On Thursday, Sept. 26, two members of an international organization known as the Parents’ Circle hosted an event at Rappaporte Treasure Hall, advertised by email as an event for “Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.” The speakers were an Israeli and a Palestinian woman, though their names were not shared when they introduced themselves. Having both come from experiences with traumatic loss and grievance in their families, they began the event by explaining their past and what had led them to join the Parents’ Circle for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Israeli woman was actually born in South Africa, growing up during apartheid. As a white woman, she participated in the anti-apartheid movement seemingly from a young age, and after South Africans gained their independence, she moved to Israel and raised a family there. Living in Israel, her first-born son was required to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Conducting operations in occupied Gaza and/or the West Bank, he went on to fight against Palestinian rebels during the First and Second Intifadas, but after his military service, he went to India or South Africa “as many young Israelis do,” according to his mother, “to escape what they’ve done.” Years later her son was called to serve in the Israeli reserves and once again operate in occupied Palestine, this time leading a group of soldiers at one of many military checkpoints Palestinians are forced to go through on a daily basis. Before he left, though, the Israeli speaker was told by her son that he would “treat everybody who went past his checkpoint with respect,” while also saying “I will make sure all my soldiers do as well.” Some time later, she received news that her son had been killed by a Palestinian sniper. Despite mourning the loss of her son, she later decided that she wanted to see the man who had killed him, who was being held in Israeli prison, so that she may genuinely ask him, “Why did you kill my son?” Israeli law states that she cannot see him unless he is the one to request the meeting, which he has not. However, from the information that she had gathered, this Palestinian man saw his uncle killed violently by the IDF as a small child, and also had two other uncles killed in the uprisings, and because of this, he “went on the violent path of revenge,” in the woman’s own words. After the tragic loss of her son, the Israeli speaker was willing to look beyond her personal perception of the greater conflict at hand, and went on to become an anti-occupation, anti-apartheid activist for the freedom of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, much like in her early years in South Africa. This eventually led her to join the Parents’ Circle, where she would meet with Palestinians and other Israelis.
The Palestinian woman, the other joint-speaker at the event, was born and raised in Gaza. The Israeli government did not allow Palestinians to have citizen IDs, restricting their movement while also being stuck under the occupation of the IDF. One night, still living in Gaza upon beginning to raise her own family, Israeli soldiers threw tear gas into her house, where her firstborn six-month-old son was sleeping. The tear gas put her son in critical condition, and when she tried to rush him to a hospital that night, the Palestinian woman was stopped at a checkpoint by more soldiers. This wasted what little time she had to get her son the treatment he needed, and when they eventually did arrive at the hospital it was too late to save her son. He died within the next 48 hours. When the Palestinian speaker had another boy three years later, she gave him the same name as her first, who she was still mourning the loss of. “I did not want to forget anything about what happened to him,” she stated. It was this second son who would later be asked in adulthood to join the Parent’s Circle, but his mother initially did not want him to. When approached by a representative of the organization about this, she said, “You know what happened to my son, why would I want him to be a part of this?” Her son still wanted to show his mother what they were truly doing, though, by meeting with other Palestinians and Israelis at the Parents’ Circle, so he convinced her to join him for one meeting. It was there, she stated, that “I saw for the first time Israelis and Palestinians laughing together, hugging each other. I said they’re crazy, how can they do this? We cried the same tears, despite our different situations, we still shared our humanity. I used to only see Israelis only either as soldiers or settlers. For the first time I thought someone could understand my feelings.” After this experience, she too decided to join the Parents’ Circle.
Both of these women, having faced situationally different yet humanely similar grief and loss, chose to look beyond their personal trauma and initial perceptions of certain others. They bravely reached out and connected with others, both Israeli and Palestinian, who were looking to reconcile on the violence and loss they had each faced by the hands of individuals from what many others would simply perceive as “the other side”. The speakers, and the Parents’ Circle as a whole, are also not afraid to acknowledge and fight the injustices that bred this perpetuated cycle of violence. They look specifically at the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which the organization has the greater goal of ending through nonviolence and communication.
For instance, the violence against Palestinians conducted by Israel and the IDF under this very occupation is a major issue for the Parents’ Circle. The Palestinian woman once met with a former IDF officer at another meeting, who had openly admitted to the time he had stopped a van of sick Palestinian children at a checkpoint. When his own child got sick sometime in the future, he was stopped by other Israeli guards who wanted to “ask him a few questions.” It was then that he understood what he really did that day. The man refused to serve in the IDF again, and instead started another organization that advocated for peace. According to the Palestinian speaker, after this confession, the two moved outside of the meeting and tearfully spoke more to each other, each feeling the need to make some sort of amends. In this sense, she later said during the event, “Even in these dark times, we have to do something. We cannot wait for our leaders to do something. We have to work with each other. I don’t care what kind of solution happens. Two-state, one-state, thousand-state. I just don’t want to have to pick up the phone and hear, ‘Again I’m really sorry about your son.’”
Understanding the aforementioned cycle of violence and “path of revenge,” which impacted her firsthand, the Israeli speaker asked those attending the event to “Imagine growing up in Gaza, being fourteen years old. There’s no freedom, there’s no hope. What kind of adults are they going to be?” In a similar experience during her work for the Parents’ Circle, she once attended an event in a school classroom in East Jerusalem. Sharing the story of her son, along with his goal in the reserves to treat Palestinians with respect, an Israeli girl interjected, “Your son deserved to die.” Rather than debating this statement out of love for her son, as most mothers would, she simply asked, “Who did you lose?” The girl began to tell the story of the people close to her that she lost to violence from Palestinians.
The Parents’ Circle describes itself and its events as being for “bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families,” with the aim to “generate cultural empathy and understanding from ‘the other side.’” “It’s not that we’re in love with each other, it’s respect,” stated the Israeli woman. In addition, with her personal knowledge of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, she described how important the Truth and Reconciliation Committee was, providing a space where native, black South Africans and white colonizers together came to terms with the injustices and human rights violations behind apartheid. This was, at least to her, a major inspiration behind the Parents’ Circle’s activities, and their fight against Israel’s own apartheid over Palestinians. However, in being asked “how we can do more” at the event, the Israeli speaker responded to the attendees, “In Gaza, do you know the names of any of the children who have died in the conflict?” The room went silent in this moment. “Those are the human consequences, their stories that we can tell.” These human consequences are often lost in the media, whether it be due to bias towards one side, or how when the lives lost are simply narrowed down to a number, a statistic to be put in the headline of an article. The value that an individual human life holds, and the value it holds to close others, is what the Parents’ Circle wants people to strive towards emphasizing, not the stereotypes or stigma that may come with an identity. When a Palestinian civilian is killed by an Israeli airstrike, people should not be inclined to immediately associate them with Hamas; the prerogative should be to mourn an innocent life lost. “Please, do not import our conflict into your country and create hate between Muslims and Jews,” the speakers requested. “If you are not going to be part of the solution, do not be involved at all.”
