Talking Dugri: Are Peace and Coexistence Possible?
This panel discussion explores the challenges of fostering peace and coexistence in light of the heightened crisis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Panelists, including an American-Gazan advocate, a Jewish academic, an Arab-Israeli advocate for coexistence, express a similar desire for inclusive dialogue while grappling with tensions between their commitments to national, ethnic, or religious identities. Ultimately, they speak of the need to engage in uncomfortable conversations and how aligning on coexistence doesn't negate the complexities of personal and communal affiliations. This discussion reaffirms the need for inclusive approaches that foster mutual understanding while acknowledging the difficult realities of life on the ground.
About Our Speakers and Moderator:
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is an American writer and analyst who grew up in Gaza City, having left in 2005 as a teenage exchange student to the United States. He writes extensively on Gaza’s political and humanitarian affairs and has been an outspoken critic of Hamas and a promoter of coexistence and peace as the only path forward between Palestinians and Israelis. Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in intelligence and national security studies. His writing has been published in US and Israeli outlets, and his opinions and comments have been featured in the international press.
Moderator Laura E. Adkins is an award-winning writer based in New York. Her work on Israel, global Jewish life, and gender issues has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Glamour, Fox News and other outlets. As a senior director at Jewish Women International, Laura works to combat gender-based violence and advance women’s leadership. She is also a volunteer mentor-editor for the OpEd project and serves on the New York Atid board of the Israel Policy Forum.
Dr. Masua Sagiv is a Senior Faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute based in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at the Helen Diller Institute, U.C. Berkeley. Masua’s scholarly work focuses on the development of contemporary Judaism in Israel, as a culture, religion, nationality, and as part of Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Her research explores the role of law, state actors and civil society organizations in promoting social change across diverse issues: shared society, religion and gender, religion and state, and Jewish peoplehood.
Mohammad Darawshe is the Director of Strategy at the Center for Shared Society at Givat Haviva. He holds a master's degree in Peace and Conflict Management from Haifa University, and is a Robert Bosch Academy Fellow and faculty member at the Hartman Institute. Previously worked as co-director of The Abraham Initiatives, elections campaign manager at the Democratic Arab Party and United Arab List, and was a leadership fellow at the New Israel Fund.
Video Transcript
Introduction: [00:00:00] Before our panelists begin their fascinating conversation, I know it will be fascinating, I'd just to remind you a few key points that are part of the Z3 vision. So first of all, you'll likely hear an opinion you disagree with. That's good. That's actually a very good thing. That's a blessing.
Those of us that are Fluent in Hebrew, we all know that we say when we argue, we become wiser. So I urge you to argue and disagree. But please understand that it's out of the principle of this conference to include diversity and different opinions. And while we can't obviously represent every perspective, this panel today like many others, reflect a range of opinions.
Our panels brings together people from different backgrounds. Israelis, North Americans, Europeans, Jews and non Jews alike. This reflects the Z3 commitment to engage as [00:01:00] equal partners in securing the future of the Jewish people, Israel, and the region. So with that, I hand it over to Laura. There was a small exercise for you to engage with your partners in a few minute discussion.
And Laura and I agreed that this is such an important conversation, we want to leave as much time for the conversation. So with your permission.
Laura Adkins: Thank you so much. And thank you all for being here. And I think that table setting was really helpful. And I think it's really important to remember that we don't get these opportunities very often to speak between Palestinians and Israelis.
So I just want to reiterate that I want to try to lean into the points of disagreement. Everyone sitting up here, believes in coexistence and peace. So when you hear things you disagree with, I'm trying to [00:02:00] push to refine what the differences are and the obstacles are. So as we get started, I'm joined up here with Ahmed Fouyad Al Khatib, a senior resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Dr. Massouas Aghiv, who is senior faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute, as well as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, and Mohamed Owasheh, the director of strategy at the Center for Shared Society at Givat Haviva. And I want to start out by talking about each of us are up here representing ourselves as individuals, but also speaking on behalf of a perspective of a community.
And my first question, very broadly for each of you is, who do you consider in your community? And how have the last 407 days been? shaped the experiences of that community or communities. Maybe, Ahmed, if you want to start.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Great. Thanks so much [00:03:00] for having us. And actually, I appreciate the opportunity to start because I always feel very strongly about saying that I'm speaking on my own behalf.
I am not speaking on behalf of the Palestinian community. I'm not speaking on behalf of Gazan Americans or Gazans. That said, a lot of the sentiments that I share and express are certainly various elements of them are held by different folks in the Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Gazan community.
And I also have made a point of always highlighting how diverse Muslim and Arab and Palestinian communities are. And Palestinians in Gaza are different than Palestinians in the West Bank. And they're radically different than Palestinians in the diaspora. And we'll talk about that. You'll see that as a kind of a common thread that I bring up in this, who's in my community.
I've honestly felt soon after October 7, I very much so felt politically homeless such that I was in desperate pursuit of a new community that could hold multiple truths, that could hold different threads together, that could have [00:04:00] empathy and solidarity with the victims of October 7 and with the hostage families and to say not in my name, not my beautiful people in Gaza who are suffering.
We are absolutely not represented by the sheer horror of what we saw. And yes, we saw the participation of civilians and we know about Hamas and we'll talk about all that later. But I didn't feel that the, what you would call the pro-Palestine discourse or pro-Palestine community, and I'm very specific about putting them in air quotes because what does that even mean anymore today?
It is not a community that speaks to how I perceive myself. I very much so identify as pro-Palestine. I am very pro the Palestinian aspirations for self determination and independence and for peace. But also I was horrified by a lot of the dehumanization of the Palestinian people by folks in the pro Israel community.
And I felt that there was just this reductionist narrative of what [00:05:00] constitutes pro or against or anti. So I've been in this pursuit, since October 7, of a new community, one that is not defined by religious or national identity, but is defined by desired outcomes, shared humanity, shared empathy. And that's not kumbaya, let's hold hands, eat falafel and hummus and everything is going to be fine.
I love falafel and hummus, but that's not how we're going to end up with an actual framework that can get us beyond this point. And so my community are Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, Jews, Israelis, and non-Jews and Israelis, Christians, atheists, and everybody who is interested in seeing a radically different discourse, who is interested in having these difficult, uncomfortable conversations, who is interested in challenging the binary entrenched narratives that I think have failed both people miserably and equally.
Thank you .And that's been a difficult road to take because it's very, it would have been very easy as somebody who is from Gaza, who has skin in the game, [00:06:00] who has lost dozens of immediate and extended family members. to put myself out there with a pro-Palestine community and to take a certain angle to this conflict.
And it, that could have been my community, if you will, or it would have been as somebody who's highly critical of Hamas, who's highly critical of a lot of elements of the Palestinian narrative and the historic mistakes. There are attempts to drag me over to the pro-Israel community and to tokenize me and to parade me as the anti-Hamas Palestinian without giving space to the fact that I am very pro-Palestine and I do believe in the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.
And so being in the middle, and not just being as a centrist, but being somewhere where you can have Space for both, means that you also get attacked by both. You also get dehumanized by both. And you also get rejected and called. In one post on Twitter, it'll be like, Tell your Hamas friends to surrender and to turn over the hostages.
[00:07:00] And then the next comment will be like, You Zionist spy, CIA sellout, go to hell. So it's it's been a journey, but I am delighted and honored and really happy by what I believe is the community that I've created and it is my hope that part of my presence here Is an attempt to bolster that community and to plant those seeds.
Dr. Masua Sagiv: So I want to be, Ahmed, I want to be with your community. I want to be a part of your community because on everything that you've said about I consider myself pro Palestinian also that's why it's very difficult for me. I don't consider, for example, the university campus encampments and the struggles to be pro Palestinian.
I consider them to be anti Israel, which is a different a different framing of this. And definitely I want to be in, in this community of people who are seeking peace, who are not afraid of uncomfortable conversations, but at the same time I'm also [00:08:00] very much entrenched in my religious and national and ethnic communities. So definitely the Jewish community is my community. The Israeli community is my community. And sometimes It's not enough to say what community you are part of because it's great that I want to be in our community now, right? In, in our place and I also want to be with my Jewish and Israeli community and when I live my life in the past year in the Bay Area the commitments, my commitments to both communities often collide and are in deep tension.
So what am I supposed to do? I get, and again, obviously I get criticism and heat from both sides. The side that is willing to speak with me. Some of them are just not engaging with me because I'm a Zionist. But yes, number one, of course, I want to be with this community, and I suspect also that a lot of people will say, I want to be in this community, but are not [00:09:00] willing to make the next steps that are, I think crucial in order to move forward.
Mohammad Darawshe: Good afternoon. Laura, your question reminds me of an interview I had with Krista Teppit once, and you can look at it. And the title of that, that she chose, Children of Both Identities. And so when you ask, when you have four panelists here, you have two Israelis, me and Msua, and two Palestinians, me and Ahmed.
And that, that's my community. I'm a Palestinian citizen of Israel. I'm proud of being a child of both identities and I'm trying to make this work. I'm not an academic, I'm not, I'm more of an activist, an educator that is trying to think about what do we do tomorrow morning? How do we bring more Jewish and Arab youth to meet each other, usually for their first ever encounter?
How do we bring, what, who's my [00:10:00] community? 2,500 cross sector teachers. Jewish teachers in Arab schools, Arab teachers in Jewish schools. Tomorrow, they're going to meet 400,000 kids. 20 percent of them are Arab, 20, 40, 80 percent of them are Jewish. That's my community. People that are concerned about what do we actually do tomorrow to make Jewish Arab relations work?
And I do believe it works. I do see it working. You know where it works also? Who's my community? Hopefully you will not need it. If you come to an Israeli hospital, you will find that almost one third of the medical staff in Israeli hospitals are Arab. That's my community. Those are the heroes. Those are the warriors for peace, in real, physical, mean, meaning.
And that's the community that I relate to. People that are, that didn't give up hope. People that didn't give up work. People that know that it's up to us to make it happen. That's my community.[00:11:00]
Laura Adkins: Ahmed, it's an interesting coincidence you used the phrase that we shouldn't just be sitting together eating hummus because, Mohamed, in an interview you gave several months ago, you framed it exactly like that. That the work of coexistence cannot just be sitting around and experiencing one another as kind of foreign things, but actually deeply interrelated.
You have this whole methodology. I'd love if you could get into a little bit about how it's not really about dialogue, but about mutual interests. But before you do, I think it's really important to define words. And I think the word “coexistence” is something that people's relationship with has changed a lot since October 7th.
I guess the question is both how do you think about that word coexistence and how have you refined your method of getting toward that in the last 400 days?
Mohammad Darawshe: Great, thank you. I've been working on Jewish Arab, I called it coexistence until 2001. And [00:12:00] in 2001 I said I don't want coexistence with Jews.
Because coexistence can also be between a horse and a rider. You can have wonderful relationship between a horse and a rider. You can have wonderful coexistence and in a joint ride, you see the same views, you drink from the same river, you share the same sweat, and you can have wonderful connection with your pet.
And at the end of a joyful ride, One goes to the barn and eats hay and one goes to the castle and eats a steak, and if you're French, it could be a horse steak. Also, I wrote an article against my industry, the coexistence industry in 2001, and I almost got fired because of it. And that the question then I forced was is that the relationship between Jews and Arabs, one enjoying the ride and one doing the work?
And the question was, what do you want? And I said, I want equality. And I [00:13:00] refined it, and I called it, Equal Coexistence. And I refined it in another article later, and I wrote, I used the term, Shared Society. I was the first one to use the term Shared Society, which has become the title for Jewish Arab relations.
And the idea behind Shared Society is basically to include two components. Good relations, that we need to have between both sides and equality at the same time. Now, good relations has three stations that it visits usually. One is the, what's called the social contact theory in conflict resolution. The social contact theory is the combine stuff.
Let's eat hummus. And is the pita good? Does it have enough garlic or does it have enough lemon? That's basically, and it's important. It's good to do it with, usually for your first ever encounter. We bring Jewish and Arab kids. You'll see in our brochure, you can take it in the back. Last year we worked with 17, 774 kids [00:14:00] that came to meet each other, half Jewish, half Arab, at Givat Haviva.
For 93 percent of them, this was their first ever encounter. Usually, mostly elementary and high school kids. If you don't go through the Kombaya stage, you cannot go to the second stage. If you don't go through the stage of social contact where you break stereotypes and you humanize the other, then you can't go to a real dialogue on narratives and debate about identities.
And that's an important stage too. Let's debate about who did what to whom on October 7th, on October 6th, on October 8th, 1948, and who did Abraham want to sacrifice? Was it Isaac or Ishmael? And we continue to debate it. But let's debate it. Let's talk about the conflictual issues. Let's allow the elephant in the room, and that's a topic that needs to be discussed.
But more than that, and I go back to the hospitals, I think we need to talk about mutual interests, about interdependency. [00:15:00] President Weizmann once said, when he was president, he said, Jews and Arabs, we're doomed to live with each other in this country. He referred to Arab citizens in Israel. We're And I wasn't happy with that message.
So I had the second meeting later with President Rivlin and we agreed that we're destined to live with each other. So if we're destined to live with each other, as we can create that interdependency in the medical industry, we can create it in the art industry. We can create it in, at universities. We can create it in the buses, in the schools, in the shopping malls.
We can create that and it's working. It's holding together. Everyone was expecting that May 21 clashes. will explode in our face following October 7th. And we're managing to hold it together. Why? Because we created those islands of success, of interdependency, of collaboration, of mutual interests. And that's why when we talk about the term shared society is much more important than coexistence.
The second is equality. [00:16:00] And equality is not a new topic that I'm introducing here. Read Israel's declaration of independence. It speaks about even two types of equality. It speaks about political equality and social equality. And if we drop it today as some people that narrated and wrote the nation state law, which was passed in the Knesset in 2018, they're trying to rewrite the vision of Israel to make it hierarchical Israel, to create coexistence between Jews and Arabs based on no equality.
I want the promise of the founding fathers to be fulfilled. So when we talk about good relations, the founding fathers term was also equality. And that's why equality and good relations, shared society is the substitute term.
Laura Adkins: So another big, elephant in the room that is on my mind a lot these days is, I think on October 6th, if you asked most American Jews, do [00:17:00] you, what's your ideal outcome for the state of Israel and Palestine?
Most polling data shows the majority of American Jews support some sort of negotiated two state solution, and a plurality usually of Israelis also were open to it depending on how it was framed. For That is not the case today. And show of hands, who's been to Israel since October 7th? So many of you know that the Israeli psyche is, still not over the Lebanon war, but especially the last 400 days have hardened a lot of hearts, I think, to, to talking about the end goal of two states.
And Masuo, why is it important, and is there any point even in talking about these lofty goals when not only on a grassroots level, but the Netanyahu administration has made very clear that they have no interest in seeing the creation of a Palestinian state. So how do we make sure that these conversations are not just idle [00:18:00] chatter among people that have access to each other but are actually going somewhere?
So a
Dr. Masua Sagiv: few points here. As opposed to a lot of the things that Israel is that the Israeli citizens are in deep disagreement with the prime minister and the government, a Palestinian, state is actually not one of them. So in, as opposed to, again and the, this specific government really doesn't hold the trust of the people.
But with the question of a Palestinian state, you would see even the majority among Israeli liberals are saying, are not saying never to states, but right now I cannot speak about. A Palestinian state because of fear, because I cannot guarantee because if we had a Palestinian state on October 7th, then it wasn't just the Gaza.
envelope, but it was the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, every [00:19:00] single city in Israel. And this is based on something that Netanyahu is very good at harnessing, which is a politics of fear, as opposed to what Muhammad spoke about which is a politics of fear. of hope, which is something that is more accessible, I think to North American Jewry than it is to Israeli Jews.
In, in, in a most, in, in a very basic way that maybe we'll talk about later. So it's not just Netanyahu. It's really the sentiment of the people. Now, part of the frustration and I want to talk about the, I don't know if it's a gap or an experience of a gap between Israelis and American Jewry.
There, it's almost an, a mirror image, right? Because the majority of Israeli citizens are more right wing, are more conservative. The majority of of American Jewry are liberal. And I want to talk about Israeli liberals because Israeli liberals should be the spearhead [00:20:00] of of anti occupation, pro peace, pro a Palestinian state, and they shouldn't be swayed by the politics of fear.
But what they need a strong ally across the ocean. They need a strong ally with in the image of North American Jewry, and what I feel like, and I think that a lot of Israeli liberals have been feeling in the past year, at the beginning, there was a lot of support and a lot of solidarity and I think for the first time, this is for a different panel, but I think for the first time for a lot of people, of Israeli Jews was the first time that they really felt American Jews with them, behind them.
But as time went by, I think that we're not using the same, the conversation is not using the same language. And I feel like this is really needed and the model that we're seeing in the U. S. for a conversation about the two state solution [00:21:00] and the day after the war is not penetrating Israeli discourse and it's not penetrating Israeli discourse because Israelis, including Israeli liberals, who are really against this political government.
meaning we can really use these people as a change agent, are feeling that they don't have that they don't really have an ally. And if they have to choose between Israelis and people who say who are calling for ceasefire, not because of the hostages, for example, but for other reasons then they're pushing back against it.
And if people are speaking about a Palestinian state without talking about the security needs of Israelis. They just Israelis are just saying this is, you don't know what you're talking about because you're not here. And I don't think that the people that are speaking about a Palestinian state don't know what they're talking about, but I'm talking about what Israelis are hearing right now.
Maybe I'll stop with this.
Laura Adkins: Yeah, I think on that same note but across the wall, Ahmed, [00:22:00] you've written extensively about the unprecedented, is the word you used, level of day to day suffering within Gaza, including the death of many loved ones and your own family. But remarkably that you actually still believe in the possibility of Palestinian leaders abandoning armed resistance.
You made the statement in the last panel that this is Gaza's last war. How? Give us something to hold on to. What signs do you see that, that give you that optimism?
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Certainly, and I promise I will get to that, but just like in 30 seconds or less, the idea of coexistence is something that for me also encapsulates the need for some sort of separation between the two people, even though there's two modalities, there's interconnectedness and the intertwined fate in which Palestinians certainly inside Israel who are citizens of Israel, are part of Israeli society and the social fabric, but Certainly folks in [00:23:00] Gaza, certainly after 17 years of life under Hamas and the need for a gradual generational shift and certainly many in the West Bank, there absolutely is this interest in a separate entity, a separate space where they can express their unique national identity.
And so for me, coexistence is an end state to that. It's not it's not necessarily a thought process. It's it's not necessarily what guides the day to day of how do we solve this problem, but it describes how we get to a place where there will be islands, there will, as you described them of or big islands or aircraft carriers, whatever you want, describe them of like cooperation and interconnectedness.
And then there will be spaces where there's separation between the two people. And within that separation, there's coexistence. And I feel like that is very strong because there are many Israelis, Jewish Israelis and Palestinians [00:24:00] who Say that like you I mean the number of times that I've heard people talk about we want to divorce That's the analogy people describe and I as me as Ahmed who has built robust relationships With the Jewish and Israeli communities.
I Don't necessarily identify with that. I view I want to go beyond just like coexistence I want to go to cooperation and collaboration and as like the realization of that shared future But we also need to check our privilege in that, us here on this stage are radically different than those, than the 70 percent of people in Gaza who have never left the Gaza Strip, let alone ever interacted face to face with a Jew or an Israeli without the context of the occupation.
As for what you asked me why do I believe that? That this is going to be Gaza's last war. Why do I think there's something different? And there's tears to that, right? And this is part of why I decided to put myself out there. But I genuinely feel that there is, this is after all [00:25:00] Gaza's first actual like full on full blown war.
What we've experienced in the past was horrendous and I'm hoping The part of why I'm really loud is that I'm mainly, largely deaf in my left ear from an IDF bombing that killed two of my friends and rendered, gave me permanent hearing damage and so I can't hear myself and so my body overcompensates and I yell, but the idea is that, like I, experience that low intensity where this is not to say it was any less destructive or harmful but what we've experienced the second intifada cast led in 0809 the 2012 war the 2014 war that every thought was the everybody everyone thought was the biggest Those, ultimately, were a form of low intensity warfare.
And what followed October 7 was an actual war that was massively destructive. That was, and this is where I think you see the entry of the lexicon of, Is it a genocide? Is it not? And I'm not here to adjudicate that, and I'm not, and I've Caught a lot of crap for refusing to say it is [00:26:00] or it isn't and we can ask me about that later but my point is Now that there's this it's partly the consequence of an actual war.
It's partly the disregard for the lives of palestinian civilians by hamas the utter just insanity of this statements that we have seen time and again from Musa Abu Marzouk, from Khaled Mishal, from Osama Hamdan, these are all Hamas's leaders in Lebanon, in Qatar, in Turkey, in wherever the hell they are, of just like how Uninterested they are in the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And, Khaled Mishaal in Qatar said, our losses are tactical, the Zionist losses are strategic. And the amount of memes and anger and rage and fury that people in tents had for him, that this regard, the contempt that people had for him was unbelievable. Or what Osama Hamdan, The guy in Lebanon right now who's traveling around the Middle East rallying around the Middle East when [00:27:00] he said that when someone asked him what about the losses of Palestinians in Gaza?
What are we going to do about that? This is horrendous. And he was like what's the price for Palestine? You're either going to accept that there's just a price and the way he said it in Arabic was just so callous and so despicable that there were thousands. of social media posts on Twitter, on, on Facebook, on social media that I read daily.
There's not a day that goes by without me seeing an endless avalanche of Palestinians in Gaza who are turning against Hamas en masse, not just because of the consequences, but they now, it's like a full circle. They see Hamas having squandered their resources, they see Hamas having uttered disregard for their lives.
They see Hamas's strategy as entailing the death of civilians in an attempt to delegitimize Israel to Israel. And when I say this here in the United States, and I say this on social media, and I say this, the pro [00:28:00] Palestine community, they're like, Oh, you're just being a Hasbara agent. You're like, Just because the Israelis say it, doesn't mean it's false, okay?
Yes, there's Hasbara, and I have no interest in Hasbara, and I think Hasbara is pathetic, and weak, and ineffective. And yet, what I'm saying is that, unfortunately, Hamas is relying on civilians to be killed as part of the delegitimization of Israel. That is a fact. That is real. That is tangible. And never again will anybody like Hamas, this is the shift that I'm seeing, this is the shift that I'm detecting, the armed resistance narrative, the idea that you can wipe off Israel militarily, the idea that you can align us with the worst regional players like Hezbollah like the Houthis, like Iran.
And somehow that's going to be an alternative to Hamas. A political settlement negotiations, the two state solutions, which by the way, Hamas sabotage, worked overdrive to sabotage the fragile yet viable Oslo process with all of its [00:29:00] baggage and weaknesses. And now 31 years later, and I wrote about this in Newsweek, what does Hamas's other fat cat in Qatar say, who's made millions of dollars being in Qatar?
He's actually, if there's a pathway to the two state solution, we at Hamas would consider dropping our weapons and And it's hello, dude, where have you been for the last 30 years? And this is what I tell many of my Palestinian, fellow Palestinians, who are like Israel is not really serious about the two state solution.
And I'm like, yes, I understand that there are elements within Israel who, We're spoilers for peace and we're spoilers and incited against Rabin, and Netanyahu was certainly a part of that. But what Hamas did is part is in inseparable of the radicalization of Israeli society. And it's such that the peace movement, the left, the liberals the who were part of spearheading the also peace process and giving it the social fa base.
They've been decimated by the suicide [00:30:00] bombings of the second intifada and by what happened in the with after the withdrawal in 2005 Again, that's not Hasbara. That is reality. If we as Palestinians want to actually move forward and effectuate change in our fate, we Because like I said, I actually think the Palestinian people ultimately writ large, want, know that their Israel is here to stay and that our fates are intertwined.
And it's uncomfortable to admit that they want to show off the keys from grandpa and grandma from 48. My parents were pushed out in 1948, but guess what? My own grandparents, when I grew up in Gaza and my own parents who were born in the early fifties in an actual tent, in an actual refugee camp in Rafa.
Knew that there will not be a return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to mainland Israel. All of that is to say, I see all of these threats coming together, and this war, the people who are experiencing it, the people who have been held hostage by Hamas's nefarious designs, the people [00:31:00] whose resources and futures and lives were hindered by Hamas's armed resistance narrative, there's finally a realization.
Social media and the avalanche of news, and just the awareness of the Palestinian public in Gaza, I'm speaking about in Gaza, is radically shifting. And that's part of why I've decided to take a leap of faith, put myself out there to, great risk, unfortunately, and great harm to my reputation within the pro Palestine community, because I'm much more interested in what people in Gaza are thinking than what a bunch of Starbucks latte drinking, pro Palestine activists on college campuses have to say about this.
Now that's not to say that the folks here are insincere, that their heart is in the wrong place or isn't in the right place. But for them to not actually aspire to bridge that gap between what they're thinking, their [00:32:00] lived experience and their identity as diaspora Palestinians with what people in Gaza are feeling, I think that has been at a great detriment to the just and urgent aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Laura Adkins: I want to pick up on a thread that Mesua mentioned about political differences between American and Israeli Jews and take it the next level. When you look at a graph by age of political opinions for Israelis and American Jews, it looks like an X. The younger you are in Israel, the more right wing you tend to be.
And the opposite is true in the United States. And you mentioned Oslo was 31 years ago. I'm 30. People my age have never seen actual processes happening, have never known each other without a wall in between. And the average age in Gaza is 18. It's not older than that. Radicalization, you mentioned that a [00:33:00] lot of Gazans are fed up with what's happening with Hamas.
In the West Bank, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of radicalization. Hamas is far more popular in the West Bank than it is in Gaza. And to take agency for our own communities as well, within the Jewish communities, both in Israel and the United States, there, there was also this thread of radicalization.
And I'd love to hear all of you address this because you come at it from different angles, but I'm curious if there's anything else that you feel is particularly radicalizing that we can be affecting change on, but also what, if anything, you've found persuasive when you're speaking to Let's say a 25 year old person in your community who is so stuck in that place of anger and extremism.
Is there anything that can work to pull people out of that place for whomever wants to start first?
Mohammad Darawshe: I'll start because I work with that age group on daily basis. [00:34:00] If you ask Israeli high school kids, and this is a study done by Professor Efraim Yar from Tel Aviv University, he calls it the racism index.
Racism of Israeli Jewish high school kids towards Arab citizens, let alone the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Hamas, but even against Arab citizens, racism rate is about 65 68%. of Israeli Jewish high school kids against Arab citizens. Racism rate of Arab citizens against Jews is about 57%.
With a margin of error of 4%, it's as bad. And we know how to bring those kids to give out Haviva to our campus, and after three days, you take the same questions of Professor Ya'ar, give it to them, and racism rate drops to 12%. Which leads me to say one thing about radicalization. We are made radicals.
The system makes radicalization. It starts with fear, that Massouha [00:35:00] spoke about, lack of hope. Why should a Palestinian not be radical if he doesn't have a vision for personal safety, dignity, humanity? So clearly, he will be radical. We're, the lack of vision, and that's my argument with you, Mosul. The Israeli liberals are pulling back and say there's no place for a Palestinian state, out of their fear, out of their frustration, of there's no one on the other side.
But you have an interest in creating a partner on the other side, because otherwise, you're going to have another 10 October 7th. Radicalization is made, one, by fear. Second, lack of vision and lack of clarity that we have something in the future. The third is our politicians. Who's trying to lead the next front in Israel between Jewish and Arab citizens?
Two people, or two groups. One, Hamas, who are asking Arab citizens to [00:36:00] engage in anti Jewish violent acts, to create another front and ease the pressure from Gaza. And who's the other? Ben Gvir and Smotrich. The ministers, right wing ministers in the government, who want to fuel the relations between Jews and Arabs, so that they can capitalize on it politically.
And that's what the kids are hearing. The kids are hearing this radical message, and that radical message, and where are the rational voices? They're silent. They don't want to talk about future vision for peace. And if you, they're not meeting each other. And when you're lacking a vision and you're lacking activity of bringing people to, to see it's realistic, then radicalization is easy.
And to once you fall in that trap to unmake radicalization, to unmake racism, to unmake animosity is very difficult. Believe me, that's what I do on daily basis. We have a, we have in our work, we have a syndrome, we [00:37:00] call it the returning home syndrome. We know how to bring down racism from 65%.
The problem kids go home, right? They go home and they say to them, Oh, you went to give out Chaviva, you met 20 good Jews, they're the only 20 good Jews in the world. The rest of them, remember, they're our enemy. You met 20 good Arabs, they're the only 20 good Arabs in the world. The rest of them are our enemy.
The echo system needs also to be changed. That's the media. That's a political leadership that we know how to do the work. If we have the right ecosystem, we know how to deliver the work. We even won the UNESCO prize for peace education. The only organization in the Middle East that has that kind of quality attestment to its, to the fact that we know how to do the work.
The problem is scale, and scale, we can't do the scaling. I'll tell you a small, quick story. When the previous government, Bennett Lapid government, was in power, the Minister of Education [00:38:00] called me and said, I heard about this cross sector teachers program, Jewish teachers in Arab schools and Arab teachers in Jewish schools, a program I started personally in 2005.
I started with six teachers. And then, by then when I met with the minister, we were at 1, 500 teachers. And she said, how fast can we grow? And I said, how much money can you bring? And she said, how many more teachers can you bring? 200? 500? I want to see results, because we feel that this government is not going to last for too long.
I said, 1, 000? In one year? And she said, you got it. And we recruited 1, 000 new teachers. We had 6, 000 applicants. When everyone was fearing that we were not going to have The capacity to do it and we were able to grow the program from 1500 teachers to 2500 teachers in one year What did that take? It's not just a bottom up approach.
It was a top down approach. To fight radicalization, you need government that is willing to fight [00:39:00] radicalization. Just touching on the topic also before,
We civil society organizations, we can create models, we can create successes, we evaluate our work, we know how to do the work, but we need that systematic decision. In America, when you had in the 60s, you had the segregation in the educational system. It was not NGOs. That created the busing.
It was presidential, formal, federal decision that said no more segregation. Separate can never be equal. It was statements by presidents. We don't have that leadership today in Israel. We don't have it also in the Palestinian side. Not in America anymore either. But To have, and I want to touch with created radicalization.
I was a left person, but You should go back to being left person. You should go back to the You should go back there, because I think you're misled. You're misled by [00:40:00] frustration. We have
Laura Adkins: a limited amount of time, so let's let the panelists speak. Thank you.
Mohammad Darawshe: Back to the previous question that I wanted to talk about.
Okay, let's say we don't want the two state solution. What do you want? One state apartheid state? Three states? Four states? Five, six, ten? What's the alternative? No one has created, since we all keep cursing Oslo and everyone has become, like the lady there saying, I used to be What else is there?
What vision are we giving to our children? If you want to fight radicalization, give them a feasible solution. I'm not the one, I'm not the politician. I'm not the one that's going to bring a piece, the capital P piece. I, my work is on pieces of peace.
Laura Adkins: Guys, I know it's so hard but we have a very limited amount. I'm happy that
Mohammad Darawshe: there's the audience is interacting. I'm not, this is good. Be careful what you wish for. No. This is good. I'm [00:41:00] We have lots of talking around, but let's be a little bit more specific. Sure. I'll be very specific.
I'll be very, I heard you. I respected you. Respect me. So respect me and give, let me give the answer. I'm Gary Propolis media. Gary Propolis. Sit down please. Please don't push. No, no problem, man. You don't need to apologize. I think that dialogue is important, and your question is in place.
Maybe everyone is in pressure because we want to end at some point. But, what I would say, we have no privilege to give up hope. We have no privilege to say we are not going to solve the conflict. My answer is to her question about radicalization. If we give up a vision, we for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
If we give up a format for a solution and working format, you know what? The two state solution is the [00:42:00] worst solution. What else? It's the best, it's the best worst solution there is. Now, in, just, let's, I'm, can you your question sir, your question, be specific. I think a Palestinian state should be demilitarized state that will never constitute any military threat against Israel.
I think a Palestinian state, he, we talked about divorce, Yes. We talked about divorce. It's a complicated divorce. It's like a divorce between two, between a husband and wife that have many children. So when you split the house, you need to have a lot of doors so that the children keep going back and forth.
But those children need to have metal detectors, it seems, so that we maintain security for both sides. The minute you put your hands on practicalities, it is a solvable problem. We need Two types of leaders in one person. In Israel, we need the willing and capable leader. We have maybe capable because he's [00:43:00] elected, but not willing.
And on the Palestinian side, maybe we have Abu Mazen who's very willing, but definitely not capable to deliver the Palestinian people. You need capable and willing leaders to deliver peace. And that's how you fight radicalization on the vertical discourse, on the horizontal discourse, which is basically what do we do tomorrow?
Tomorrow we engage on Jewish and Arab kids, Jewish and Arab teachers. I know exactly what pieces of peace I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't know what Trump is going to do. I don't know what Netanyahu is going to do. I don't know what El Hayyeh is going to do. I'm not in the capital P peace process. If they appoint me, sir, I will invite you to be my counselor, my advisor.
And believe me, 20 minutes, we find the solutions. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is an over negotiated conflict. Everyone knows. Where do we need to end? But many people are pulling back, as Ms. Suaz said, because of [00:44:00] fear. Maybe it's not popular. Maybe what are the details? Who's going to guarantee? These are legitimate questions.
What you're asking is a legitimate question. But ma'am, you don't have, we don't have, I am a grandfather. My granddaughter is 16 months, 16 months old. I do not have the privilege to say with whom we're going to make peace. It's our responsibility, our generation. We need to find a solution and not throw it on the shoulder of children.
Dr. Masua Sagiv: So I'm going to, I'm going to continue with the house metaphor, because this is whatever agreement it is, whether it's divorce or not, it's an agreement that everyone has to understand that we are staying at the same house. We are still going to live at the same house. And even if some Part of our population would like for the other side to move out.
It's just not gonna happen. So this is a really, a number one realization. [00:45:00] We are both our fate and our destinies are intertwined and they will continue on to be intertwined. And that's why we don't have the privilege, as you said, to not seek for a solution. I have to say something here that is painful for someone who actually did the opposite journey than you, because I went from going right wing to going center left.
And after October 7th, it was a very difficult place to be in because there isn't an alternative. And the alternative says in order to really have safety and later on actually peace, we have to defeat. So it's what you're hearing on the news today, that is peace out of power or something like that.
If you're in a war, the other side, you need to defeat the other side, because we have the slogan, the Israeli slogan, right? The final victory or total victory which I personally don't think is something that is [00:46:00] achievable because when you defeat someone, then you have a con and you actually cannot kick him out of the house, then you have to live with the consequences.
And that's why I, for example, did the other the other way than you're describing. But, at the same time, I have to say that the question and it's, for me, it's been hard to be to continue being a center left liberal throughout this time, especially living in the U. S.,
especially working in Berkeley and trying all the time, I want to criticize my own government, and I do, but it's also, I have to say, to also maintain, Israel's right to self existence and self determination and all of this. And sometimes it's hard to do both of them together, but sometimes I ask myself.
Sometimes I ask myself, maybe it is the right move, maybe the right move, and the only way that the people that I, that right now define themselves as my [00:47:00] enemy will have to understand, I'm talking about Hamas, I'm not talking about Palestinians, will have to acknowledge the fact that they lost in order to move forward to somewhere.
So that alternative is compelling to a lot of Israelis. And in order to remain someone like me who says, no, we are inextricable and we have to move forward. And then we have to find a partner to talk about a Palestinian state. It's really difficult when that's the alternative. Now, I have a lot of moral questions, to this alternative, right?
What does it entail, this total victory? And what is our, and what's the moral cost in and the incredible death toll of civilians and innocent lives on Gaza and all of these things are things that are important to speak about. But the fact is there is an alternative. Now about the radicalization, I think there are two things that are important to note.
One of them is Young people [00:48:00] are usually more radical. And when they grow up, at least until now, I think the world has changed. We're living in a different world right now, but at least until now, when people grow up someone told me once, that usually when people leave college campuses, they grow up.
And if they don't grow up, they move to Berkeley. Which sometimes I feel is true. But in general, and I, and I love Berkeley. I live in Berkeley, so I'm sorry if someone is insulted. But I think that people grow up. And the second thing is that I wanted to say is that what Mohamed, what you said before about your community, I'm there too.
I'm an educator. And I think that our role right now is the way to fight radicalization that is caused by our politicians, that is caused by the media. Jonathan Haidt has a great piece in the Atlantic two years ago, why everything in American life became stupid or something like that, that speaks on the way that that social media is motivating [00:49:00] us to the extremes and is motivating the people in the middle to be silent.
All of these things are true. In order to break that binary not to be what I see outside on campus, but what happens in my classroom, we have to trust our educators, we have to we have to really engage with education much more than we're, than we've been doing and really realize, and I think it's both of these questions are connected.
There is an alternative and we need to reject that alternative because that alternative has severe consequences to both sides, not just to the Palestinians.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: So I've heard that, the amount of times that people ask me how, what's the vision for de radicalizing Gaza and how do we do that?
And The, by the way, this con the conversation around education being the main tool of radicalization. And this might not be a popular [00:50:00] opinion. Bear with me. I went to RA schools, my dad ran the RA school in Jabal. My middle brother ran the un RA clinic rather in Jabal. My middle brother ran the clinic in the beach camp.
I. Like we ate UNRRA food when we didn't have the means. I'm a child of UNRRA. There has never been once a statement in any of the curriculum, which by the way was paid for by the United States and Belgium and the European Union. The problem isn't so much the curriculum itself. Are there elements of supplemental curriculum or small non governmental or non UNRRA schools where they have textbooks and they're on, they're not part of the.
formal educational system that have problematic textbooks, yes, but this overemphasis of education as the sole culprit in the radicalization of Palestinian society is misplaced and it's inaccurate. And if we actually are serious about addressing it, I use the example of the, my friend in the West Bank who runs a successful tech [00:51:00] startup, Jerusalemite, multi millionaire dude, and he was like, I will make peace with the Tel Aviv Israelis tomorrow like that.
The problem is that I, with all of my privilege and with all my benefits, have to be equally humiliated as somebody who works with Israelis, stand at the Columbia checkpoint, and have to be humiliated by an 18 year old soldier with a rifle. And I love Israelis, and I go to the Tel Aviv every other day, that's fine, But imagine if I am being radicalized by this, imagine the masses.
Imagine those who haven't interacted with Jews and Israelis. But I speak differently about Gaza in the sense that Gaza, much more than the West Bank Has been historically isolated. It has not had a real functional seaport. It had a short lived airport that I flew into twice in 1999 and in 2000. And it was the embodiment of the prospect of hope and Renaissance and rejuvenation of Gaza.
We've been surrounded by [00:52:00] Israel on all sides, but also Egypt on the other side is a part of Gaza's closures and the blockade. And the amount of. money that Palestinians have had to pay well before the war to get out of Gaza. So people are a product of their environment. When you have a population that's 50 percent of whom are under 18, They've never interacted with Israelis.
Of course they're going to be radical. Of course they're going to think that, when Hamas does all of these parades, which I've spoken about, by the way, as something being really shameful. Hamas would put on all these fancy vests that they would smuggle from Libya and Sudan and from Iran and act as if we are the Palestinian army.
And then when the war happened, what did they do? They fight with flip flops and in shorts and in jeans and stuff. I don't know. They, this is the diet that they have been fed. This is what they know, which is part of why I think of Gaza post war. The de radicalization cannot happen without opening Gaza up to the rest of the world.
This [00:53:00] idea of permanent closure, permanent isolation is going to feed the next generation of traumatized Palestinians who are experiencing the worst chapter in Palestinian history. And they're either going to. Capitalize on the shift that I talked about, the boiling, the undercurrent of we want something radically different.
Or, God forbid, a Hamas 2. 0 could further radicalize the population and keep that vicious cycle going. This is part of why I talk about the Gaza, post Gaza war is not just, we don't just want reconstruction. Reconstruction alone is not going to cut it anymore. We need a rejuvenation and a renaissance of Palestinian political life, of what Gaza is to the Palestinian national project.
Gaza should no longer be a hub of Iranian led Islamic regime of I don't want my Iranian friends to get pissed off at me, but Gaza is no longer going to be a hub for Iranian sponsored terrorism [00:54:00] and Islamist led nihilism. Gaza needs to be a hub of arts and culture and development and economic prosperity.
It's overlooking the Mediterranean. It can have a seaport. We can have an airport. Gaza needs to be a role model for to make a case for effective Palestinian self governance. Gaza needs to make a case for the Israelis on the fence, that this is what happens when you give us sovereignty. This is what happens when we are provided with an opportunity.
And that takes two to tango. It takes our leadership and our people. taking matters into their own hand and definitely exercising agency over our future. And one, one thing real quick, I've talked about the power imbalance between Palestinians and Israelis. That goes without saying, you have a dispossessed displaced people versus a first tier nuclear power that has a world class state of the art military and economy, et cetera.
That said, [00:55:00] Even within the confines of this imbalance of power, I am a strong proponent that we as Palestinians have a role and a responsibility and agency to effectuate change and make different choices and make different, decisions that can absolutely influence the trajectory and the path forward.
And when I say this once again, unfortunately, and especially in the context of leftist discourse in the Western world, it's Oh my God, how dare you say this? You're like blaming the victim. No. And I actually think this highly racist to say no. The other day I was with this like famous I'm a leftist economic professor and like we and I went on his podcast and we got into this shouting match because he was like, no, the Palestinians cannot, he literally said, the Palestinians cannot be expected to act civilized because they've been oppressed by Israel this whole time.
And I said, how dare you say that? Who the hell are you to tell us that we can blame all of our [00:56:00] problems just because of the occupation and because of Israel's behavior, that somehow means we cannot make a choice. I think it is racist. I think it is disgusting. October 7th was a choice, not a necessity and not an inevitability.
And this is why I feel strongly, and my brother helped me out here I think, unfortunately, when I say these things. It's very easy to blame Israel for everything. It's very easy for me. I said again to be part of the pro Palestine industrial complex, if you will, to say that we are simply a product of oppression and occupation and therefore anything and everything that we do is somehow justified.
And I am simply saying that is not the case. My beautiful, smart, intelligent, beloved, Palestinian people, 70, 76 years later, we've tried the pan Arabism of Nasser. We've tried the secularism of the PLO. We've tried the Marxism and communism of the PFLP. And we've tried now Hamas's Islamism [00:57:00] for 30 years.
What the, what has that gotten us? Except for more death, more occupation, more settlements, more radicalization of the Israeli society, who are. viable and necessary partners in the path forward. Going back to just close out the radicalization thing. This is why I envision Gaza being an open territory after the war.
Gaza having actually being allowed to develop, and that's not to dismiss Israel's legitimate security needs. And I've certainly studied security from an academic point of view. And I understand that Israel has a perpetual need to understand what's happening in Gaza. to prevent the recurrence of October 7, but the 17 year long blockade that made Gaza aid dependent that helped Hamas in radicalizing the population, it didn't stop October 7.
And that's what I'm trying to say is security solutions not only don't work in the long run, but they are part of the radicalization and the isolation that somebody like Hamas [00:58:00] needs. So I want Gaza to have a seaport and an airport, I want Gaza, I want anybody here with a U. S. passport or whatever passport, ideally an Israeli passport eventually, but that might take time, to be able to fly into Gaza, to be able to take a boat ride and actually experience Gaza, and we might be five, ten years from now.
From that now. But that is how you de radicalize the population in Gaza. The West Bank folks, they've seen the Palestinian Authority. They've seen the corruption. They've seen the squandering of resources. They're humiliated by settlers who are protected by the army. They're humiliated at checkpoints.
And yes, of course they're going to be radical. Of course they're going to, Hamas is going to capitalize on that. And it's going to be a lot more popular. The reality, I will say, however, and with all due respect to my brothers and sisters in the West Bank, is that the standard of living in the West Bank is radically different than that in Gaza.
And it's, it sucks that we have to compare two people are equally disadvantaged, but the reality [00:59:00] is, In the West Bank, you have water, you have electricity, you can relatively easily get out of the territory through Jordan. And, and the West Bank is also like a lot more socially liberal.
You can buy liquor, there's nightclubs there's just that people have gotten used to a certain standard of living. And when in Tulkarm and Nablus and the outskirts of Jenin and other areas, some of the Palestinian militants tried to, bring on the third intifada. And we've seen that happen over the last few months.
I've seen a certain shift within the local population where people are like whoa hold on. This is all we have right now. We cannot be tools for allowing the further entrenchment of the military occupation and the further destruction of our communities because some, a couple of idiots with an M 16 or an AK 47 want to pop off some shots at the Israeli military.
All right. So that's where I see the potential for de radicalization in that it is reversible, it is elastic, attitudes and opinions and [01:00:00] views shift and change, and we can absolutely effectuate the circumstances and the lived experiences to reverse that.
Dr. Masua Sagiv: Can I jump in for one minute? Just, exactly because everything that you've just said, it is so disappointing that the, all of the discourse about this war.
in the West and specifically in the United States is so different. This could be a model. This could be a model because right now the people who are in the war, it's very hard to speak. To, in that way, it's very hard when you're literally running for your life or are this place or is displaced.
It's very difficult to see ahead, to see this vision of hope, but Here should have been different. Here should have been people who are real stakeholders in the welfare of both Israelis and Palestinians. need to be able [01:01:00] to have this discourse rather than point framing this whole situation as a zero sum game where there is room for only one population or one interest of a population in the land of Israel.
And that's why I feel it's not just, it's a very important that we're talking about the future. of the conflict and talking Dougri and all of these things. It's, yes, it's great that we're sitting here speaking, but it's even, it would be even greater if the people who are sitting here will be agents of the same kind of discourse that is so needed Because that's, I don't think it's the only thing that can influence the people on the ground, but it's definitely something that can boost people like us that are right now on the ground in the land.
Laura Adkins: I'm probably going to regret throwing in another dimension with four minutes left in our conversation. But in a couple of months, a new [01:02:00] president of the United States will be returning to office, and has chosen potential nominees that many of whom state the Palestinian people do not exist, not to mention the idea of a state.
And I think we're very blessed to live in an era of access to so much information, but we are also flooded with every emotion. And these emotions have been, I'm sure you've seen on college campuses, really radicalizing to both ends of the spectrum. And thinking about that idea of who is a partner that could actually rise up in the U S and create the conditions with which both liberal Israelis and pro peace Palestinians feel they have a partner with such a dramatic shift, perhaps happening in the U S political climate.
And given the radicalization happening among people my age and younger on campuses, I know what [01:03:00] Mohammed's going to do the next four years. Your vision is very clear. What are the rest of us in this room who are here? What's helpful?
Mohammad Darawshe: I have four minutes out of the four.
I met with President Biden when he was in Israel a year ago. And I had a few minutes with him and also with Secretary Blinken. And he immediately spoke about the day after with the Israeli Palestinian cross border. And I said to him, There's also a day after inside Israel. The day after inside Israel is that Jews and Arabs will continue to live with each other and we need to protect whatever we've, the successes we've accumulated till now, we need to protect that.
We need to make sure that we do not slide into violence and we do not allow Whether it is people in government or people in Hamas to drag Jews and Arabs in Israel into confrontations. So I know that's [01:04:00] been done. How are we doing it? We make sure that Jewish and Arab mayors act, neighboring towns, they act as crisis management teams.
If there is a fight between Jewish and Arab kids in the mall, they are the ones to intervene and calm the situation, not leave it to Ben Gvir. Because Benkvir, the minute it gets there, some of his officers will want to give him an offering. What's that offering? Let's punish yet more Arab citizens. Till now, he's arrested 1, 200 Arab citizens on flow accusations of support to terror, that only 30 of them are maturing to legal action.
So why did you arrest the other 1, 170? It's to try to flare the area and try to create more and more anger. So what do we need to do today in the next, I don't know if it's four years or 40, it could be another 40 or 76 years, deescalate, reduce the conflict, take some control of the [01:05:00] components or elements in the community that want to take us further into violence and try to bring them back, put a leash on them.
Some people like Ben Gvir in Israel, they need a leash. Some other radicals in the Arab community, they need a leash. They need to be pulled back and be put in the right place. But people that have a proper vision of cooperation, we need to double capacity. Usually every year at Givat Haviva, we train about 24 to 26 facilitators of youth encounters of Jewish and Arab youth encounters.
And we pretty much supply all of the manpower of facilitators. This year we trained 75. Because our subject matter, our problem, is more than doubling. The mutual mistrust and mutual fear that Ms. O'Hara spoke about has more than doubled. And if you want to solve the day after, is how do we engage twice, three, four times more in our work.
That's why, [01:06:00] there's a gentleman back there, Jonathan. Jonathan Lack has just volunteered to become the executive director of Friends of Givat Haviva in the United States. He's going to give you leaflets in the back. And It's basically asking you to be involved, find your right project. You don't have as, I don't have the luxury of sitting and just watch history get worse in front of me and my children and my granddaughter.
I want to make sure that you also don't, just don't just witness and just don't just describe the problem. We can easily describe the problem. We can easily throw the blame on the Israeli leadership, on the Palestinian leadership, on the Israeli people, on the Jewish people, on the Palestinian, on Muslims, you name it.
We have a thousand and one guilty people. Three minutes. I have more three minutes more, thank you. See, I made a friend. And why did I make a friend? Because I spoke to him respectfully. Because if we know how to be generous with [01:07:00] our emotions, with respect to each other. Go back to President Rivlin, what he said.
We're destined to live with each other. But we don't know how to do it. We need to learn how to do it. All the 17, 774 kids that we brought to Givat Haviva last year, it's what we call engineered encounters. 92 percent of Jewish and 92 percent of Arab citizens live in separate towns and villages. 99. 9 percent of the kids in the Israeli educational system are in segregated schools.
And it's a government decision. We need to force integrated educational system. We need to force municipal cooperation. We need to force cross sector teachers program. We need to force artists collaborating. We need to bring in more Arab citizens in high tech. We need to bring in more Arab doctors in Israeli hospitals.
That's the way you do it. I know how to make it piece by piece.[01:08:00]
Dr. Masua Sagiv: I'm allowing myself to say something on behalf of both of us, of all of us. I think that people like us have the blessing and the curse of working in what we do. In being engaged in what is the, what I see as the most important mission that we have as a people, as human beings. So that's why you know what you're going to do tomorrow.
And I know that I'm going to go into a classroom tomorrow and Ahmed, you're going to teach tomorrow too and speak all the time. So first of all there are quite a few young people here and I don't know if you're and and older people as well. I don't know if that's what you do every day, but if you don't, I invite you to be more involved in And making sure that the future of our people and I'm talking about our people as Israelis and as Jews and as human beings, will be better.
So engage and choose choose a profession which is [01:09:00] maybe not as profitable. as others but can definitely influence whether, yes, exactly, whether in walking into a classroom or being an activist that, that educates other people or working in, I don't think, I've I always looked down on Hasbara and in the past year I found myself doing a lot of Hasbara, so I don't know, even if you're, if that's what you're destined to do.
So that's number one. And number two I think is really, even though it's very difficult, don't give up hope. Because I see a lot of people around me, really in such a state of despair, and I fight it too, every single day when I read the news and when I hear, from my people back home we can't afford to be despaired, unless we are willing to give up, and I'm not willing to give up, not on the Zionist pro project, and not on the Jewish people, and not on Israel and not on shared society. So if we're willing to give up, great, let's despair and have a miserable life. But if we are [01:10:00] not willing to give up then we have to hold on to hope, and we have to do whatever we can, and there are so many ways to engage in a discourse that is that, that is a fruitful discourse and not a zero sum discourse in order to move us forward to a better future.
Laura Adkins: It's a long road toward all of these lofty goals, and it's also a long walk back to the main auditorium. With that, I know everyone has so many questions. Let this be the beginning of the conversation, not the end. Thank you all so much on stage and in the audience.
