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october 7
Israel-Palestine History Didn't Begin—or End—on October 7, 2023
We must understand what happened leading up to that nightmarish day and certainly we cannot be blind to has happened since.
Oct 07, 2024
On October 7th, the continuing genocide in Gaza and the massive bombings in Lebanon will likely be ignored by U.S. officials and media outlets as they solemnly commemorate the anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. What they’ll ignore is that the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t begin on October 7th, nor did the suffering end on that day.
October 7th was a horrific day, to be sure, of condemnable acts committed by Hamas against innocents. It is important that the stories of those who were murdered and those taken as hostages be told and that we hear their cries and mourn their loss. And it’s right that Hamas be condemned for the crimes they committed. But history didn’t start on that nightmarish day, and it certainly didn’t end there either.
Since then, from what we know for certain, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, 97,000 wounded, with upwards of 20,000 missing. Entire Palestinian families have been wiped out, neighborhoods leveled, most housing in Gaza has been destroyed along with its schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Aid has been restricted, resulting in deaths from disease, starvation, and malnutrition. And all kinds of psychological disorders have taken hold resulting from prolonged trauma. What Israel has done we are told by respected international agencies is genocide—the destruction of a society, its culture, and well-being. And now the devastation and trauma are being extended to Lebanon.
When America’s political leaders and media commemorate the horror of October 7th, what happened after that day will not be considered. What began on October 8th and continues until now will be ignored. Worse still, those who dare to speak of the tragedy that followed will be denounced for their insensitivity to Jewish suffering. It will be as if the cries of the Israeli victims will drown out those of the Palestinians. One people’s pain will be prioritized over another’s. It’s something that Arabs have come to expect: They are not seen as equal human beings.
When America’s political leaders and media commemorate the horror of October 7th, what happened after that day will not be considered.
To be crude, this is not making a case for Palestinians winning the Victimhood Olympics. Rather it is merely a reminder that Palestinian lives matter as much as Israeli lives and that history didn’t begin or end on October 7th. But this is not the story that will be told on that day, in the U.S. media or in Congress or by the White House. And it’s not the way this story will enter our history books.
It’s often noted that history, as it’s taught in a society, is written by the dominant group. The story that is told is a function of the perspective of the person who’s relating it. It’s how they see it from where they stand, and its meaning is determined by where they choose to start their narrative.
When I was in school, the American history we learned began with Columbus’ “discovery” of what was termed “the New World.” “Indians” were savages and the “3/5ths compromise” was presented as a logical answer to how to count slaves in the census.
The world history we studied was Eurocentric. Islam was a barbaric threat; China was a mere footnote “discovered by Marco Polo”; Genghis Khan was a marauder. And the British and French, we were told, brought civilization to the primitive people of the south and east.
In reality, of course, the “New World” was populated with ancient civilizations that had built magnificent cultures, slavery was a barbaric institution, Islamic civilization taught the West a great deal, Genghis Khan was one of the great conveyors of culture from East to West, and colonialism was an evil that subjugated and exploited and distorted the economic and political development of the conquered nations. But that’s not the story that was taught, because those who wrote the history we learned in school began their story in 1492 and told it from the perspective of Americans or Europeans looking out at the world.
Public opinion in the U.S. is changing with more Americans understanding the Palestinian story and empathizing with their pain. This broader view, however, has not taken hold in official political and media circles.
Back to October 7th. Palestinians have a tragic story to tell of dispossession, displacement, and horrific oppression that began a century ago. But here in the U.S., their story is not the dominant narrative. The nightmare they’ve lived isn’t understood or is outright rejected.
In mid-October 2023 I had an encounter with a senior Biden administration official. After he spoke passionately about October 7th and the trauma it evoked for Jews everywhere, I told him I understood. I noted how my uncle, a U.S. soldier in WWII, told me about what he saw on entering the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. His stories and The Diary of Anne Frank, which I read in high school, helped me understand Jewish trauma and be understanding of their fears. I cautioned him, however, that there was another people who also had a history of trauma and that what Palestinians were seeing play out evoked for them the nightmare of the Nakba. We must, I insisted, be sensitive to the horror and trauma of both peoples. He angrily shot back, dismissing my observation saying that it smacked of “whataboutism.” I was stunned and angry. It was one thing for Israelis to feel that only their suffering matters and that anyone who attempts to distract from that one-sided view is either dismissive of Jewish pain or is defending those who inflict it. It’s quite another for U.S. officials and major media figures to share this view.
Public opinion in the U.S. is changing with more Americans understanding the Palestinian story and empathizing with their pain. This broader view, however, has not taken hold in official political and media circles. They still see history through the eyes of only one side. For them, only Israeli lives and suffering matters and the story of the current tragedy began and ended on October 7th.
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When Peace Is Not an Option: Israel Has Already Surrendered to Its Worst Self
An interview with Israeli academic, left-wing activist and resister Idan Landau, who has been jailed three times in military prison for refusing to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and says that Israel is "a paranoid modern-day Sparta, with ultra-Orthodox, intolerant, and persecutional internal regime.”
Oct 07, 2024
One year after the Hamas’s October 7 terror attacks, and with most of Gaza literally destroyed and the conflict in the Middle East growing, one may wonder what the mood is inside Israel. Israel’s populace has supported the war in Gaza, opposes the two-state solution, but now also seems to offer enthusiastic support for the attacks in Lebanon and even a strike on Iran. In fact, Netanyahu’s popularity has been boosted following the Hezbollah attacks and his Likud party is back at the top of national surveys.
What has happened to Israel? What has happened to the Israeli peace movement? Why is the country on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path? In the interview that follows, Idan Landau sheds light into the current political and social environment inside Israel. Landau is full professor of linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University and writes a political blog (in Hebrew) on Israeli affairs.
C. J. Polychroniou: The October 7 attacks by Hamas’ military wing—the al-Qassam Brigades—and several other Palestinian armed groups shook Israel to its core, and the nature and scope of the operation, called Al-Aqsa Flood, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 1200 people while some 250 were taken as hostages to Gaza prompted the extreme far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu to embark on a maniacal campaign against Gaza which has led so far to a Palestinian death toll that has risen to over 41,000 although the true death toll is undoubtedly much higher. Indeed, the utter destruction of Gaza was a stated objective as Israel’s war cabinet had vowed to wipe Hamas off the earth. Now, it’s been said that the attacks created a strong sense of solidarity among Israelis, with the overwhelming majority supporting the military response against Hamas, including limiting humanitarian aid to Gaza, but that old divisions have returned and that Israeli society is divided about the lessons of October 7. Can you give us a sense of the mood in Israel today, especially since Israel is pressing forward now on two fronts?
Idan Landau: Probably the single most divisive issue in Israel concerns the fate of the hostages. By now it is clear that the military “pressure” (a euphemism for rampant killing of Gazans) not only fails to facilitate the release of the hostages but directly contributes to their death. So the terms of the dilemma have grown more brutal: Are you or aren’t you willing to sacrifice the lives of the Israeli hostages for Netanyahu’s promise of “absolute victory”? Note how the human aspect has been removed; their lives are no longer considered the ultimate end, to which different means may be deployed. Their lives are one more strategic means, along with others, like holding on to the Philadelphi road, or using 2,000 pound bombs, etc. This reflects the increasing dehumanization that affects not just Israel’s victims but Israelis themselves.
Now, the constant demonstrations for the hostages, which attracted hundreds of thousands of Israelis, were a real nuisance to this government. It did and still does everything it can to demonize the demonstrators; they directly target family members of hostages—miserable fathers and mothers and siblings, who have gone through many sleepless nights of anxiety and sorrow—so that police forces and random mobs beat them up on the streets. In this context the new Lebanese/Iranian front really serves Netanyahu perfectly; it silences the protest, quite literally, as the emergency regulations simply prohibit people to gather outside. Even mainstream analysts agree that among Netanyahu’s motives for escalating this never-ending war with ever more new fronts is the forceful pacification of the internal divisions that threaten his coalition.
Israelis are traumatized, exhausted, and feel defenseless more than ever under this state of endless war. That’s exactly when societies cling together and refrain from challenging their most fundamental assumptions.
Regrettably, on the major questions of Israel’s policies there are no serious debates. Was it moral or wise to bomb Lebanese towns, kill around 2,000 Lebanese citizens since Oct. 7, and invade the villages in southern Lebanon? There’s increasing talk now about “a security zone”—the same false idol that persisted between 1982-2000 and which Israel eventually abandoned (tail between legs), and one that will surely be established in the Gaza Strip. There’s absolutely no promise of security in pushing your enemy a few kilometers away from the border if you constantly fuel its hatred. Thus, the most important lesson has not been learned: Military force cannot solve everything. And coming back to your question: Israelis are traumatized, exhausted, and feel defenseless more than ever under this state of endless war. That’s exactly when societies cling together and refrain from challenging their most fundamental assumptions.
C. J. Polychroniou: The situation in the West Bank has deteriorated significantly since the start of the war in Gaza. Settler attacks against Palestinians have increased dramatically and Israel is seizing a record amount of Palestinian land in the West Bank, which is in total violation of international law. Does mainstream Israeli society support what’s happening in the West Bank? Is there any resistance to the settlements in Palestinian territory?
Idan Landau: Here I can say that most Israeli media simply lost interest in these developments; an average Western observer probably knows more about them than an average Israeli. Only if you read Ha’aretz (around 5% exposure) are you exposed to the magnitude of land theft and state-sponsored terror in the West Bank. The media is totally complicit in these crimes, either by ignoring or by normalizing them. Importantly, since Oct. 7, the far right is working very hard to obliterate any distinction between Gaza and the West Bank, between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and erase any imaginable indication that Palestinians are as diverse as any other people. They’re all faceless terrorists, in Rafah or in Tulkarem, no difference. That’s the prevalent outlook. So daily incidents of forced evictions of herder communities or live shootings at unarmed demonstrators simply fall outside of that outlook; Israelis literally can’t see them, they are conceptually unequipped and often informationally deprived of any means to even consider what they think about such matters, let alone come to oppose them. It is really hard to convey how insulated the Israeli mind is, especially during the last year, from any hard evidence that we commit unjustified, unprovoked crimes on a massive scale. I don’t mean to exempt the common Israeli from responsibility. This ignorance is often willed, it is not a passive state, and it requires constant repression of unpleasant facts and findings, that do seep in (we can all watch CNN, we observe the mounting international disgust with our country).
It is really hard to convey how insulated the Israeli mind is, especially during the last year, from any hard evidence that we commit unjustified, unprovoked crimes on a massive scale.
With respect to “resistance,” there is a handful of very small, dedicated groups of activists, practicing so-called “protective presence” in threatened communities in the Jordan valley and South Hebron hills. Their success is real but limited. As to new settlements—I haven’t heard a voice of protest across the entire political spectrum. It’s totally normalized.
C. J. Polychroniou: What is the status of the investigation on the October 7 attacks? The first Israeli military report that was released in early July did not shed much light into the probe other than to say that the military was unprepared for what took place on that date although there are reliable reports that Israel knew of a Hamas’s attack plan over a year ago. But isn’t it true, as was recently reported in The Jerusalem Post, that IDF investigations are never intended to reveal the truth?
Idan Landau: Investigative committees are the ritualistic epilogue of wars in Israel. They reveal a jaw-dropping culture of negligence, arrogance, and typical Israeli dilettantism; they publish tomes full of vital recommendations; and nothing is ever done with them. This culture of self-assurance and lack of real interest in self-improvement is not specific to the army but it is accentuated there. I suspect that decades of fanatical reliance on military force have elevated the myth of “deterrence” to such levels that it is largely immune to evidential refutation. So even though we may see the separate dots of failure, nobody dares to connect them. We’ll see some local, operational “lessons” being drawn and possibly implemented, but the overall complacency (and underestimation of our enemies’ capabilities) will not change much. Keep in mind that there was a thorough investigation after the second Lebanon war (the Vinograd committee). In 2008, the committee published a very critical report on the military conceptions and political decision-making that led to that disastrous failure, and yet, we’ve seen them all over again on Oct. 7.
C. J. Polychroniou: It’s safe to say, as you noted earlier, that the release of the hostages has not been among Netanyahu’s objectives. Yet his popularity has rebounded since the Lebanon attacks and the latest survey found that if elections were held today his Likud Party would win. How do we explain the natural alliance that has been formed between the Israeli right, the messianic lunatics and the ultra-nationalists which essentially work together to prevent the possibility of Israel becoming (again) a liberal democracy?
Idan Landau: Well, you sort of said it yourself—it’s a collaboration that benefits all the parties involved. The far-right extremists advance their “Arabrein” vision of greater Israel; the promoters of the judicial reform get blanket support for their takeover of the judicial system; meanwhile the military industries and their satellites, a huge and ever-growing portion of Israeli economy, enjoy an endless boost; and the ultra-orthodox parties get more and more privileges in education, housing, taxation, etc. Every party in Netanyahu’s coalition, every single member of it, has a lot to lose from its demise, so they all cling to it no matter how terrible the crimes that it commits. The graver the crimes, the greater the price they will face, so obviously, the greater their devotion to its survival. Ultimately, and contrary to many analysts in the West, I don’t think Netanyahu is solely power-driven and only seeks refuge from his trials. I believe he shares the fundamental principles that guide the more outspoken Smotrich—Jewish supremacy, total control over the West Bank, brutal oppression of any Palestinian political leadership. So it’s a natural alliance.
Israel will not necessarily destroy itself, but it may well destroy everything that many people held dear and beautiful in it.
Why does the public keep supporting a government that clearly destroys our lives? Years of racist indoctrination, fueled by constant fear-mongering and demonization of any possible reconciliation with Arab enemies. Compared to those threats—some of which are real but not nearly as existential and fatal as the propaganda machine would have us believe—certain liberal or democratic rights seem like a luxury that are worth sacrificing. Especially if those who suffer the sacrifice happen to be Arabs.
C. J. Polychroniou: Peace has disappeared from Israeli political culture. Why is that?
Idan Landau: This is a natural outcome of all these processes. In addition, there is no real opposition in the Knesset. Outside of the Arab parties, no Jewish party dares to talk about peace. A thorough system of indoctrination has defamed the concept to the level of some despicable conspiracy by Hamas-loving lefties to sell the country to its worst enemies. This is what “peace” has come to mean in the discourse that is constantly nourished by Channel 14 (Israel’s Fox news) and other such outlets. The sad truth is that most Israelis were born into a hopeless political climate where peace is not an option. And it is very hard to imagine a future that was never even presented to you as an option.
Change and hope can only come from the West—the very same West that planted Israel in the Middle East out of colonial interests...
C. J. Polychroniou: In an op-ed that appeared in Haaretz on September 15, iconic Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy posed a challenge to his fellow citizens by stating that “we live in a genocidal reality” and then asked whether Israelis should continue “living in a country that lives on blood.” Is Israel self-destructing?
Idan Landau: I will not venture any prophecies, but Israel has surely gone far enough beyond the semblance of a liberal democracy, and this, I believe, will not change in my lifetime (as I hinted, younger generations are even more militaristic, more despaired, more fanatical). Israel will not necessarily destroy itself, but it may well destroy everything that many people held dear and beautiful in it. It will persist as a paranoid modern-day Sparta, with ultra-Orthodox, intolerant and persecutional internal regime. Change and hope can only come from the West—the very same West that planted Israel in the Middle East out of colonial interests, armed and backed it throughout its military adventures for decades, acquiesced in its illegal expansion, and now faces the catastrophic, global repercussions of its commitment to endless war. Israel will not save itself; it has already surrendered to its worst self.
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Grieving Israelis and Palestinians Offer a Lonely Plea for Peace
The Parents Circle believes that the first step toward ending the cycle of revenge is for both peoples to listen to each other’s stories, learn each other’s language, and come to see one another as the humans we all are.
Oct 05, 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.
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.”
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 Decided to Say Goodbye”
“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.”
“We Are Not Weak People Who Kill”
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 vengeance,” he wrote in an autobiographical essay, “but for me there was no return from dialogue and nonviolence. After all, it was one Israeli soldier who shot my daughter, but 100 former Israeli soldiers who built a garden in her name at the school where she was murdered.”
“My father is my hero,” Aramin told us. “When I said I wanted to kill the soldiers who killed my sister, he told me, ‘We are not weak people who kill. We have strength in other ways.’ But I still needed revenge. So, he said, ‘I understand, but first you must make peace with yourself.'”
Bassam then took his young son with him to Germany, where he had been invited to give a talk. While there, he and Aramin also toured the former Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.
“He wanted to take me out of my stress, but he also wanted me to learn about the narrative of the other side,” Aramin explained to me later.
“I started to cry like crazy for all the people who had died there,” he told us in that classroom. “But then I felt even more confused. I realized I knew nothing about my enemy. All I knew of them was that they had killed my sister, and that they were the soldiers who would storm into my house at five in the morning to harass my father because he had a Palestinian ID and my mother had an Israeli ID, so they were not supposed to be in the same bed.”
His mother was Palestinian, but because she had been born in East Jerusalem, she had a Jerusalem ID that looked Israeli. That was enough to subject them to persecution.
“So, I taught myself Hebrew and 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. I began to lose hate and fear of the other side. But it took me seven years to make peace with myself and to understand that behind every Israeli is a human being.”
Both Aramin and Zeigen agreed that the first step toward ending the cycle of revenge is for Israelis and Palestinians to listen to each other’s stories, learn each other’s language, and come to see one another as the humans we all are.
Listening From the Heart
The Parents Circle conveys this message not only by holding talks like the one at Columbia, but through videos of bereaved people telling their stories, an online guide to conflict resolution, and an educational program aimed at both children and adults called Listening From the Heart. The goal is to move people away from thinking in binary terms of “us versus them,” “victim versus oppressor,” or “right versus wrong” to considering instead how to accept people’s differences while working toward peace.
“Our organization does not advocate a political solution to the conflict,” explained Shiri Ourian, executive director of American Friends of the Parents Circle, who was touring with Aramin and Zeigen. “Our vision is for a reconciliation process to be alongside any political solutions.”
Zeigen elaborated further in a text: “Declaring in advance a solution (one or two states, federation, etc.) is not constructive if there is no ability to reach that solution in total agreement. The point of the Parents Circle is to train both peoples to accept or reach a solution from a place of equity, of acknowledging each other’s narrative, pain, and reasoning, and to be able to build trust and a shared future.”
As one of the organization’s campaigns stated, “If you have lost a family member due to the conflict, and you are also tired of the never-ending cycle of loss of life, we would like to see you with us.”
Banned
At home in Israel, the Parents Circle has been sending bereaved Palestinians and Israelis to talk together in schools for some 20 years. It also runs youth programs and an Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day every spring, which the organization says is the largest such jointly organized peace event in Israel.
These actions have long been controversial in a land where so few Israelis and Palestinians ever get to know one another, but since October 7, the Israeli government seems to see the Parents Circle as downright dangerous—so much so that the Israeli Education Ministry recently banned its speakers from entering schools at all. (Twice!)
The first ban took place in April 2023 which, according toThe Jerusalem Post, the ministry excused by citing a new rule prohibiting any educational program that “slanders” the Israel Defense Forces or its soldiers. The Parents Circle sued, a judge reinstated its right to speak in schools, and then the Ministry barred them once again. The Circle has been battling that decision in court ever since.
Yuval Rahamim, Israeli co-director of the Parents Circle Families Forum, lamented the ban in a blog he wrote in September 2023. “A generation that grows up shielded from alternative viewpoints is ill-equipped to engage in meaningful dialogue, bridge gaps, and work towards peaceful solutions… In such a scenario, the cycle of animosity and mistrust continues unabated.”
Letting Go of Revenge
In their talk at Columbia, Zeigen and Aramin also emphasized that understanding and even friendship between their peoples is essential if lasting peace is ever to be achieved. This doesn’t necessarily mean forgiving those who kill, it only means letting go of the need for revenge. “I do not want my son to see his sister or brother die like I did,” as Aramin put it.
Both men were quick to add that the members of the organization hold a wide range of views about how to solve the conflict, but the view they all have in common is this: Nobody wants anyone else’s child, brother, sister, mother, or father to die in the name of their own loved ones. As Rahamim wrote, “The tears shed by a bereaved Palestinian mother are no different from those of a grieving Israeli mother.”
Once Zeigen and Aramin had finished telling their stories, they took questions from the audience and, naturally enough, given that we were at Columbia, the subject of campus protests came up. Neither man seemed much impressed.
“Instead of exporting solutions, you have imported the conflict,” Zeigen told us. That made a few of us blink.
“If you want to promote peace in Israel, give up the flags,” he continued, adding that he has nothing against the flags and their symbolism, but that in protests, they only serve to emphasize divisions. “Put the flags down and hold up peace signs instead.”
Aramin agreed. “The land doesn’t belong to Palestinians and it doesn’t belong to Jews,” he said. “God gave it to us all.”
If only more people would listen right now, with Gaza lying in rubble; Israeli bombs crushing southern Lebanon; war spreading ever more widely across the region; and tens of thousands of children, women, and men maimed or killed.
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