Israelis work to bring more West Bank children to Tel Aviv beaches

After three hours at a checkpoint from the West Bank, many in the group seemed quite serious getting off the bus at the Tel Baruch beach. The entire expanse of sand and water was enveloped by the white-hot glow of a hard-hitting sun. I was partly blinded by the light, partly preoccupied: I wasn’t entirely sure how to conduct myself if I heard a child say, “The Jews took everything,” as they took in the exquisite Mediterranean coastline, speaking from memories of loss inherited.

The sea, though, immediately washed away such theorization of the mind. Everyone was breaking into smiles! I wonder how many years it had been since they’d seen the sea, if at all.

Soon, kids and adults alike tumbled with the waves in their inner tubes. Some of the boys and I threw around a beach ball, often hitting people on the head by mistake, making the laughter grow exponentially. We also played a game where I held them by their ankles, sending them gushing through the water like they were tubing.

A crowd favorite was the moment when one of the mothers brought out a darbouka into the water. Many of the women around her clapped and danced, while a boy showed me how to clap, stomp, and shoulder-pump in the style of Dabke. It was magical to see everyone enjoy Palestinian music and culture from inside the refreshing waves like that.

I also showed several children how to do a water pistol with one hand and two hands. I wished that the next time they get the opportunity to visit a beach, they’ll be able to prank their friends and family by shooting water with full ease.

While most of us didn’t speak each other’s language, the waves and all that we can do with the water served as a common language and common joy.

I believe that projects such as this urgently need to increase. First of all, all children here deserve a childhood filled with the beach and fun in the sun. In addition, these projects make us realize the fundamental things that can bring us together.

Thoughts that it may be an entire year till the same children would be back threatened to beat me down. So instead I tried with all my might to hope that such projects will cumulatively reopen the gates one day – for people to mix and mingle again as fellow people.

A school making history: Jewish-Arab integrated education

Student artwork at a Jewish-Arab integrated school

Volunteering at a Jewish-Arab integrated school was my most joy-filled time in Jerusalem. I feel that, despite all the dehumanization of both Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land, one can wash away prejudice by interacting with the children of ‘the other side.’ I probably couldn’t have engaged with this land in certain meaningful ways without also having been inside the walls of this school. For example, away from the godforsaken ‘adult’ world of strife outside, I saw how kids made real bonds across the divide: through the shared experience of classroom games, soccer during breaks, and together earning the teacher’s ire and together facing her chastisement.

It didn’t take long for questions to emerge in my mind, though: namely, the predominance of Hebrew despite the intended bilingualism, and the limits to sharing both the Israeli and Palestinian narratives.

I sat down with one of the teachers to hear more:

“If the school were perfect, Hebrew and Arabic would be fifty-fifty,” she said, lamenting how if one kid speaks Hebrew, then all the children cascade into speaking Hebrew. Similarly, when staff at a meeting are mixed, then that meeting by necessity is conducted in Hebrew. She didn’t think the Palestinian staff had negative feelings about this, but she couldn’t be sure if this was always the case.

We talked about how most Jewish Israeli students don’t manage to learn Arabic well enough to have natural conversations in the language. I surmised it might take more structured opportunities for them to apply their Arabic as a living language. Moreover, more Jewish Israeli adults who speak Arabic must be sorely needed as role models for the pupils to gain the self-confidence to hone their ability.

We later talked about how the school handles national days of commemoration. How on Yom Hazikaron, or the Israeli Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, Palestinian staff and students do not stand for the siren marking the nationwide minute of solemn silence. How, for a time, many Palestinian children stopped coming to school on this day of commemoration. (By contrast, they do stand in silence for Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.)

“You haven’t seen a single person stand up for the siren, even by accident?” I asked.

“No. It’s like it’s ingrained in everybody. Even if people identify with the sadness, they simply can’t take part.”

In that moment, I contemplated what she was introducing to me, something perhaps ineffable. It was a capacity for people who have hurt each other to empathize, but short of crossing a line – a line Israelis and Palestinians drew together in blood and tears.

The teacher told me that last year, the school instituted a change to have its commemoration of the Nakba together with Yom Hazikaron. She described the undeniable change she sensed among the Palestinian children, a feeling that their presence mattered and was being validated on Yom Hazikaron.

“I think the commemoration allowed them to be seen and allowed their self-esteem to be recognized. You know, I think recognizing each other’s self-esteem is half the battle.”

I also thought about the act of accepting Israelis as they all stood up to honor their fallen brothers and sisters. This, too, is making room for the other’s self-esteem. In both directions, there can be room to acknowledge the uncompromiseable core of the other’s self-worth.

What a place, I thought to myself. In its walls, students are stretching their minds. They’re recognizing that mutual dignity is created not only by bilingualism and multiculturalism, but also by validating the other’s narrative of struggle. To survive, resist, and express one’s right to dignity.

I asked her how she’s changed after ten years at the school. Unassuming and ‘unproselytizing,’ she told me that the school simply opened her eyes. It allowed her to live her ideals. In the past, she’d believed in equality but “had never talked to an Arab kid.” Now, she knows she could never go back to teaching at her previous school. Despite having loved her job, she would not be able to go back to an atmosphere in which people believed Israel could supposedly do no wrong.

While believing in Israel as a state, she was yearning for her country to grow into the democratic and tolerant ideals it set for itself at independence.

Impressions from ‘Judea and Samaria’

I was lucky enough to meet with several people who believe in the Jewish return to Judea and Samaria, or the ‘West Bank’ in more politically correct terms. I firmly believe all parties must be engaged in pursuit of a sustainable peace, so this was one attempt for me to walk the walk and start understanding the so-called ‘settlers.’

I first spoke with an Old City resident who has an extensive network spanning Hebron/Kiryat Arba, Susiya, Gush Etzion, Beit El, Itamar, and others. I appreciated her giving me her time, and reminded myself to stay open to listening.

Sure enough, I’ve come out of the experience utterly confused: how can you open up your heart and mind to accept someone’s decency and passion, while categorically rejecting some of their important opinions and beliefs? Having learned deep skepticism for people like Meir Kahane, Baruch Marzel, and Moshe Feiglin, how do I then keep composure with an endearing lady who tells me she personally knows these and other such folks?

Despite my discomfort, I must say I felt a warm pull by her passion. She claimed that her life’s mission was self-improvement in connection with God. She seemed to truly believe she must continue to put ‘love’ and ‘light’ into the world. And with an unwavering voice, she said all the people she knows in Judea and Samaria are full of that love and light. They are supposedly guided by pure intent and pure heart, despite what some may say about their actions. Here are roughly some quotes in which you can perhaps feel how agreeable and persuasive she is:

“Bringing peace isn’t about ‘conflict resolution,’ but about individual transformation through education and inspiration in the context of community and interactions within it. It can’t be done with strategy. It’s an evolution of how people see the world and how things are done. We will have to leave behind history as history, since it doesn’t and shouldn’t define the totality of reality. We have to create a reality that has never existed before, defined by our values, and that’s extremely difficult—seemingly impossible. But this is simply the only way.”

“We have to start behaving as though the Times of Redemption are already here, so that we are conditioning the world to be amenable to their arrival. We have to begin seeing through the Messiah’s eyes.”

Through this lady’s connections, I later met a lovely couple in Tekoa, part of the Gush Etzion bloc. My feelings jived with their desire for community, family, and the centrality of God in one’s life, which brought them to Tekoa from the United States. Like our friend in the Old City, they too told us about how crucial peace with oneself is for achieving any other larger-scale peace. The Jewish people must have unity first (including healing secular-religious divisions) before hoping to achieve peace with the Arabs, the husband said. I gathered that, in such a process, people’s respect for others ceases to depend on whether they agree with them.

Once the Jewish people thus makes peace with itself, it will spill over to the world. He also said the Arabs must also work on themselves, I assume in parallel. They need to begin telling each other that violence and killing are against the Quran. As long as Arabs are afraid to talk to him or his wife for fear of being called a collaborator with Israel, peace will not come.

“We’re supposed to be here. That’s clear to me.”

“You must be a light unto all people you meet.”

Perhaps you can’t really get a sense from these quotes. But I can’t shake his clarity from my mind. How he can say with quiet confidence that extremism in Judea and Samaria hasn’t seen historic growth. How the BDS movement will hurt its adopters the most, not Israel, by giving up Israel’s “computer chips and cures for cancer.”

Listening to these individuals in Tekoa and the Old City, I felt I was entering a world existing on an entirely other plane than political labels or political accountability. It’s a world where everything is having faith in the long-term process. Where constituents don’t vote for a political settlement promising ‘peace’ in the short term. It’s a world where people are reaching for something that doesn’t yet exist, where family and community serve as an incredible source of support for achieving the impossible.

Is this really the same world that periodically gives rise to those twisted acts we hear about in the news? Is it at all because people are judged more by the ‘pure intent’ of their actions rather than by their immediate physical consequences?

If, according to your worldview, your actions cannot truly be judged by secular law or by how they affect a political ‘peace process,’ then at what point do you stop and evaluate your actions? How much adversity (some of it self-wrought) will your faith help you cope with before you rethink your religious convictions?

I come away with respect for these people, including for the spiritual force that they’ve found for themselves. But I still hunger to understand whether they see their faithful actions as having so far contributed to their ideals such as equality, social justice, and dignity for all in the land between the River and the Sea.