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Grieving Israelis and Palestinians Offer a Lonely Plea for Peace

11 0
05.10.2024

With the first anniversary of the October 7 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.

“We all need to shape an alternative reality where no one should pay this price. Otherwise, it will happen again and again.”

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.

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.

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.”

Once he was grown, Zeigen became an activist himself, soon moving to Haifa to study law, thinking that would be the best way to help forge peace. But after he married and became a father, while no progress was being made between Israelis and Palestinians, he began to give up. “Peace became irrelevant and I fell into a political coma,” he told us.

He switched from law to social work and had two more children. “I tried to hold onto the fantasy that I could live a normal life.” He did not wake from that political coma until October 7, when his wife told him what was happening. He called his mother at the kibbutz while it was under attack.

“We talked through the morning about how the once celebrated Israeli Army was not coming, a dual experience of knowing something was happening but being unable to understand it, to grasp the scope.” Then he heard shots and screaming through the telephone. “They are in the house,” his mother told him.

“I asked her, what should we do? Keep talking or say goodbye? We decided to say goodbye.” He paused, then told the audience, “I was lucky.” He gestured to two other members of the Parents Circle sitting nearby, Layla Alshekh, a Palestinian, and Robi Damelin, an Israeli, both mothers who lost children to the conflict. “Most of us do not get to say goodbye.”

Zeigen’s own mother was killed in the safe room of her house that day, but he was unable to find out her fate for a long time because the house had been burned down. At one point, she was considered a hostage, then her bones were found and identified and he knew for sure.

“I sat down and said, ‘What now? What should I do with this pain and helplessness? What should all of us do?’ I realized my illusion of safety was gone. That we all need to shape an alternative reality where no one should pay this price. Otherwise, it will happen again and again.”

Aramin, who also wears his hair cut short and has huge brown eyes, spoke next, telling the rapt audience that he was only 13 when his sister died. She had just bought some candy and was standing outside her school when an Israeli border guard shot her with a rubber bullet and killed her.

“She was everything to me, my second mother, even though she was younger, because I was just a stupid, naughty boy,” he said with a sad but wry smile. “I kept going into her room to find her before I remembered she was not there. All I could think about was taking revenge. But I had no gun, so I lied to my parents, stopped going to school, and went to the checkpoint instead to throw stones at Israeli soldiers.”

Luckily for him, a friend of his father saw what he was doing and reported him to his parents. His father sat him down and told him it was time to have a talk.

“I began to learn that if you want to kill yourself, keep hating your enemy. If you want to save yourself, then learn about your enemy.”

Aramin’s father, Bassam Aramin, had himself been arrested for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers when he was 16, and served seven years in an Israeli jail for his actions. But whenever Aramin asked his father how he had been treated in prison, Bassam refused to answer. A founder of Combatants for Peace, which describes itself as “an organization of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants leading a nonviolent struggle against the occupation,” and a member of the Parents Circle himself, Bassam only wanted to talk about peace.

“Abir’s murder could have led me down the easy path of hatred and........

© Common Dreams


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