Supporting Israelis and Palestinians
I would like to thank everyone who has reached out to Israelis in the recent period. Several RCers have reached out to me, and it has been a huge contradiction to my distress. It seems that Israelis who identify as leftists have never been so isolated during a war. That you reach out is extremely important and appreciated.
The following is my best thinking so far about the support needed from people in other countries, at this time and in general, and for both Israelis and Palestinians.
The main thing is to stay clear about the big picture. We need you to remember benign reality—that we are all (on both sides) good people, that there is no rational conflict between us, that there is at least one elegant solution to our situation, that we deserve to live and have good lives, that we deserve the love of every human being, that we should trust our thinking. We (Palestinians and Israelis) aren’t easily remembering these things. We are facing a very restimulating emergency. We fear for our lives. That’s why we need you to remember benign reality for us. Our attention is focused on the conflict and the fighting—we need you to keep the wider perspective.
It’s important that you acknowledge how the conflict affects us. However, your perception of us shouldn’t be based on the conflict. It should be based on our relationships and on what you know about human beings. We need your support as humans, not as “sides” of the conflict. “Conflict-based” thinking about our region is common. Many people want to “support” one of the sides of the conflict by giving them resources to “fight back” or “defend themselves,” which usually means enable them to act out of their distress. For example, for many years both U.S. political parties have “supported” Israel the above way, justifying it as “Israel’s right to defend itself.” We have received a lot of funding for our “national security,” which may have kept us “safe” for a while, but it has made it harder to reach peace. We didn’t get contradictions to our distress. We didn’t get support for recovering our intelligence.
Now, at least in big parts of the U.S. left, the “supported” side has changed to the Palestinians, but the kind of “support” has remained the same. Online discussions have called for the U.S. government to help the Palestinians. However, when asked about the immorality of Palestinian terrorism, people say things like, “As long as they are the main victims of the conflict, we don’t care about their morality,” “As long as Israel is the ‘overdog,’ we don’t care about Israeli suffering.” This “support” leaves the Palestinians with their distresses and without any real support.
The above is thinking about the people who live here only in the context of the conflict. It is thinking about us as “victims,” “aggressors,” “overdog,” “underdog,” “endangered,” “dangerous,” and so on. It is seeing us through the roles we play, or are momentarily playing, in the conflict—not as the full human beings we are. These are exactly the distress recordings that we, Israelis and Palestinians, carry about each other (and about some groups in our own nations). And these recordings are probably the reason why the conflict is still going on. To end the conflict, we need a contradiction [to distress], and that’s why we need you to think about all of us as humans, which seems easier for you than it is for us.
So please think about our region as human based rather than conflict based. Focus on what you know about human beings and not on your understanding of the conflict. Put every aspect of the conflict in a human context. Imagine a Middle East without conflict, rather than as just post-conflict.
You might find the following direction useful: “Maybe I don’t need to understand the conflict at all to do the right thing about Palestine and Israel. Maybe what I know about human beings is enough. What would it be like if I were to completely give up trying to make sense of the conflict?” At the same time, good thinking about the conflict is needed, especially if you live in a country that has a significant influence on the Middle East. We do need your thinking, and you should trust your thinking. The point of the direction is that any confusion about the Israel-Palestine situation should not prevent you from supporting people of both nations.
A final note: many of you come from countries with deep imperialist and colonialist oppressor patterns. The “big picture” I’m asking you for is not about what should happen in this region and what is best for the people here. This is for us—Palestinians and Israelis—to decide. What we need from you is a clear picture of reality—of who we really are, who our “enemies” really are, and the wide range of possibilities and options we have to choose from.
Thank you for reading this. Shabbat Shalom.
Israel
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of Jews
(Present Time 204, July 2021)