The Anatomy of Radicalization: My Journey from a Jewish Extremist to a Peace Advocate. Part III
This is Part Three of a four part series. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here.
Part Three: Breaking the Enemy Images
May 2010, Jenin
By this time, I lived in New York, but I returned to the West Bank frequently. I had become a cultural guide for Dual Narrative tours, which allowed tourists to visit Israeli and Palestinian sights and to have a more expansive prospect for those searching for a broader perspectives on what life is like in the region. Having met several Palestinians and having had deep conversations about their perspectives and lived experience, I had now, through these tours, visited every major Palestinian city and each refugee camp at least a few times. I had yet, though, to visit Jenin city and the Jenin refugee camps, which had a reputation in Israel from stories of the killing of Israeli soldiers. While I was there, the Battle of Jenin (April 2001) was circulating in my mind. In-between a beautiful antique archway and a modern FedEx sign on the old city walls were large public posters depicting Palestinians who were killed, or who had killed others. All the posters depicted young men holding M-16s or AK-47s. Seeing them, I wondered if some of the young men, now themselves dead from violence, had killed people that I had known and loved. Likewise, I imagined: if I were them, growing up in this refugee camp, what would I have done? Would I be dead after trying to kill Israelis? Would I be working for peace? Would I be caught somewhere in the gray in-between? Although I was afraid here of being outed as an Israeli, I held the contradiction: I now understood some of their life stories, I could see choosing violence (after all, I once had too) and I even saw part of myself in them.
I knew that even being here was risky, but that fear was drowned out by how much I wanted to understand our conflict. Walking through the streets of Jenin was scary, but I trusted my Palestinian colleagues, and the group I was helping to lead. I was pushing one of our group members who was in a wheelchair, wearing an American ball cap, smoking a cigarette, as if the cloud of smoke could mask my Israeliness, even momentarily. I had asked the group not to call me by Hebrew name as we were walking through the streets of Jenin, toward the refugee camp — but one of the women kept speaking to me in Hebrew anyway, which made me nervous. I relaxed when I experienced that great unifier — common cultural food — because as we walked through the market, I saw someone making fresh pita bread and I was struck by the familiar smell and the familiar experience of buying bread in West Jerusalem at Shuk Mahane Yehuda, where Yosi, my grandmother’s brother, had had a vegetable stand for decades.
I slept in a village near by Jenin. I woke up on a mattress on the floor with two other men near me on similar mattresses, and I forgot for a moment where I was. We had spent an evening filled with meetings with local leaders and dinner with the host family. We gathered in the dining area, where the family placed comfortable mattresses and orange pillows to support our backs so we could sit in a circle around the newspaper they had spread on a rug, atop of which was food. We had avocado, chips, halloumi cheese, fried potatoes, tomatoes, hummus, two kinds of fresh pita bread, different kinds of homegrown olives, and za’atar. As we began to eat, more extended family came. When the female head of the house heard that some of us were Jews, she paused for a second and looked up at us, saying, “Oh, we don’t hate Jews, okay? You are welcome here. Ahlan Wa Sahlan.” For the most part, no one in the house knew that I am Israeli — my friend didn’t want them to know, for safety reasons , but they knew that I was Jewish and visiting from Brooklyn, and while they were surprised by that information, they didn’t have a problem with it.
The night before, the man who was the head of the family who smoked nonstop and grew tobacco in his backyard passed me a hand-rolled cigarette. He had a lot to say, “It is okay, here. We don’t care. You speak Hebrew? You speak Hebrew? We respect everyone. I miss my boss from Israel, who cared for me for years. My family and I are against violence. I worked in Israel. When the second uprising started, my boss would come to the checkpoint and give me money, because he knew I needed to feed my family.” I thought to myself that I wish other people would hear stories like these, because for many Israelis, a Palestinian is someone who would kill them if he had the chance. For many Palestinians, a Jewish-Israeli is only a settler with a gun, or a soldier at a checkpoint. The truth is more nuanced that any enemy images allow.
March, 2015: Road 60, West Bank
This time, I was approaching the West Bank settlement once again. The last time I was here I came alone, to visit my friends’ graves. This time I came with Eli (the friend who, together with another security guard, had shot the gunman the night of the Basketball Murders). While Eli was driving with fully loaded handgun in his lap, images of different attacks flashed before my eyes. Here… Matan got killed… and there -a few miles further- another friend was murdered. My head was filled with the scenes of the two suicide bombing attacks in Ariel years ago: one where my friend Matan died, another where I assisted in first aid. It was as if blood was still visible on the roads.
As we entered Hawara, we slowed to a crawl. The road we drove on was named after my friend, who got killed while looking for the shooter of the Shabo family. I remembered how, after the Basketball Murders, he invited me to the teachers’ room and made me tea to lift my spirits. I felt anxious driving here; stones and Molotov cocktails are often thrown at those passing through Hawara, particularly when the traffic is heavy. As I got closer to the settlement, my hands began to sweat and my breathing quickened. The last time I visited Itamar, there was just one grave: my friend’s. At my feet now there were seven more.
I was revisiting the past. We were driving uphill past the basketball court all the way to the last outpost, recalling and sharing memories while overlooking Nablus, where so many biblical images and scenes came into being. I realized how sprawling Itamar had become, with so many new houses and farms. This settlement had grown much larger as a result of the land taken from Palestinians.
As we left, I stopped by my Yeshiva High School for the first time in forever. I felt that old nostalgia: here I had planted trees with Miler, who had been killed while performing his duties as a security guard in Itamar, on August 13, 2004. These trees are now huge, covering most of the street: a beautiful legacy. I didn’t dare to go to the corner behind the old food room, where the kids were murdered: it was close enough to be at the teachers’ room, and yet a great gift to say a warm hello to my former rabbis and teachers. Such mixed emotions.
Though I was received warmly, I was afraid to wonder how they might behave if they knew that I had visited Nablus and other Palestinian cities and had sat with the “enemy” over coffee. And I was going to visit the “enemy” again, even within that week. This, too, holds us back: the social pressure to continue the enemy narratives. Even though I had seen and known otherwise, I was not immune.
March 2015: Nablus
I never imagined that I would see Itamar from the Palestinian side without the need to carry a gun: not as a settler; not as a soldier; not visiting Joseph’s tomb to pray; but just as myself — a visitor. This was so different from my friends who had been living here for years. I was with a group of graduate students from Boston, whom my Palestinian colleague and I brought to learn about conflict transformation beyond theory and the classroom. As we were driving through Nablus and seeing the houses of the settlement from this perspective, I felt conflicted because that social pressure was creeping all over me, saying: What am I becoming? Would the people I know even talk to me again if they knew that I am what we used to consider, a “traitor”? Through my windows I saw the PLO police with their AK-47s. The ones whom I feared in the past, the ones I fought in the army, the ones whose guns likely killed some of my friends. These were the police for whom we held signs reading, “Don’t give them guns.” Here they were, holding their guns I had protested against.
And what now? I have literally spent almost two decades learning everything I can about conflict, about people’s perspectives and emotions, about the history of my country and the history of others’ land. I have attended hundreds of classes, completed two degrees, studied cultures, religions, psychology, and biology — all to try to wrap my mind around what we have all been going through (and are still going through) and why we often end up on such divergent paths. I have met thousands of people from across the globe, attended dozens of workshops on building relationships with “the other side” and part of my heart is with them and their experiences now while the other part is still pierced to the ground all those years ago, my body covered in blood, and trying desperately to bring life back to a dead boy’s body.
Whatever we think we know about this conflict, there is always more to the story. I have lived in this narrative for my whole life, and I learn everyday. Because I know firsthand that violent conflict is complex, that our millions of interrelated stories converge, I have no doubt that everyone deserves the same human rights, respect, and dignity. I know that I could have been born a Palestinian or an Israeli, like the flip of a coin. And this is the power of empathy: we choose to begin to see and respect the complexity of life and the beauty of everyone living it together. We choose to see ourselves in the “other.” We choose to undo our beliefs that our fellow humans are enemies.
This is a 4-part series — thank you for taking your time to read Parts One, Two and Three. The final piece, Part Four: “Reflections and Moving Forward” will be published on Tuesday, June 29th. For Part Four, click here
