No lasting peace will be possible between Israel and Palestine until there is a dramatic change of consciousness comparable in depth to the kind of change that took place in the United States as segregation was dismantled; as the women’s movement put patriarchy on the defensive and dismantled many (but not all) aspects of sexist oppression that predominated for 10,000 years in much of Western society; or, more recently in the United States, as the LGBTQ movement fought to achieve marriage equality—all changes that were dismissed as “unrealistic” in the first decades of those struggles. A similar change of consciousness in Israel-Palestine will require a strategy of nonviolence, compassion, and empathy.
Such a strategy requires the development of a powerful movement that at once critiques both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and at the same time tries to convince each side that it is through generosity toward the other that something might change. Each side, of course, will tell you that they’ve already tried this approach and that it didn’t work. In this, both sides are deluded, and they can be taught to see things differently.
Palestinian violence toward Jewish settlers did not start in 1967 or even in 1948. It was there from almost the start, when Zionist settlers began arriving in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and was mobilized more fully by the Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as by other nationalist and fundamentalist extremists. Likewise, Jewish violence against Palestinians did not begin with the conquest of the West Bank, but was already present in the expulsion of some Palestinians from their land in the 1920s and 1930s. Jewish violence became a major factor in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem from 1947 to 1949. Neither side has clean hands, and we who seek peace must be able to critique both sides, even as we assure both sides that a satisfactory mutual peace agreement is possible.
Yet none of this can even begin to be heard until we approach those with whom we disagree—on both sides—with a spirit of generosity, a commitment to nonviolence, and a strategy of compassion and empathy: everyone must feel that they are being heard. We need to train a massive force of empathic and compassionate activists, people from around the world who can begin to teach such skills to both Palestinians and Israelis. But since they are likely to be blocked from entering Israel-Palestine in large numbers once the Israeli Right understands our strategy, Israelis and Palestinians themselves must also seek this kind of training.
Let’s call this united set of activists the Empathy Tribe. The Empathy Tribe must be built in Israel and Palestine, and in every country where peace-oriented people are willing to become ambassadors for reconciliation in Israel and Palestine. It must also arise from the many supporters of Israel or Palestine in the lands of their dispersion around the globe. And this approach will have to include, for those of us who support the Israeli peace movement and oppose the policies of many of the settlers and of the Israeli Right, the very difficult path of developing empathy for the Right and for the settlers, even as we oppose their policies. Some of this work is already being done by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, by Mubarak Awad and the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, and by several other groups. But to work with millions of Israelis and Palestinians, the Empathy Tribe needs to train thousands of people for this essential work.
Progressive Thought in Action
An example of this kind of thinking was exhibited in Israel this past October 2015 by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the president of Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem. Arik was among a group of peace-oriented Israelis trying to protect Palestinian land from a group of Jewish settlers who sought to steal olives from Palestinian land and burn Palestinian trees. Rabbi Ascherman was assaulted by one of these Israelis who kicked him, threw rocks, and drew a knife. The incident was captured on video and shown on the website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Israeli attacker was in position to kill, with his knife raised, ready to plunge it into Ascherman. But he didn’t. Instead, he got up and ran away.
Here is what Rabbi Ascherman wrote about this moment:
I would like to think that this moment in which my attacker was an instant away from becoming a murderer caused him to ask himself how he came to be on a hilltop in the occupied territories, so angry that the Israeli army had protected Palestinian farmers harvesting their olives, that he was driven to lash out.
I hope he has spoken with his fellow “hilltop youth,” explaining his change of heart. Perhaps his teshuvah [repentance] will have ripple effects reaching the communities that cultivate extremism, those who look the other way or “understand” them, and all those who have turned our shared belief in the sacredness of the Land of Israel into idolatry by raising it above all other values.
We founded Israel correctly vowing “never again.” We must have the power to ensure that Jews will never again be helplessly slaughtered and persecuted, as we had been for 2,000 years of statelessness. There are still those who would “throw us into the sea” if they could. We are not yet in a messianic age in which the Jewish people can survive without power ….
We should never, even once, oppress others as we were oppressed (Exod. 23:9). We now exploit our power to take from others. The Midrash teaches us that the hand that strikes the non-Jew will eventually strike the Jew as well. The violence against me is the inevitable outcome of the civilian and state violence directed at Palestinians on a daily basis. “The sword comes into the world because of justice denied and justice delayed” (Pirkei Avot). Our sages didn’t justify the sword, but understood that injustice brings it upon us.
We could pin all the blame on the handful of settlers who are extremely violent and the larger settlement community that fosters them and turns a blind eye. However, all of Israeli society has to engage in soul-searching. Too often even Israelis who oppose settlements act towards the lawless and violent culture that has sprung up with equanimity, resignation, a polite “Isn’t it terrible,” or the feeling that extremists must be appeased in order to hold Israeli society together.
This way of thinking and acting by Rabbi Ascherman is a manifestation of what we mean by a path of nonviolence, compassion, and empathy. It is not passivity, but an insistence that we put ourselves in the mind of others, to see what might be motivating them. So join our Network of Spiritual Progressives at spiritualprogressives.org/join and help us develop an Empathy Tribe (we also want to invite JStreet, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other organizations aimed at peace and justice in the Middle East to offer similar trainings to their members).
Transformation could take decades. But it could happen much more quickly than any of us might imagine, the way marriage equality suddenly became possible, once we have a large and effective Empathy Tribe working in Israel, Palestine, and the countries to which they have been dispersed—including the Palestinian refugee camps.
The details of a peace agreement are more likely to become relevant and not simply be dismissed as utopian fantasy once the Empathy Tribe has made serious inroads toward transforming consciousness in Israel, in Palestine, and among their respective diasporas. Our Tikkun plan for a two-state solution is presented in my book Embracing Israel/Palestine, which you can order at www.tikkun.org/eip. I’ve also outlined the plan in a shorter form in my essay in Tikkun’s Winter 2014 issue—subscribers and current members of the NSP have access to our online archives, where they can read past issues. Please let us know if you encounter any problems, including forgetting your username or password for reading Tikkun articles online. Simply contact [email protected] with your questions.
Meanwhile, 2016 marks our thirtieth anniversary. Please log on to www.tikkun.org where you will find information about how to celebrate with us.
