touring New York City and the Boston area to introduce the Parents Circle and its philosophy to Americans.
Moving From Anger to Empathy
I went to hear the men speak when they were at Columbia and was surprised to find them tucked away in one of the most remote corners of the university, in perhaps the smallest classroom I've seen in all my decades teaching there. It seemed chillingly symbolic that a group carrying a message of reconciliation in this time of extreme violence and conflict should be relegated to such a hidden and shabby spot.
The visitors began by asking us, the audience of about 20 people, to introduce ourselves. Among us were several Israelis, a few Palestinians, a Jewish law student from Iran, and other students and teachers from a variety of departments around the university, including political science, Middle East studies, and in my case, the Graduate School of Journalism. One man startled us by saying he was a Palestinian who lived in Ireland and had once fought with and killed people for the Irish Republican Army but is now devoted to promoting peace. Like the rest of us, he had come to hear how the speakers had moved from grief and anger to promoting reconciliation and empathy.
"Peace Became Irrelevant"
After the introductions, Zeigen and Aramin, each squashed into one of the old wooden desk chairs cluttering the room, opened by telling their own stories with striking honesty, for it is impossible to talk about reconciliation in a land mired in conflict without also bringing up heartbreak, history, and hate. Zeigen, who wears his hair shorn tight to his head, emphasizing his finely boned face and huge brown eyes, began by describing his mother. "She was a feminist, a peace activist -- she devoted her life to that," he said, his voice instantly sad. "I grew up knowing lots of Palestinians because of her work. She would take us into Gaza to meet her friends. But I knew my Israeli peers did not experience this because of the divisions between our peoples."
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