My Turn: A third way to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

‘Complexity’ is the lingua franca of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How could it not be, as Israelis celebrate the establishment of a Jewish State in 1948 as their “Independence Day,” and Palestinians refer to the same events as the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”). Two intertwined yet competing belief systems, leaving Israelis to gird themselves for perpetual conflict and Palestinians yearning for national self-determination and communal dignity unfulfilled.

Having lived in Israel myself from 1973 to 1975, during my youth as an ardent Zionist and returning to the West Bank in 2016 with the objective of listening to both Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, my understanding of this continuing tragedy has evolved considerably.

A complete explanation must center itself around a religious upbringing illuminated by three biblical phrases: “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” and the soulful reminder that “You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the soul of the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Consolidating all three, we are enjoined to engage the world with an open and principled heart.

That said, born only five years after the Holocaust I also learned early on that being Jewish in the world was not safe, for the sting of anti-Semitism leaves a deeply felt vulnerability as instinctual as breathing. Fast forward several decades, my attempt to reconcile an exceptionally humane scripture that would have me lean towards compassion for the stranger (i.e., Palestinians), and an “inherited” vulnerability that would have me lean towards Israel and safety, has been the most painful and challenging experience of my life.

From the Israeli and personal perspective — after centuries of religious discrimination and violence directed at Jewish communities in Europe culminating in the Nazi Holocaust (1941 to 1945), Zionism’s founders (late 19th century) pursued an ingathering of world-Jewry to Judaism’s biblical homeland to secure self-determination and safety.

And, from the Palestinian perspective — the creation of Mandatory Palestine (1920 to 1948), the UN Partition plan, and the establishment of a Jewish State in 1948, instilled a similar collective trauma that, ironically, Zionism was trying to liberate Jewry from. Wherein the majority of Palestinians were forcibly removed by Israeli forces from their homeland, their indigenous culture uprooted, over 500 Palestinian towns “erased” (bulldozed, and most redeveloped with Hebrew names). What most Americans appear not to understand is that despite Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, without exception the Palestinians I spoke to in 2016 still refer to the Nakba as the more devastating tragedy.

Parenthetically, it wasn’t until the late 1990s upon release of formerly archived government documents, that Israeli scholars, referred to as “The New Historians,” challenged the official Israeli version of events, implicating Israeli political and military leadership with orchestrating the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948. Over the years, layer after layer of the traditional Israeli narrative that the Palestinians left of their own accord, has been stripped away by independent sources, confirming the darker reality underlying the events of 1948. With each new essay, novel, interview and personal story, my youthful naivete surrounding the implementation of Zionism’s original objectives gave way to a broken heart.

As so often throughout history, “to the victor goes the spoils,” and given the lopsided power dynamic, the Palestinian community lacked the political platform to tell their story. Is it any wonder, in light of the continuing violence and all we now know, that we must ask, in desperation, have Palestinian militants fired missiles into Israeli cities and repeatedly attacked civilians? Yes, “criminal” under international law and unconscionable. And, has Israel altered the demographic character of the occupied areas, illegally seized Palestinian land to expand its settlement project, impairing an independent Palestinian state? Yes, “criminal” under international law and unconscionable too.

Confronted with this deep well of history and memory that individuals on both sides of the conflict draw upon, how can we, how dare we, remain unmoved and continue adhering to the same failed paradigms. If we have gleaned any one lesson after decades of conflict, it is that war is not the solution.

Returning to my personal journey, I find myself occupying a different landscape than where I started. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains “complicated,” I am better prepared to respond. In the course of my own outreach and information gathering, I found I am not alone. Voices and solutions are emerging, without parsing who is deserving of compassion, that might better orient us towards a new beginning, a “third” way.

For example, Rabbi Sharon Brous (based in Los Angeles) recently challenged her congregation to consider the following, “That a paradigm shift is required by rejecting the binary model and refusing to see being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian as contradictory stances. That we try to honor competing narratives, cultivate hearts that are capacious enough to hold multiple truths, knowing there is very likely another way to tell every single story they hear - and nothing more than the Israel-Palestinian struggle elicits this feeling.”

Rabbi Brous’s reflections remind me of Bishop Desmond Tutu’s comments during the commencement of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “To be able to forgive, one needs to know whom one is forgiving and why.”

These are both radical ideas, for we well know how threatening it is to step outside of our comfort zone, to set aside the familiar (and opportunistic) biases we have long adhered to and listen to one another’s stories with the compassion and dignity each deserves.

However, if we are to go forward, how else might we bridge the tragic experiences of the past while seeking a path to a viable and more humane future? How else might we sow seeds of hope and reconciliation that both sides yearn for?