For the past few months or perhaps years, depending on how you count, I’ve been bushwhacking my way off the beaten path of contemporary Jewish discourse.

The familiar responses never sat right with me. Diaspora should not be a choice between ever-expanding boundaries around Orthodoxy and slow attrition over generations. Israel-Palestine should not be a choice between moral compromise and irrelevance. And rising antisemitism feels driven as much by ignorance and misunderstanding as by hatred itself.

Years ago, I created my own online community for discussing Israel-Palestine, focused on finding areas of agreement and connecting Palestinians and Jews in meaningful ways. I had been following the repeated diplomatic failures of the two-state solution. Again and again, I heard some version of the same idea: maybe coexistence was possible, but not friendship.

I kept wondering: could we actually come to want each other?

In New York City, this was real. Groups that were enemies in their home countries found an anchor of common ground here. People walked through each other’s neighborhoods, ate at each other’s restaurants, talked about each other’s cultures, and felt something begin to open. There was no holy site to own. We were simply jumbled together and left to discover what was possible.

It is often taken as a given that this could not happen at scale in Israel and that the culture is different, the violence too deep, the history too heavy. The conclusion, from many directions, is that Israelis and Palestinians would never come to want each other.

And yet, I later found examples of former enemies who came to want each other—some of them quite striking.

Long before modern diplomacy, a group of nations that had been mortal foes found a way to live together that went beyond mere coexistence. They built a confederation that endured for centuries and grew powerful, which still exists today—yet is rarely part of our conversation.

It is called the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy and is in eastern North America. I had heard of it, but had not known this.

What struck me first was that this was something people were passionate about, not as a quiet arrangement to keep the peace, but as something alive with its own energy. It had roots. It had tradition.

It preserved the integrity of its member nations and, as I would learn, their religions. Christians could be part of it and eventually were. Jews might have been, in significant numbers, had history gone differently. The Haudenosaunee have a long tradition of adopting and embracing people fleeing persecution, like the Tuscarora, who joined as their sixth nation.

They built in protection of minorities on purpose. Their Grand Council includes representatives of each of the nations, with all fifty rotiyanershon—commonly translated as chiefs, but more like senators—required to reach unanimous agreement before proceeding. Even the smallest nation could not simply be overridden.

Women were represented from the beginning, arguably more strongly in some respects than they are in Western democracies today. Except for one royaner called the Thadadaho, each royaner, or male senator, has a corresponding yakoyaner, or female elector, making forty-nine yakoyaners. Based on the premise that those who nurture the next generation are best suited to select the nation’s representatives, a yakoyaner is chosen by senior women.

Both rotiyanershon and yakoyaners serve for life and are usually groomed for their roles within a lineage. Members of each body can be removed by the other for improper conduct, including placing factional loyalty above service to the Confederacy as a whole.

Discussions of democracy in the Middle East generally assume that elections are the gold standard, that majorities override minorities in politics, that hereditary power should be broken, and that gender equality means structurally identical representation of women and men. Here is a living system—older than almost any Western one—that operates on none of these assumptions, built around an intergenerational time horizon more familiar to the Levant than to modern Western politics.

The Haudenosaunee founding framework is not just a system of governance but the process that incubates and sustains it, beginning with the individual. Applied to the Levant, with the premise that Israelis and Palestinians should come to want each other, it would point toward an eventual federation or confederation.

Israeli-Palestinian federalism is an active area of discussion. Organizations like Federal Forum have gathered many such proposals and continue to invite new ones. These plans—including one I helped develop—still often reflect a shared assumption that political office is a prize to be awarded to a winner, after debate in the Western sense.

I started to notice how differently we are conditioned to approach disagreement.

In the online forums and in discussions about Israel-Palestine in general, people feel the need to win arguments. But persuasion requires a willingness to be persuaded. Without that, conversations harden into factional rallying, shouting matches, and attempts to silence the other side, along with a growing sense that the other group would rather see you disappear. Reassurances that they simply want to live in peace begin to ring hollow.

A political system based on consensus of the good mind calls for a different type of rhetoric. Concerns taken up, rather than dismissed or papered over. Proposals meant to bring the reasonable actors into alignment and that a diverse group of people can own.

Trust can be built over time by addressing less controversial issues first and ensuring the issues that matter most are genuinely resolved. Even those who initially seem unreasonable often become more reasonable as the field of consensus is explored and expanded.

This does not eliminate conflict, individuals unwilling to engage, or irrational or eliminationist actors. But it changes what the system is designed to do with them. Over time, the goal can shift from winning the argument for one’s faction to remaining in relationship.

When one person holds to this approach in as heated a context as Israel-Palestine, through the most devastating news cycles, it can build unique bridges and reveal new angles. I know this because I have tried. Many, if not most, of the bridges I built survived 10/7 and the devastation of Gaza.

It is not appeasement, because it is not based on capture by the powerful and because the consensus principle stops existential threats in their tracks. It should not be mistaken for weakness, even if it is sometimes perceived that way. It can be criticized for the implications of individual positions, but taken as a whole, it is an expression of good faith. It is a beginning.

In a group, the consensus-based approach leads to a merging of minds. The traditional Haudenosaunee Confederacy has no political parties and no formal opposition factions. Structurally, rotiyanershon and yakoyaners are not required to compete with others to remain in their roles. Competition for these roles means individuals within the Confederacy they would not support, when their responsibilities are to support the whole Confederacy.

The tradition says that Tekanawita, the Peacemaker who brought the original Haudenosaunee nations together, had an even grander vision:

It is peace that will unite all of the people, indeed it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means there will be unity.

It is peace that will unite all of the people, indeed it will be as though they have but one mind, and they are a single person with only one body and one head and one life, which means there will be unity.

Source: Skaniatariio John Arthur Gibson’s 1912 version of the Great Law of Peace, translated by Hanni Woodbury and Reg Henry, excerpted in Kayanesenh Paul Williams’ Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace, University of Manitoba Press, 2018.

To me, this evokes a more precise earthly reflection of our own Jewish cosmology built around one God. I do not mean to equate these traditions. But the resonance is there.

One God, a heaven with one mind, was revolutionary in its time. There were no divine rivalries as ancient Greek religion had, leading to difficult situations about which deities to appease. The principles were clearer and in greater harmony with the world—to name one, no sacrificing children as the Moabite king Mesha did, because their lives in covenant with God were the true offering.

In Hellenistic and Roman times, this distinctiveness was palpable and compelling. Jews may have lost Judea, but Judaism’s offshoots eventually won Rome and later Arabia. Monotheism or at least divine harmony became the default.

The Peacemaker’s work promoting One Mind was continued by the Haudenosaunee. This did not mean a lack of external violence. But it did mean that former enemies could bind themselves into something that lasted.

Without written language or metalwork beyond a bit of copper, the Haudenosaunee carried the vision of One Mind across a large swath of eastern North America. Waves of European disease only galvanized them to press on, to grow faster. Ultimately, it was genocide and forcible assimilation that interrupted the spread of One Mind.

Although Jews and other Abrahamic monotheists believe there is one mind in heaven, we do not have one mind on earth. Our present-day conflicts over land sovereignty lose the plot—land stewardship—and in doing so, diminish ourselves and the whole Abrahamic tradition. These conflicts on earth have begun to echo as conflicts about heaven.

If we wanted, we could promote One Mind on earth, with a confidence we once knew. The Peacemaker’s torch is still lit, thanks to the Haudenosaunee, and it needs more carriers.

Full Levantine peace will likely take generations. But the soil for it can be tended. The roots of the Tree of Peace remain, said to extend outward in all directions for those willing to follow them to their source.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)