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Sanam As the summer gets going and we plan the next season of If You Were In Charge, we wanted to re-up some of our past episodes and share with you sort of on a thematic basis the discussions that we've had. The first set that we have put together is related to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the path to peace and coexistence. We have paired Mohamed Darwasha, our Palestinian colleague who works in Israel on issues of equity and education, together with the podcast episode with Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, who was a settler and is now involved in the discussions around coexistence and shared land and so forth. So we thought that would be a really interesting pairing for you to listen to, and hopefully give you some different perspectives on what remains a very, very bleak situation. Thank you. (...)
Hi, everyone. My guest today is Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, one of the founders of Roots, a unique network of local Palestinian Israelis who come to see each other as partners, both needing to make change to end their conflict. And it's about a mutual recognition of the people's connection to the land and developing an understanding and solidarity despite their ideological differences. It's a place where people, local people, are taking responsibility. This seems to be a theme that we have running across many of our podcasts, that it's about local people taking on responsibility and finding the solutions from the bottom up. Rabbi Schlesinger, welcome. May I call you Hanan as we carry on our conversation?
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger Absolutely.
Sanam Thank you. Thank you for joining me today.
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger You're welcome.
Sanam I wanted to first acknowledge that this is probably one of the more difficult conversations that I have had in recent times, specifically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically now you're into the Gaza conflict. I'm not sure how you feel. Are you going around the world talking about these issues and what you're doing? How's it been for you so far?
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger That's a difficult question. Yes, we, not I, we, myself and one of my Palestinian colleagues, we've done two month-long speaking trips in the U.S. since October 7th. (.) And there's a world of things to talk about as far as emotions and politics and worldviews and trauma. So we have to be specific. You, you lead me.
Sanam Thank you. I mean, part of it, as you say, is the question of the trauma from which everybody is coming from, the historic trauma. Then we have the trauma for Israel and for Israelis, and I'm sure your friends, family and others of October 7th specifically. And then at the same time, we have the Palestinian historic trauma, but the ongoing trauma in the sense that it feels like every day this war goes on. There is another family, another child, another mother, another father, whose trauma is being exacerbated because of the violence. And so how, how is it, how can one kind of stop and talk about the future when, when this, when the trauma is still going on? This, this seems to me one of the big issues that we're dealing with, at least those of us who are in the peace community and trying to look to the future.
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger Well, you asked, how can we look to the future and talk about the future under these circumstances? And the answer is that we can't. Now, you have to define who we is. When I said we can't, I mean, my society, Israeli society, at this point, is clearly unable. (..) So one of my Palestinian partners, Noor Awad, often says that he and I and the circle of peace activists involved in Roots, and this is also for our peace activists of the organization, we live in a different universe. The fact that he and I and the other activists can talk to the other side right now, can understand, can envision a way forward, means that for 90% of societies, we're crazy, or we're naive, or we don't live in reality. We don't see what's happening. Now, of course, we, meaning the peace actors, we say the same thing to the 90% of the society. You don't see what's happening. So it's two different universes, unfortunately, which is really, really painful. It means that we peace activists, we have a sense that we see a reality that the others are blind to. When I say the others, I don't mean the other side. I mean, the others in both societies, they live in a world of trauma, of victimhood, of the forces of light against the forces of darkness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. (.)
Sanam You know, I've been in this universe of peace making and peace building also for about 30 years. I'm Iranian by background. And I experienced the Iranian revolution when I was 11, and I didn't see my father for seven years. And the reason why I became involved in peace activism was because I didn't want other people to go through what I'd gone through. And I work with a lot of women peace builders who've lost their children, and they are motivated by the same sort of force that I experienced something awful. I don't want it to happen to others. What I find in the universe that I'm in, and maybe this is the universe you can join, because there are many of us actually in this space, that women are future thinkers. Maybe because we look at our kids and we're thinking about, you know, what kind of lives we want for our kids. But it seems as if those of us who are in this universe of peace are willing to stop in the present and imagine the future direction and then look at that and from there decide how we deal with the past. It's almost like, as you say, it's like, you know, you're at a crossroads and you're saying, which direction am I going to go in? But it is incredibly hard for all of us at the moment, and it's hard because I'm sure a lot of my colleagues are going to be saying to me, why are you talking to an Israeli rabbi who has been part of the settlement movement, right? I mean, these are the kinds of things we're all going to get attacked for or criticized for or something. (.) But if we can't see the humanity in each other, then I do lose hope. And so we are, it is important to have these conversations. What kind of criticism do you get? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger In Hebrew, we call it a conversation of the deaf. (...) I hear what they're saying, and I've heard it a thousand times, and I hear the pain, and I hear the perspective. (...) But to me, it's suicidal. It's self-destructive. Let me say something parenthetically. (.) Among the founders and the close circle of activists and roots in our organizations, I find that there are others, both Israelis and Palestinians, who are better able to empathize with their own societies than I am. (..) I, today, I almost don't have any patience for my own people. I really feel that we are committing collective suicide. It's true for the Palestinians as well. (..)
Sanam What is the message that you're sharing? And specifically, you know, we hear in the rhetoric of the politicians and so forth that, you know, two-state solution. Constantly, they talk about a two-state solution. But when you dig down and you see the question of settlers and how many settlers there are now in the West Bank, 700,000, I think, between that West Bank and East Jerusalem and Golan Heights, these kinds of, you know, the real hard facts. What is the message that you are conveying and you're hoping that people will hear as a pathway to a solution? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger So let me put the headline on the table. (.) The headline is two truths in one heart, two peoples in one land. (.) To say that differently, you don't have to be wrong for me to be right. I don't have to spend all my energy proving that you're wrong so I can be right because you can be right and I can be right. (.) Which means that there are two peoples, two real, indigenous, legitimate peoples, the Jewish people and Palestinian people, that are deeply connected to that land. (.) Our message is that fundamentally, this is a conflict over identity. (.) Israelis, by and large, do not accept the existence of the Palestinian people and certainly do not accept the connection of the Palestinian people to the land. (.) And Palestinians, by and large, do not accept the existence of the Jewish people. They talk about the Jewish religion, not the Jewish people, and they do not accept the Jewish connection to the land. (.) So we're saying that fundamentally, both sides have to accept the other side's identity. We have to recognize the other side's identity. We have to begin to see its legitimacy. In other words, not just the humanity of the side is important, but the identity and the connection to the land of the side. And once you have that fundamental acceptance and recognition and even empathy for the other side's identity and belonging to the land, then solutions are possible. (.) So now let me go back to what I said I was going to unpack two minutes ago. I usually put on the table four principles that are very, very difficult for Israelis and Palestinians to accept, but it seems to me they're what we need in order to go forward. Number one, there is such a thing as the Palestinian people. (..) And its corollary is such, there's such a thing as the Jewish people. (.) You'll find almost no one that accepts both those points. (.) The second point, there's such a thing as the land of Palestine. (.) And it's corollarily, it's such a thing as the land of Israel. (.) Again, you'll find almost no one who accepts both sides of that. Number three, the Palestinian people are deeply connected to the land of Palestine. And the corollary, the Jewish people are deeply connected to the land of Israel. (..) Those three points, each with its other side of the coin, leads us to the fourth point, which is excruciatingly difficult, which is the historical borders of the land of Palestine and the historical borders of the land of Israel are more or less the exact same borders. (.) That's excruciatingly difficult to admit that my homeland is their homeland, their homeland is my homeland. And then what that means is that from the river to the sea is all Palestine. (.) Here I am, an Israeli Jewish religious Zionist settler, saying that the whole land from the river to the sea, the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, is all Palestine. That's historical truth. That's not going to change. (..) And if you won't admit it's a historical truth, at least admit it's a truth of identity. That's not going to change. (.) And the reason, or one of the reasons why I can comfortably say that is because I know my Russian partners in Roots have come to the conclusion that the whole land from the sea to the river is historically Israel. (..) That's, again, a fact of history and a fact of identity. It's not going to change. (.) So once we have that, if we can get that far, that the land has two identities, Mother Earth, the Holy Land, has given birth to two children. (.) They're both fighting over who's the real child, the legitimate child. And here I'm coming and saying that both children are legitimate progeny of the Mother Holy Land. (..) Then the rest of it is not easy, but it's not that hard.
Sanam When did you have your moment of realizing this recognition and the importance of recognizing and seeing Palestinians for what they are and who they are and their connection? What was your own story for this? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger The last Wednesday of January 2014, as the sun was going down. You asked when, that's the answer.
Sanam And what happened on that day? (..)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger A few months before that, I was driving in my car in the area where I live, south of Jerusalem. We call it Judea. (..) And I had with me two Protestant evangelical pastors from the U.S. in the car who wanted to see the fulfillment of biblical prophecy of the Jews coming home to the land of Israel after 2,000 years of exile. (.) With great pride, I drove them around and I showed them around the roads we paved, the forests we planted, the buildings, the settlements, the institutions, the synagogues that we've constructed. (..) We're driving and I saw a hitchhiker in the side of the road. I picked them up. (..) After another few minutes, I saw another young man. I picked them up as well. (..) We drove. They asked to get out, dropped them off, started to drive again. (..) And one of the pastors said to me the following words. He said, Hanan, you just taught us a lesson in Jewish ethics. You picked up hitchhikers. That's great. No one does it in Texas. They're from Texas, one of them. (..) And I said to them, you know, it's not just me around here. We all pick up hitchhikers because we have a common vision. We trust each other. Just like everyone else, I do my best to pick up every person who puts out his finger for a ride. (..) By the time I finished that sentence, I realized that I was lying. (..) I was lying to the two pastors. And even worse, I was lying to myself. (..) I really believed what I said, that I try to pick up every person. (..) But it dawned on me that it's not true. I pick up only Jews. (...) And after a conversation with those two pastors, it became clear that what allowed me to say what I said, that I pick up every person, is because the only persons I saw are, which is. Now, there's lots of Palestinians walking on the side of the road waiting for rides, but I didn't see them. I literally, almost literally, didn't see them. (..) And what that means is, so I began to realize in that car ride, is that in a certain sense, I'm a bigot or I'm blind. (.) The Palestinians are like the gray, drab scenery that passes in the background of the movie, but they're not part of the plot, not part of the story. (..) I began to understand over the course of days and weeks and months and years, actually, that I live within my Jewish story, my Zionist story, my Israeli story. And that story is me, and I love it, and it's beautiful, it's glorious, it's true, it's legitimate, it's the meaning of my life. But it's blinded me to the fact that there's another story in this land. (..) There's another people in this land. (..) And today, I believe that if you mistake part of the truth for the whole truth, you're pretty close to falsehood, and that's not a place I want to be anymore. (.) And a long, difficult, excruciatingly difficult process began that ultimately brought me to the place where I am today, and I'm still changing and developing and seeing new things. I've become, like I said earlier in the conversation, it's a certain degree alienated from my society. I admit that. (..) But I've also become liberated. I have a sense that I see things other people don't see, and I experience things other people don't experience. By the way, my Palestinian partners feel the same way, that they've been liberated. You're liberated from the shackles of the tunnel vision that doesn't allow you to see the larger reality. There really are two truths. Actually, there's more than two truths. This world is full of opposing realities. And from my perspective, from a theological perspective, God is the kaleidoscope that collects together in a dynamic collection multiple truths that are intention. And my job as a human being and as a Jew is to learn to include, to ratify more and more of those truths and live within the tension of this kaleidoscope. (...)
Sanam What you're saying, first of all, it's extraordinary, and thank you for sharing that. Secondly, my first reaction as I was listening to you saying your own awareness was that how do you then convey that to the people that you're closest to? You know, when you have, when your eyes open and you see, and then you begin to question your own, you say, your own exclusionary views or your own bigotry, as you said, and you want to share it with your friends and family. How does that work? Because I can see the alienation and it's almost like you get alienated from one side, but there's a whole world of people that open up to you and want to be your friend. But still, your closest and your dearest people are probably the ones that you may be losing. What was that like and what is that like right now?
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger So you ask, how does it work? And the answer is it doesn't work. It doesn't work because what I gained includes facts, but more than facts, it's experience. (...) I experienced Palestinians as human beings and I experienced Palestinians as Palestinians. In other words, as bearers of a national, cultural, religious, historical identity that contradicts mine, but it's still true. (.) How do I convey that to other people? (..) So I'll say kind of cynically, that's it. There's no way. You can't do it. (...) And then I'll say, if you really want to try, the answer is experience, not fact. (..) So both I say and my pleasant partner say that there's nothing we can say to get our own side to open their eyes and their minds. What we may be able to do is encourage them to come and meet the other side. (.) And since we began 10 years ago, 2014, thousands of local Israelis and local Palestinians have come to meet the other side, as well as tens of thousands of Israelis from around the country who've come. And 200,000 people from around the world have come to see this amazing, miraculous center. (..) So what happens there are the activities of any community center around the world. (..) Photography workshops and music therapy and a little bit of sports and drama, playback, storytelling. We have a little kids group. We have a summer camp, a day camp, and a great emphasis on interfaith dialogue. Because religion and identity, as I said earlier, are a major part of this conflict. A lot of emphasis on learning the other side's history and narrative, language also, and again, religion. (...) So in these face-to-face meetings, people undergo human transformations. (..) By the way, we call ourselves the Israeli-Palestinian Grassroots Initiative for Understanding Nonviolence and Transformation. (.) Transformation there means personal transformation leading to political transformation. (.) I'm a member of a movement called the Land for All, which advocates for an Israeli state, a Palestinian state, and a confederation be between them.
Sanam And then since October 7th, what has been the reaction in terms of trying to continue this work, given that the violence also in the West Bank has increased as well? So what is happening in terms of whether on a personal level, on the practical level, people maintaining contact or, you know, or the outreach that they do? (..)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger The present fear and the trauma on both sides, of course, has skyrocketed. (.) And each side has retreated into its own circle of wagons, them against us, zero-sum game. (..) And even within the leadership of Roots, during the first few months after the war, four months, five months, there was tension among the staff, Israelis, and Palestinians. And actually, I saw my major job during those months as making peace among the peacemakers and just ensuring that the organization would not disintegrate. And some other organizations did, unfortunately, implode. (..) So we managed to stay together, and a lot of those tensions, if not just about all of them, are behind us in Roots now. (..) That's as far as the leadership goes. (.) As far as the rank and file, as far as keeping the activities together, keeping the activities ongoing at the Dignity Center, no, we didn't continue. For two reasons. One, because of the trauma and both sides' inability to see the other side at all. But also because the Israeli army put serious movement restrictions on the Palestinians. So at least for the first five months, six months, they couldn't leave their villages. And even today, to this very day, the Palestinians in some local villages can only leave their village during the day, but not at night. (..) The date gate is locked by the army, Israeli army. (.) As far as in-person activities, we're down to 10% that we're doing before the war. And almost all of that is among the staff and the activists. (.) So, you know, I wanted to talk to you specifically on the question of what happens with settlements.
Sanam And I'm just wondering, but in a very practical way. I have a colleague right now who's living in Bethlehem. And at night, she has, she lives on a ground floor flat. And at night, she's had, you know, settlers with, you know, baseball bats and guns roaming around her neighborhood, threatening her. People have been forced off of their homelands or houses and so forth. We have so many Israeli Jews or settlers that have come in from other places. And they are often the ones who are being violent or intolerant towards the Palestinian community. And I don't think that they're going to listen to somebody like me or to a Palestinian. I think that they would, you know, in a way, you have the access to them because you know how to talk to them. How do you engage on these issues with your own community? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger Yeah, very important question. So, part of the raison d'etre of roots of our organization is to create a voice for peace within the national religious community, within the settler community, within those who have been considered by others and have been considered by themselves as against peace. (.) That's why our work is in the West Bank. It's in Judah and Samaria. That's why we create our community center, the dignity center in the heart of the West Bank. (.) That's why our mission is to bring together Israelis who are settlers with Palestinians. There's no other organization doing that. (...) So now, the four of the activists in roots on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side, we spend a lot of time day in, day out, week in and week out for months and years together, listening together, applying all the values and the skills of listening and of open-mindedness and of pluralism and of finding truth on the other side. (..) And in this core group of people in roots, I would say that to a certain degree, a large degree, we've been able to heal from what I call the hubris of exclusivity, as if our side has all the truth. No, there is humanity, and there's legitimate identity, and there's truth on the other side, which is wonderful. This expanding of horizons, expanding of identity, of coming to a place of really, really being able to empathize with the other side is absolutely what we're about, and it's wonderful. (.) But what happens is, sometimes, many times, is that the activists on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians who are doing this intensive work, we end up so successful that we put ourselves in a new universe, a universe that 95% of our constituencies on the Israelis and the Palestinians side are not there. We're in our own world. (..) And what can happen is, and sometimes does happen, is that we begin developing a language, an understanding that our communities cannot relate to, cannot identify with, cannot understand, and think is just traitorous and ridiculous and is heretical. (.) So what do we do? (..) So, as I often mention, I am thinking of one and a few people in roots, my colleagues in leadership, who really have this uncanny, this wonderful ability to not only empathize with the other side, but not to lose their empathy with their own people, not to lose the common language of their own people. In other words, there are some people, Israelis and Palestinians, the leadership of roots, who are really able to apply our ideology and our values and do the work that needs to be done, keeping up, I'm talking on the Israeli side now, keeping up, the dialogue with the settler community, speaking their language, and slowly showing them an additional truth together with the deep partnership with the Palestinians. However, I think that to a certain degree, I'm a failure. (..) In other words, I have developed such an understanding of the Palestinian cause and people and such an empathy and such friendships and such understanding that I've begun to lose my empathy for my own people (..) and begun to reach a place of a certain despair for my own people. They just don't get it. They just don't see what I see. They're drinking this ridiculous Kool-Aid. (...) So, I have work to do. (..) And I think that I have to be very, very aware that I don't always practice what I preach. I practice and I teach and I preach and I lecture about pluralism and accepting the other and listening and finding truth on the other side. And I believe it so much. I really do believe it. I think the world needs it. (.) But then I realize that I practice what I preach only with certain opinions and certain people I don't agree with. But other people that I don't agree with, I don't practice it there. And I'm becoming more and more aware of my unconscious bias in who I apply, what I preach to, and who I don't. (..) I don't want to say what my bias is because that will cause bias in the audience. But I have this bias. (.) So, I'm just going to describe now in one minute the inner work that I'm trying to do. (..) Be aware of this bias. (..) Be aware of the judgmentalism. Be aware that I'm not practicing what I'm preaching. (.) and connect to the visceral anxiety and visceral opposition that is aroused in my soul and my heart when I hear these opinions from my own side, from my own people. (.) And know that I can't undo my anxieties. I can't undo my biases. But I can be aware of them. (.) And I can connect to them. (.) And I can try to correct for them. They're always going to be there. I can't just beat myself up. They're always going to be there. And I'm not a bad person for having these biases. I don't hate the people that I don't agree with that I can't listen to. (.) But I have some type of existential anxiety. So, just to be aware of it, to work on it, to talk about it, right? As I expose myself, at least I'm not being hypocritical.
Sanam I'm a profoundly secular person, if you want. I come from a Persian empire which started the whole Cyrus Cylinder. And it said, you can have whatever faith you want, provided you follow the rules. You know, that's basically kind of the difference between state and faith, that if you want, despite what's happening in Iran now. (..) And to me, the answer seems to be simple. To me, the answer would be that, well, if you're going to live in a country, you have to, everybody has to follow the rules equally, right? And it seems that, again, when we're talking about the settler community, on the one hand, they're coming in and taking other people's land, (.) which goes against the Ten Commandments. I mean, you know, if we're going by faith. On the other hand, it's as if they want to live by their own rules and are unwilling to see themselves as equal under the law. Is that a kind of, is that a fair assessment? (.) So, first of all, let me just back up a little. (..)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger When I talk about listening, about tolerance, about openness, about seeing some truth on the other side, I don't mean lying down and letting people kill each other. I don't mean condoning behavior that is immoral, but I mean being able to listen to people's ideology, listen to their beliefs, accept their way of life. Again, not in their relationship with other people, of the other side. Accept their way of life. See, some validity and some truth, some humanity and some goodness, even on the other side. I mean, within my own people, the camps I don't believe in. (.) But at the same time, of course, I have to work for what I believe in. I have to work for what I believe to be morality and the true Judaism. (..) Okay, so that's an introduction. Now, let's try and understand (.) the extremist settler community that is violent against Palestinians. (.....) You talked about the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments says, you shall not steal, you shall not kill. (..) But of course, these people that we're talking about, they know Judaism better than you do. (.) So they look at the Bible (.) that talks about the Israelites, the 12 tribes leaving Egypt, going to the desert 40 years, and then at divine command, conquering the land of Canaan, (.) of eradicating the seven Canaanite nations, of literally killing them and occupying their land at God's command. (...) There's a lot of violence in the Bible, in the Jewish Bible. (..) And I mean commands to do violence, and I mean descriptions of how that was carried out. (..) Now, later Jewish tradition after the Bible, (.) over 2,000 years of what's called rabbinic, Judea's rabbinic tradition, (..) did important work in reinterpreting that violence, (.) giving it a spiritual interpretation, (.) finding ways to say that that was true in the past, but not in the present. It doesn't apply anymore. For example, the seven Canaanite nations, the rabbis say, don't exist anymore, and therefore those commands are null and void. and also even reinterpreting what happened in the past. (..) Now, what's happening is today, and I'm being very, I'm simplifying things, (..) part of what's going on in the minds of religious Zionism, (.) in those religious Jews or Zionists who are setting the land, I'm referring specifically to the settler community, is a reconnecting to the visceral physicality of the Bible, (.) leapfrogging over, and in a sense, erasing the rabbinic tradition of 2,000 years, that attenuated and moralized and spiritualized all of this terrible stuff from the Bible, (.) such that for many, many settlers today, (..) we Jewish settlers are the 12 tribes who just left Egypt 40 years ago. We're conquering the land, and the Palestinians are the modern-day Canaanites, (..) and we have a command to do what God said to conquer the Jewish land for the Jewish people because it's our land because God gave it to us. Now, let's be very clear. I'm not saying what I believe. I'm saying what they believe. (....) And secondly, (....) these violent actions are very much understood by those committing them in the fashion I just said, but also as self-defense. Self-defense. (..) The Arabs, they don't call them Palestinians. They call them Arabs, are violent. They don't know who's in charge. They don't understand that it's our land. They're just trying to displace us from our land. They're primitive, and we just have to defend ourselves. I mean,
Sanam this is a textbook extremism, radicalization, where you take one identity and you make it so supreme above others that it justifies violence. It justifies, and as you say, you find the validity in some text somewhere, and I mean, you know, you see it in the extremists and the Islamic tradition and the Hindu nationalism. It's the same kind of thing. And let me add,
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger let me add, you said you would use the word supremacist, supremacy, so I want to add, (.) I have to add, that in Jewish tradition there is an approach that says that Jews are spiritually superior to non-Jews. There's such an approach that Jews have a godly soul that non-Jews don't have. (.) There is a disagreement in over 2000 years of Jewish tradition between that approach and the other approach that says all souls are created equal. And I have to say, as far as I see things, this is sociological observation, that in the past 30, 40 years, the mystical approach, the ontological approach that says the Jewish soul is ontologically, essentially different than the non-Jews soul, that approach has won within religious Zionism today. (.) Within the settler movement, it's won. And therefore, the things that you're describing, the violence of the settlers, has fueling it, these three things that we just said. Number one, that this is like biblical times where the Jewish tribes fighting the Canaanites at God's command. Number two, it's only self-defense. And number three, we are spiritually superior to them. (.)
Sanam So, first of all, the fact that you mentioned the 40 years, I think, is really fascinating because, again, I could take, we could go back to the 1980, if you want, with the rise of Islamist traditions and then Wahhabism that's come out of Saudi Arabia and so forth that has taken that extreme, like fundamentalist, but we call it extremism because it's not just the fundamentals of the faith. But we're seeing that white supremacy. I mean, so this 40 years has been a really interesting thing around extremes, talking to extremes and coming into the mainstream across many societies. Again, it goes, so going back to what do we do about this? Do you have, are you working with, (.) you know, communities of rabbis or religious scholars to try and change this? Is there a willingness to see how dangerous this has been and to try and sort of shift it from the standpoint of the, if you want, the teachers and the scholars? Or is it now so rooted on the ground that it's going to take another 40 years of concerted effort to try and change it? Like, how do you see this, sort of, what's the future that you're looking at?
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger So it's certainly going to take many, many years to change, but let's go back a little bit. Certainly, in my opinion, part of what's going on here is a battle for the soul of Judaism. (..) I feel, quite honestly, alienated from the majority expressions of Judaism within (.) religious Zionism today. (.) I have many people that I can talk to about it, but still, where are we already? Rabbis and lay people people that think that a travesty has been committed here and it's still being committed and it's getting worse. And yes, indeed, part of the solution is within the Beit Midrash, within the study hall, within a traditional Jewish scholarship of elevating those traditional voices that believe differently than what's happening today. Okay, so there is work in Roots on this subject and there are other organizations that we work together with in Roots, organizations that are bigger and have bigger budgets than us. There is, just for example, in the city of Afrat, which is right near my home, there is a framework of Torah institutions, of Jewish religious institutions called Or Torah Stone and they have a whole Beit Midrash, they have an old institute, a study hall, that's called something like (.) Jewish people and the nations, Jewish people and the religions of the world trying to work out through scholarly study and through the ancient texts and through reinterpretation work out a better, more equal understanding of the relationship between the Jewish people and the rest of the world. (..)
Sanam A lot of your work, as you said, is focused on the U.S. as well and when we talk about the settler community and their ties to the land and going back 3,000 years, (.) for me, it's like saying that the American indigenous tribes, and we're not going 3,000 years back, we're going 200 years, 300 years, right? So, you know, how does that logic play out? I mean, you know, if everybody wanted to sort of make some claim to the land, Manhattan, Upper East Side should be handed over and, you know, Boston should be handed over and how does that logic play out or what are the kind of conversations that you have in the U.S. about these issues?
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger So, I agree with what you're saying. (.) In other words, had this logic of the settler community been applied across the board equally, yes, it applied to the American Indians as well. And by the way, I often say, I mean, I believe that just like America today is very, very contrite and sorry, but what they did to the Native Americans years ago, I believe that Israel will be very, very contrite in another 50 years about what they're doing to the Palestinians. (.) It may be too late then, right? It's easier to apologize when the evil is already done.
Sanam I was going to say that, you know, if people are put into little, you know, pockets of land and contained, you can always be contrite, but you're not giving it back to them, //S01: right?//
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger So now, let me move directly to relating to your question. I have a close friend, a colleague, who's a pastor when I was a rabbi in Dallas, Texas, we did a lot of interfaith work together and we had deep, deep conversations and he said to me once the following, he said, Hanan, everything you're saying, (.) the claim of Jesus being the son of God, you're right, Hanan, it's crazy. It's totally illogical. It's impossible to imagine except that it's true. (...) So I would say the same thing here. (...) My settler community that's involved in the violence and the land reps that's involved in would say, yeah, what we're doing that we're claiming the land for God, because the Bible says that we have the obligation and our understanding of vitally conquering, yeah, it's crazy and it shouldn't be applied any place in the world, but by us, it's true. God really said it, so we have to do what he said. (.) In other words, it's the claim of exclusivism. It's the claim of uniqueness that our case is different.
Sanam Have you had a moment, apart from your own moment, which was such a, in a way, small moment, which led you to realizing, as you said, when you were driving, have you had other instances where in your interactions with settler communities, they've, you know, somebody or some group has had the same kind of awakening and has changed their perspective that gives you hope about what is possible? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians in roots and around roots who have gone through some type of transformation on some level. I'll tell you kind of an amalgam of a few stories. (..) So I'm in a dialogue group with Israelis and Palestinians and a Palestinian on the other side of the room will raise his hand and say, you know, come on, (..) when I first saw you in a group, I was afraid you would kill me. (...) And the next time I saw you in a group, (...) I wasn't afraid you would kill me. I knew you wouldn't kill me, but I was afraid to talk to you. (..) And now I say I can talk to you. (..) And then I get up from my seat and I walk over and I hug the person (.) and there's tears. So that story in different forms has happened to me tens of times. (....)
Sanam That's the question of, yeah, the experience, the shared human experience, //S01: right?//
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger That's just experiential. Now let me add a story on the Israeli side. That's a Palestinian talking to him about his transformation. He can now see me as a human being. But on the Israeli side, my own side, I've had tens of times Israelis come up to me or talk to me on the phone (.) saying, (..) I never knew. For all these years, I lived here in the West Bank, Judeen, Samaria, Palestinian majority area and I never met them. I never knew. (..) How was I so obtuse? How did I think what I used to think? And what am I going to do now that I see them? and people are devastated in their inner transformation. (....) But out of the devastation, of course, is built a more whole personality. (.)
Sanam And that's the issue that they're devastated, which means that in a way you have to, or maybe your own community begins to reject you, but you need to then find another community that embraces you, right? That that's, it's like you're going in between spaces. Well,
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger that's the balancing act that if all those people are transformed and are healed from the hubris of exclusivity, if they just leave their community, then they lose their influence. (.) How are we able? This is the big question I don't have a good answer to. And refers back to things we talked about just a few minutes ago. How do you undergo the transformation, see the other side, connect to them, become empathetic for their needs on the individual and the national level (.) without raking your connection to your own home community? That's the challenge. (..)
Sanam And I guess I'll stop with the question of, so what gives you hope now? Given these forces that are at play, (.) where is the hope? (...)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger I fundamentally believe (.) in human beings. (.) I fundamentally believe in human progress. So I know (..) that this conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is going to be solved someday. (.) The only question is how long will it take? But I know for certain it's going to be solved. (..) it may not be solved in the best possible fashion (..) because I know it's going to be solved. (.) And I've seen human transformations that are part of the road to solving it. (.) So what I have to do is continue working and bring that solution a little bit closer, a little bit sooner. I've seen success on a micro level, but not on a macro level. If I've seen 100,000 Israelis and Palestinians become better human beings and better able to live with the other side, then there could be more. Undergoing the same transformation just depends on how hard we work at it.
Sanam If you were in charge or if there was an opportunity to create a kind of a national coalition dialogue space where you had (.) a significant role and you could shape policy as well as, you know, the practice on the ground, what is it that you would do? If you were in charge, what would you do? (.)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger I think you asked me this question earlier, so I'll see if I say the same thing I said then. (...) There clearly has to be (..) enormous amounts of money spent on education. (...) Education within (.) the religious Zionist community. We're talking about study of Jewish texts, about writing articles and books. We're talking about creating interfaith study halls. We're talking about connecting people. (..) So we're talking about the scholars. We're talking about youth movements, bring the two sides together. (..) And we're talking about amazing amounts of money that have to be spent on public relations campaigns, on television, on radio, on social media, all about overcoming the hubris of exclusivity, overcoming hyper-nationalism. (.) So it's about spending money on PR campaigns. It's about spending money on education, spending money on youth movements, informal education, formal education support, again, again, about study and a lot of money devoted to Jewish scholarship. And this has to be true, of course, not just on the Jewish side, also on the other side, on the Palestinian side. (..) I want to, (.) perhaps in the editing, you'll add this in, something you said earlier, when I talked about (.) the re-education that has to happen within the religious Zionist settler community, I did not mean to imply that it's all about education. it's only education. It's also, of course, about practical steps that are, that have to be taken right now, about the army and the police enforcing the law, preventing settler violence. It's about rabbis and community leaders right now getting up and acting against this violence, about parents reining in their kids. And Roots is involved in this work. Not enough, (.) but we're doing what we can. Much more has to be done.
Sanam What keeps you going and what genuinely gives you hope? (..)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger I think that it's not a divine decree, doesn't have to be like this. (.) The conflict is a result of bad decisions that both sides made (..) for at least 100 years. (.) So which means I know it could be different. It doesn't have to be like this. (.) And I know it's going to be different in another 500 years or 400 or 300 or 200 or 100 or less. It all depends on us. Us meaning Israelis and Palestinians. Our fate is really in our hands. (.) So as difficult as it is, it's completely possible. (..) and I have seen with my own eyes how Israelis and Palestinians in Roots and other organizations have been changed (.) by meeting the other and have opened their eyes and their hearts and their minds and their souls to the other side and become advocates for change and for peace. (.) It happened to me. (..) In other words, I give, in a certain sense, you can say I give myself hope because if I could, if I change like I did, (..) other people can also. (...)
Sanam When you see what's happened in Gaza, (.) what's your message to Gazans living through and now in Lebanon? What's your message to them? (.) If you could meet them, if you could talk to them directly, like what would be your, you know, it's a personal message, I think, but what's your, from your heart, what comes out when you see what's happening? (....)
Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger I'm ashamed of what my identity and my people and my state is doing to them. (..) That doesn't mean that I think that all the blame is on our side, the Jewish side, but some of it is. (..) I'm ashamed and I'm sorry and I'm broken and I'm, (.......) and I just want to reach out and together work for a better future. (....)
Sanam Thank you. //S01: Totally possible.// Thank you. Thank you very much and, and, (.) and I, yeah, I wish I could give you a hug because I think that this is //S02: the end of the day.// the same thing.
The same thing. (.) So that's what happens to us.
I don't know. It's the, you know, the value of the hug and it says a lot more than all the words we could be saying. (.........) Mohamed Darwasha, my guest this week, is the director of the Center for Planning, Equality, and Shared Society at the Givat Haviva Educational Center in Israel. He's been involved in Israeli politics and academia. In 2009, he was a member of the National Committee which drafted a policy on coexistence and education. He's a man of many hats but at the core of his work and what's motivated him I think throughout his vocation and his career is this search for a shared society of equal coexistence and equality under the law for Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel. And much of his work is anchored in education. So it's kind of a mirror or the other side of my conversation with Hanan and the similarities I hope you'll hear in terms of how important it is to have face-to-face real-life visceral experiences of seeing the other as an equal, as another human being, not just as somebody who is poster child of whether it's hate or polarization but as someone who's actually like you. And for those of us maybe who live in Europe or in the U.S., it's hard to believe that you could be living in the same neighborhood or in a small country with people that you never really encounter in school or in social events. You live parallel existences. And so what does it mean to actually bring Israeli and Palestinian kids together for them to see what life is like and also to deal with the many barriers that Palestinian citizens of Israel face, barriers that, again, we don't really often hear about. So that's my conversation coming up. I hope you enjoy it and see you on the other side. Bye.
Mohammad Darawshe Good to meet you, Salam, and good to be with your listeners.
Sanam Thank you. Good to have you with me. I wanted to talk to you because as part of the sort of series that we're doing on this If You Were In Charge, what we're looking at is people who are really at the forefront of tackling really difficult issues. So they're actually doing the doing, but then also kind of being able to lift our heads and imagining, you know, if you were in charge, what else would you do? So it's kind of this two-level aspect of the conversation. And when it comes to what's going on in Israel right now, vis-a-vis both inside Israel, but also vis-a-vis what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza and in the West Bank and in Lebanon and so forth, it's so complex. It's so fraught with trauma and pain
and anxiety on all sorts and existentialism, if you want.
I thought that it would be better to have two separate conversations. From both angles, it's people that are working for peace. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, what is it that you do? What, you know, you're a Palestinian-Arab (...) citizen of Israel, right?
Mohammad Darawshe Yes.
Sanam How do you cope with what's going on as a peace activist? What does your daily work mean? What have you sort of dedicated your life to? (..)
Mohammad Darawshe So there are two levels that I operate in. One is what I call the vertical discourse, you know, the political changes that need to be made in order to create better conditions for peace and for cooperation between people. That is why during elections period inside Israel, I become a political creature and I try to get out the vote and urge people to participate in elections and to vote for political parties that might be willing to engage in a peace process and negotiations to bring about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think the massive majority of people know that the solution that needs to be placed is a two-state solution. That's maybe not the best solution, maybe not the best just solution, but it's the most practical solution that anyone has invented for the last 100 years. and I think that at least from my role as an Israeli citizen, I want to make sure that we try to get the government negating the existing government that comes with maybe at least willingness to engage in negotiations with the Palestinians and hopefully deliver the needs of the Palestinians by ending occupation and bringing about freedom for our people. on the other end, you know, it seems, as we all experience, peace is not an easy target and that's why I look at the horizontal aspect, not just the vertical. And there I call it pieces of peace. How can we create programs that move us forward, even if it's one step every single day? You know, it's not the whole one mile that we need to run to get to the peace process and peace agreement, but the small pieces that make the reality much better for human beings on the ground. And here I focus most of the work on creating partnerships between Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens so people can not just envision peace, but can even practice it. And maybe with those what I call islands of success on the horizontal level, maybe ultimately we can create enough magnitude that will impact the political scene as well.
Sanam What does that look like? What does it look like if someone doesn't understand the reality?
Mohammad Darawshe Yeah, let's start with education. One of the main problems I have identified is the segregated educational system. Jewish kids go to Jewish schools and they never meet Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or even Christian.
Sanam Even if they live in the same neighborhood?
Mohammad Darawshe Even if they live in the same neighborhood.
Sanam And so there is no such thing as a, I don't know, national education system that, you know, you go to your neighborhood school and that's it. There's a, everybody learns the same language and...
Mohammad Darawshe There is a national education system which is segregated. Only private sector organizations such as my organization and a couple of others have created private mixed educational schools. We have nine mixed schools out of 5,000. The remaining government educational system is segregated by political government decision. So we try to create those by national, bilingual schools where Jewish and Arab kids come and study in Arabic. This is the long-term solution that we're looking for. we want all the 5,000 schools to be mixed integrated schools and humanize the other. You can break stereotypes and you can engage in building a shared society based on growing up as the same civic creature as everyone else. In segregated educational system, you have stereotypes growing, you have racism growing, you have fear, and it's always the othering. Looking at the other side is the complete other who's the enemy most of the time. Although you get maybe the same kind of curriculum, but you live in separate towns and villages. 92% of Arab citizens live in separate towns, and even those that live in mixed cities, the 8%, they usually live in separate neighborhoods and go to separate schools. So the atmosphere, the environment that formulates your perspective, it's the teachers, it's the fellow students, it's the parents' committees, it's the cultural activities that are created, it's the news, it's the politicians, and the curriculum doesn't really handle this. the curriculum does not try to make you a common citizen. Jewish citizens grow up to be very patriotic Israelis, and Palestinian citizens, you know, they say, okay, if Israel says it's the state of the Jews, then what's my state? So they look to the Palestinian identity to try to fill that gap that is created. So the Palestinian citizens in Israel go through two processes. One is called, I would call it, Israelization and repalistinization, while the Jewish citizens go go through Israelization and Judaization. So there is a gap. There is a gap that keeps growing with time, especially at age 18, when Jewish graduates of high school go to the military. So when they go to universities at age 21, after three years of militarization and traumatization, sometimes 40% of Israeli Jewish university students today served in Gaza in one capacity or another. and they come to sit in the same classroom at university with a Palestinian Arab citizen that says, I am Palestinian, Israeli Jews. The only Palestinians they've been meeting in the last 13 months is on the other side of the gun, on the other side of the tank.
Sanam In that time that the Jewish Israeli kids go off to the army, what are the Palestinian kids doing? Like, do they go to university at an early age? What happens to them in that time? (.)
Mohammad Darawshe Well, 20% go to university, almost half of them outside Israel. They don't feel comfortable in Israeli universities. Many go to Palestinian universities. But most of the others end up, unfortunately, pumping gas, construction and agriculture, low-paying positions. They get stuck in the lower echelon of economics. And I must say that this is a result of a lack of government investment in good educational system. Also, lack of accessibility to academia in Israel. Till now, Israel has not allowed the creation of one single Arab university for 21% of its population or Palestinian Arab. And your options are either to study in Israeli Jewish school, teaching in Hebrew, in your second language.
Sanam Again, so you go to school, you're learning Arabic, you're not really learning Hebrew.
Mohammad Darawshe You learn Hebrew, but it's clearly not sufficient enough for academia.
Sanam To go to university. Okay, so you're basically, from the beginning, there's a huge barrier.
Mohammad Darawshe Yeah, linguistic gap, cultural gap. The Hebrew becomes a barrier to pass the exam because you're tested in your second language.
Sanam 21% of the population of Israel, excluding the West Bank and Gaza and Golan Heights, the Israel sort of boundaries, is Arab-Palestinian. Exactly. And of that 21%, in total, how many end up in tertiary education?
Mohammad Darawshe About 26%. 26%. In comparison to many other countries, relatively it's good, but not all the degrees are what the job market needs. For example, we have about 18,000 teachers that are unemployed. People that finished educational degrees, and they can't get a job because the market is saturated with qualified teachers that went to study, and there's not enough clients because entering to become a teacher in the Jewish community is very, very, you know, very difficult. We've managed to have 2,000 Arab teachers to teach in Jewish schools, but there are only science teachers or Arabic language teachers. They will not take you to be a history teacher or economics teacher or sports teacher. They only take Arab for a very crucial topics for Arabic language and sometimes, sometimes, sciences, only when they are in dear need and there is no Jewish candidate to fill that position. So the job opportunities in education or in philosophy or even in economics and business management, the percentage of Arab employees in the finance industry is less than 1.5%. The percentage of Arab employees in the high-tech industry is less than 5%, and while being 23% of the engineering students. So you can graduate with an engineering degree, but that does not guarantee that you're going to get a job because when you want to, when they interview for a job, they ask, have you done military service? And we have a very simple answer. No. It's the shortest word in English. Two letters. No. We did not, we did not do military service. We will not do military service because the military has a mission which does not stand with our moral values. It is occupying our Palestinian people, preventing the creation of an independent, free Palestinian state, and we will not be part of this kind of activity. So this is used to prevent the entry of Arab citizens in many arenas in the job market or to work for civil service, to work for the government, and sometimes even to be able to get an apartment in a Jewish town if you want to work there or if you want to study there.
Sanam Okay, so you have this problem about education segregation, and then, as you say, the job market and so forth. So in your work, you mentioned that you have established independent schools that are mixed, but it's a draw, it's, how many schools, nine schools, you said?
Mohammad Darawshe Yeah, but you know, I personally, I'm very proud of the nine schools. I do not ridicule the number because I think they serve as an icon of what can be done. It's maybe the ultimate best solution, but I don't think it's enough, and that's why I went for a faster route, and the faster route which I found was to what I call to (.) bus Jewish teachers to teach in Arab schools and Arab teachers to teach in Jewish schools. And today, we're operating in almost 20% of the educational system in both the Arab and the Jewish schools. That's about 2,500 cross-sector teachers that we have. For 93% of the kids, 93% of the kids, this is their first ever meaningful encounter with the other. 93%.
Sanam And at what age does that start? When do you start that? (.)
Mohammad Darawshe In the garden to high school. We have presence in all the educational system, but for 93% of the kids, this is their first ever encounter. For 65% of them, this encounter changes their perspective about the culture of the other from negative to positive. So the program works. I'll give you a story about a young Palestinian Arab student. Her name is Aya, and we took her into program. We call it high-tech seats. We identify Arab kids who are very good in mathematics in eighth grade, give them academic courses in computer science, and the hope is to integrate those kids into the high-tech industry. And the concept is very simple. Create capacity of very high caliber, and then challenge that capacity and offer it to the Israeli high-tech job market. She's today 21, and she's doing her PhD in computer science at an Israeli university called Beersheba University. And she has a Jewish mentor, professor, that thinks the world of her and has made her in a teaching assistant. She's 21, doing her PhD teaching Israeli Jewish students who are 22, 23, older than her. They come for their undergraduate degree. They see her as the icon of success. Those are the same students that served in intelligence units, and they were seeing Palestinians as their security subjects that need to be controlled. And Aya, who's younger than them today, is their professor, is their teaching assistant at university. This is a kind of success that makes us really feel that you've done something. The problem is size, you know, scale. Now we are 20% of the system. There are certain educational streams, such as the Haredi ultra-religious schools, that will not allow this kind of program to even start. Some schools put conditions of who's the teacher, how many hours they cut. So, it's a battle. It's an uphill battle. But we are successful until now. You know, we've made, we've made this now the biggest cross-sector educational activity ever in the field of Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Arab relations. We touch about 400,000 kids into this program. And no one in history has ever been able to create the program with this magnitude. But I must admit, we're not there yet. We are, we're not reaching the 100%. The last two years have been very difficult. felt we are at some kind of a freeze because we operate under the worst government that you can think of, but also under the worst social, political, economic security conditions since the October 7th war started.
Sanam Since October 7th, how have things changed for you and your colleagues and these teachers? What's going on with everybody?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, first of all, I would say our subject matter, our problem doubled. 81% of Israeli Jews today say that they fear Palestinian citizens of Israel and mistrust them. And almost 70% of the Palestinians, Palestinian Israeli citizens fear and mistrust Israeli Jews. It means that we need to create different capacities. So, instead of training 20 facilitators every year, this year, we trained 75 facilitators. We're hoping that the day after the war. We're hoping that the day after the war, there will be better opportunity, but we need to come with three, four times the capacity with the staff that is able to do the work. We change the way we operate because in some places, there is a sense of urgency. At universities, as I mentioned, 20% of the student population is Palestinian. 40% of the Israeli male population served in Gaza. There is a potential for explosiveness. So, there is a potential for explosiveness. So, we're active in 11 campuses today. One, to work with the university administration to set up rules of what's allowed, what's not allowed, so that students don't take matters to their hands. We train professors to de-escalate tension that might erupt into a classroom. We create dialogue groups on campuses between Jewish and Palestinian students that still want to debate and argue and manage the situation so that the encounter does not become an explosive type of encounter. We do a lot of what we do. We do a lot of what we do. We do a lot of what we call uni-national programs, work with the Jewish students alone, work with the Palestinian students alone. Sometimes, if you bring them when they're not ready for an encounter, you might get negative results. We bring high school kids. Last year, we brought 70, you know, the last school year, we brought to our campus 17,774 high school students that came for three-day type of encounters program, which we call Children Teaching Children. They spend time together. We pair two classrooms to keep meeting once a month, usually for a period of three years. So the challenges are much, much bigger. The difficulties are much, much bigger. But we've been in this since 1949. So we've perfected the capacity. We won the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education. So we know the techniques. The most successful programs is when students come to programs for at least seven times in their life. (.) that's when we get a sustainable in kids that come once and leave the impact evaporates very, very quickly. They get sucked back into the home environment of stereotypes.
Sanam And what happens to them once they graduate school? And as you say, there's really Jewish kids go off to the army. So what have you have you tracked the ones that came to you systematically and then went off to the IDF and came back? What's happened to them?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, there's an index which is called the Racism Index that's done by Professor Efiyar from Tel Aviv University. The index shows that they get hardened in their political perspectives between the age of 18 to 21, which is being at university or working hard labor if you're an Arab or Israeli Jewish and going to the military. 65% age of 21 have racist views against Arabs. And 57% of Arab kids have racist views against Jews. Very hard stereotypes. But if you've gone through our programs, the racism rate is about 12%. And it's sustainable.
Sanam 12%. So it's gone down significantly. Yeah.
Mohammad Darawshe Dramatically. Not just significant. Dramatically. And it is sustainable. We've done some long-term evaluation even 10 years later. And you see that maybe they're not active in this work because, you know, these are the professional years and the educational years. People try to build their capacity in their 20s, academic or economic capacity. So maybe they're not very active. But they still have it in the back of their mind that what's right is right. What's wrong is wrong. We see a return back in people's 40s. Once they go into their second career, they feel more comfortable maybe economically and they're more stable socially. They come back and they want to be more involved. And actually now, we're in the process of setting an alumni program to try to organize thousands (.) of people that are coming back and say, we want to be involved.
Sanam And since October 7th, has that increased? Or did you see a dip and a rise? Or how's it going?
Mohammad Darawshe That actually has, within our graduates of our programs, that did increase. Although what they want mostly is to talk and not to be active. Most Israeli Jewish society still stands behind the military effort of this government. And they're not willing to engage in debate with the government. I think they're still stuck in the trauma of October 7th. And they are not able to even see the trauma caused to the Palestinians. They're blocking that. And they're basically saying, let's talk. And I think it shows confusion mostly. Many people in Israeli society that have supported the war are not not supporting it. They continue to support it. But I think they're beginning to show, one, maybe fatigue. And the second is confusion. And I think that the next few months, if we're able to activate or reactivate people that have that willingness to be involved, I think we might start seeing different phenomena in Israeli society that might challenge the government.
Sanam You're working inside Israel with Jewish Israelis and Arab and Palestinian Israelis. (..) What's the relationship between your work and what's happening in the West Bank and Gaza? And also, how do they perceive you guys now? Like Gideon Levy, the journalist, was speaking recently and he said there are three governments. There's the government for the Jewish Israelis. There's a government for the Palestinian citizens of Israel. And then there's a militarized government that is, you know, the occupation force, which is in the occupied territories. Do you agree with them? I mean, do you think that there is a distinction in terms of how the government treats these categories of people? (.)
Mohammad Darawshe Absolutely. Israel defines itself as Jewish and democratic state. And I would say that, by large, it is democratic towards the Jews and Jewish towards the Palestinians. And towards the Palestinians, it does not even attempt to be democratic. It only attempts to be Jewish.
Sanam Even for you who are a citizen there?
Mohammad Darawshe Yes, absolutely.
Sanam And are you able to say how that, what that means? Like, what does that look like for you or how you, how you experience it?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, first of all, legally, there are 28 discriminatory laws against Palestinian citizens of Israel, crowned by the nation state law, which was passed on the 19th of July, 2018, that says Israel is the state of the Jewish people. And the Arabic is no more an official language and the state can discriminate in certain activities, especially in housing and settlement activities in favor of Jews. There is the citizenship law, which does not allow Palestinian citizens to naturalize a spouse from outside Israel if they have any Palestinian Muslim Arab background.
Sanam So, so let me again. So if, so if you're a Palestinian Israeli and you decide to marry, I don't know, Norwegian, in principle, you could naturalize a Norwegian wife or husband.
Mohammad Darawshe Correct.
Sanam But if you marry a Palestinian who is not of Israeli citizenship, but comes from West Bank or has been living in Jordan, they're not allowed to be naturalized.
Mohammad Darawshe Correct. If the same person marries in Norwegian that her grandfather was Syrian or Iranian, the likelihood of getting naturalized is zero. Then there's the Nakba law, which prevents Arab schools from teaching about the Palestinian narrative, which is allowed to be taught in Jewish schools. There's the acceptance committees law, which gives power to 800 Jewish towns to create acceptance committees that can decide who can buy rent property or lease property in those towns. And they are basically committees that prevent Arab citizens from buying, renting and leasing properties in about 67% of the territory of the state of Israel.
Sanam This is just overwhelming. I mean, it's just exhausting listening to it. I think that just people, I mean, in the sense that when you, when you live in a place where you can decide, I want to go buy a place here, I want to sell that property, I want to marry whoever I want to marry. (..) And in principle, we have equality of some sort. This just seems so many barriers. How do you deal with it on a daily basis?
Mohammad Darawshe I mean, the first way to deal with it is to put your end game. Our end game is we're not leaving. We're staying. Israel can call itself Jewish 1,000 times, but its reality is not only Jewish. We are Muslim, you know, 83% Muslim, 8.5% Christian, 8.5% Druze. We're staying there. We're not going to leave to make it easy for the extreme right wing in Israel to do voluntary ethnic cleansing. I think that's what they want. They want us to get to the level of exhaustion so that we can make it easy and leave. And then they have no, what they call, Arab problem. They call us the Arab problem. They don't call us Arab citizens. They call us the Arab problem. And this problem is going to continue sitting on their chest forever. Holding on is critical. But also the question is to prevent people from despair, you need to give them better reality. And the better reality is better jobs, education, trying to make sure that people have something that is worth protecting. And that's why empowerment activities are critical to the Arab community, to bring people more to academia so that they have a better potential despite the discriminatory reality. Third, look for the Israeli Jews that are liberal and democratic in their nature. I don't think all Israelis are racist. I don't think all Israelis are religious Zionists in their mindset. I would say maybe 40% of the Israeli Jewish population are liberals and Democrats and are worth and able to work with us. And the goal is to reach out to those and try to make them become our allies, not just socially. Socially, we're able to create those contacts, but also politically. And ultimately, that's how we can create the political change. My help is in elections time. I take out, I take two months off. I go volunteer as I do my job as much as I can to help because I think it's critical. The top down is critical, but it happens once every four years. What do you do the remaining three years and 11 months? My job in that period is to create those islands of success in capacity building, but also in equal integration in the Israeli job market, academia, and social and educational arenas. Then we will be in a much better capacity to engage and maybe even better capacity to heal from the difficulties that we are accumulating every single day.
Sanam Again, as you're speaking, it reminds me of the situation in Iran where the politics is the politics and actually the international imposition of sanctions and stuff in a way keeps the extreme forces in place. And so the public has done its own thing. You know, when you see the movements, the women life freedom movement and others, it's the social and economic, you know, girls going to university changing within families. (.) And it's like a sort of once the mindset changes, it's really hard to go back to that original mindset. So you so what you're doing makes a makes a lot of sense. What's the relationship between Palestinian Israeli citizens and your cousins, your family? I mean, the friends and relatives, whoever they may be in the in the occupied territories.
Mohammad Darawshe Well, first of all, they are our people and we need to care for them. Our social, economic, political reality is better than their social, economic, political reality, which puts a big burden on us to be the big brother in this case. Although we are smaller in size, but we have responsibilities, especially now to provide the different types of support. We are busy every single day collecting food and collecting medications and try to find ways to send it to Gaza and to the West Bank. You know, I don't call it humanitarian. When you're helping your brother and you're helping your sister or your cousin, whether it is first or second or tenth degree cousin, that's a duty. We see that as a duty and not humanitarian support. The second is political support, and the political support is within the Israeli scene. Unfortunately, we're facing a lot of anti-democratic, McCartist actions from the Israeli government that's trying to silence the Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel. More than 1,200 Arab students have been arrested, put in legal processes since October 7th for speaking out. One of them was my daughter. But we are not going to stop, you know, we're not going to be silenced. And there is a price to pay.
Sanam What do they do to these students? What do they do to the girls and the boys?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, I mean, the fact that they have a file opened against you, it means that when you're into the system, the faith recognition system will pick you out, for example, in a coup to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray or to go to a public event. And they will prevent you from entering such an event. They relate to you as potential danger for public calm and safety. You cannot get a job in civil service. You cannot become even a bus driver. You cannot become a taxi driver. You're in the system just by opening the file against you.
Sanam And does the file ever close? Do you have any chance?
Mohammad Darawshe It depends on how they close it. I mean, with my daughter's situation, they want to close the file based on lack of evidence. I mean, they accused her of support for a terror organization. They couldn't bring in any evidence. So if they close it based on lack of evidence, the file continues to be, I mean, she's still in the system. We need to close the file based on lack of crime and not lack of evidence. And that's when you're clean. If it's closed based on lack of evidence, you're stuck for the next seven years at least. And they continue to look for evidence to tie you in support for terror organization. Which means you cannot open your mouth. You cannot put anything on social media. Anything you do, you are under immediate watch. And that limits your capacity to behave as a normal human being. And that's why I sent her for, you know, for the last month. She's in the United States just to be able to breathe. And with her, with her hands, just to allow her some breathing time and try to rethink the situation. And try to go with the legal processes in a way that will clean her and allow her to be back without having to be under surveillance and being the suspect all the time. But it's an intimidation, it's a collective intimidation, not for the 1200, but for the all 2 million citizens to say, watch it. If you open your mouth, if you say something which negates that collective mindset of Israeli Jewish society, then you should, you will be punished. That is McCarthyism. That is fascism, actually. And I think that this government is going to continue in this process to even more deeper. Most, many people avoid taking violent actions, although 18 incidents have taken place since October 7th till now, of Arab citizens that got fed up and they took desperate actions against Jews. Our leadership does not endorse that, does not accept that. It always calls for nonviolent support to the Palestinians, which is short of what certain Palestinian groups want. Hamas wants us to be, to open another front, physical front, in Arab towns and villages similar to the West Bank. And our leadership says, no, we're not going to do that. We have much more to lose than the average Palestinian. the day after, when the dust settles, and hopefully very quickly, we will still be Israeli citizens going to the same workplaces, riding the same buses, having the same governments that will, and any action will have generations of impact on us.
Sanam And presumably, if that were to happen, this, that would be yet another excuse to try and ethically cleanse everybody and move, move everyone again. I mean, that, that's, that's another huge risk, right?
Mohammad Darawshe That's why Ben Gvir is actually making those arrests. I think he's trying to provoke the Palestinian citizens in Israel to get into violent reaction. So that is argument of saying, you see, they're part of the enemy, their fifth column. And as such, let's get rid of them completely and find a way to do that ethnic cleansing plan. And that is definitely very deep in his heart and mind.
Sanam You mentioned, once we were speaking, and you mentioned that the relationship with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli and Palestinians in citizens of Israel, it feels sometimes like it's sweet and sour. I don't know whether you remember that, that sort of refrain. What, what did you mean by that?
Mohammad Darawshe I mean, it's sweet because of our compassionate relationship. There are us and we're there as, as, as humans, as families, as, as people who, but they expect from us much more than what we can give. And that creates that kind of sourness. You know, they, they, we are, it puts us on the margins of the Palestinian national. If we're not engaged in violent actions as they wish us to be engaged in. And some of them would take position as far as saying, oh, if you accept living in the state of Israel and you accept Israeli citizenship, this counts for treason. And because you are now accepting the identity of the enemy. So some take it that far, which creates that bitterness and sourness in, in, in the relationship.
Sanam And how do you respond to that?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, my response is that if staying home is treason, then count me as such. Staying home, my grandfather's decision to stay home, I think was the highest act of patriotism and not treason. Most Palestinians were forced to leave, but some did choose to leave. And those that chose to leave are still refugees till today. And if my grandfather would have taken the decision to leave in 1948, I assume I was still living out of handouts of food from UNRWA and welfare agencies. I think that the fact that the decision of my grandfather's generation to stay was courageous, maybe not popular, maybe not understood. I don't, I don't, I don't even think he understood what he was doing. He just was thinking of wanting to live another day close to his olive orchards and close to his 28 goats that he had and two cows that he had. He didn't know what to do. And I think they just wanted to live one, you know, a day at a time and not to go and choose to leave if they were not forced to leave.
Sanam Yeah. And people, I mean, you can't go back in that time, but it's so many people assume that maybe they were just leaving for a week and coming back or something like that. That always happens.
Mohammad Darawshe He didn't understand 76 years later what kind of political impact this will have. So I think that, that, that decision, if it's called treason, then fine. It means that whoever is saying it is, does not really understand, one, that dynamics of that moment of 1948. And did not, does not understand what does it mean to be a refugee. Our suffering, although it's, we were facing a lot of difficulties, but it definitely is not as close to the suffering of Palestinian refugees. And maybe some of them look at us and say, well, you benefited from history. I don't know if being treated as second class citizens in Israel is a benefit, but yes, it is better than being refugees. And that creates a debate that I hope that, you know, ultimately will be solved when also there will be a solution for the Palestinian refugee problem. And then they can see us as the supportive, generous brother that is only there to try to provide help for the rest of the Palestinians.
Sanam So, so this brings me, you know, in a way to the, to the big question that you've talked about all this work that you're doing at the heart, at the horizontal level, you know, the, the piece by piece piece, and then the politics being the bigger picture. But if you were in charge, if you could make decisions right now and, or if there was a, a willingness to have a national dialogue within Israel, with, you know, within Israel in parallel to what was happening in Palestine, which as a peace builder is what I would say should be happening. If you had that kind of a national dialogue and you had, and you could shape and inform policy, what, how do you envisage what could happen? What would you do if you were in charge?
Mohammad Darawshe Well, if I was in charge, I would, first of all, create a coalition that will be based on the liberals and the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the liberal Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel, which happened twice in history. During the Rabin period, that was, he was dependent on support of the Arab political parties. And that's why he engaged in the peace process and the Oslo agreements that progressed very well until he was assassinated. I would repeat that segment of his story. This will happen only if we increase the political participation of the Palestinian citizens in Israel and create that partnership with the Israeli center left. So that's one, that's one area. The second, and I just spent a couple of days in Washington, D.C. last week and talking to people in the administration. The final status agreement of the Palestinians, no one has invented anything better than the Oslo process. And I think that what we need today is to ask the international community to step in and impose a solution. So let's work on the 97% of agreed land that will be Palestinian. Yeah. And for negotiations for the next five, 10 years or 20 years over on the remaining 3%, let's shrink the conflict and not keep working on the 100%.
Sanam And the 97% that you're talking about, unfortunately, now includes an awful lot more settlers. Right. So the number of settlers, especially in the West Bank, but also in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights has gone up significantly. And the way that they have built the settlements and kind of the Bantustans that we hear about, I've seen it in the times that I've come, the changes and just the physical geography. What happens to the Jewish settlers in this solution that you're thinking about?
Mohammad Darawshe The 97% was not taken out of the air. It was basically looking at the 3% territory, which is heavily populated by Jewish settlers. And that will be some kind of a land swap between Israel and the future Palestinian state. The less than 10% of the settlers live in the deep heartland of the West Bank, and they were sent there to disconnect Palestinian towns from each other. Those kind of settlements have to be taken out. They cannot stay. They were sent for strategic political security matter, and they need to be evacuated. But that's evacuation of only about 10% of the settlers. The rest of them, the 90% of the settlers live in that 3%, which will fit into the land swap. I would look for empty territory that is of similar quality and value, but that needs, that serves the Palestinians' best interests. I mean, one of them, for example, around Gaza, Gaza is very highly populated and needs a little bit more territory. There's enough territory around it that does not have a residence on it, or very, very minimally populated. Maybe a couple of kibbutzim around it. And I think that if you need to evacuate a thousand or a couple of thousand people to make Gaza a bit more habitable, that can be done. I mean, there has to be a price for peace. Israel needs to be able to step backwards and say, okay, we will give something. It cannot be only that the Palestinians have to accommodate that reality. And I do not think that the Palestinians should be asked to give anything more than 78% of the land of Palestine for Israel. That's already very generous. So when the Palestinians accept Palestinian state on 22% of the original Palestine, they're doing their share.
Sanam In your work, if money wasn't an object, if there was a billionaire who wanted to come and help, what would you suggest that they do?
Mohammad Darawshe You know, I believe in education. I'm an educator. So instead of, if I have the financial means, I will hire 7,500 teachers tomorrow, but I will need 7,500 salaries a month and not count on the goodwill of the existing government. I would give every Arab student that wants to study in university scholarship, especially those that belong to the 46% below poverty. There's a lot of potential of people that are able to go to university. They have the brains, but they don't have the means. And this is institutional poverty. These are not people that are lazy, but people that they lost all of their assets when their land was confiscated and their father turned into becoming a day laborer that barely brought enough food to the family and could not send their kids to school. You know, I will look for more training, more women to go to the job market so that you build capacity for people to get themselves out of trouble and you just work with them for two, three years and not for all of their life. And also put every Jewish and every Palestinian kid in some educational encounter that will allow them to want to recognize the humanity in each other, reduce stereotypes, realize the other side doesn't have a horn, doesn't have a tail. They have different political perspectives. We have different political narratives. We can argue those narratives, but in an administered, managed way that does not produce more hatred, but in a way that reduces the tension between the two sides. This is how you create maybe a generation of people that are more willing for peace in the future. (.)
Sanam Thank you. I don't even think you need a billion for that. I think a few hundred million and it's taken you for many, many years. I mean, it's so...
Mohammad Darawshe Probably the price of one fighter jet.
Sanam Exactly. The question I always ask is, what gives you hope? Especially now, especially with what's going on still in Gaza, what gives you hope?
Mohammad Darawshe Two things. One is the fact that I know I have Israeli-Jewish partners in this, that we're not screaming in the darkness, but there are real people with whom we're working. (.) And second is that I see that the younger generation didn't give up. They did not surrender their will to radical groups, and they're still trying to fight the right battle. I see about 300 kids that come to our campus every week. We can unmake racism. We can unmake stereotypes. That gives me hope. You know, it's not the scale and magnitude that makes change within a day. But that's the nature of education. It's a slow process. There's a rule that we use in our institution. It's called TTT. Things take time. But if you bring me that billionaire, instead of 300 kids a week, we can work with 3,000. We can work with 50,000. We know how to do the work. We need the scaling. The scaling comes usually by one of two ways. Either you get the right government, and we do not have the right government today, or you get the resources. This is what happened in Northern Ireland when the international community came with the resources. This is not happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanam Thank you. Thank you for that, Mohamed. And really good luck with everything. I think what you've shared is so important because it just shows what is really possible. At a time when everybody is assuming that nothing is possible and that nothing is going to be possible, actually not only you're saying it's possible, you're seeing it happen. So thank you so much for what you're doing.
Mohammad Darawshe We're making it happen.
Sanam Absolutely. Making it happen. Einstein said knowledge is limited. Imagination is limitless.
Mohammad Darawshe Wonderful. Thank you so much. (...)
Sanam My thanks to the Bijan Reisar Foundation, my own organization, ICANN, and Africa Digital Audio for making these podcasts possible. If you have ideas for topics or for people that I should invite and have a conversation with, please let me know at info at ICANNpeacework.org. Info at ICANNpeacework.org. You can also follow the events on our newsletter, which is on the ICANN website, same address. I really hope that the conversations, the ideas, the solutions, the hope and the inspiration that you've heard in these conversations keep you going over the next week and that you join us again. So stay well and see you soon. And I hope to hear from you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.