Ten days ago Weiss wrote a piece disparaging dialogue efforts between the Hillel and pro-Palestinian groups at Brooklyn College. Clenchner, pseudonym for a former Israeli refusenik during the first intifadah who is now an activist with American Jewish organizations, takes a different view.
When it comes to Israeli Palestinian dialogue projects, I must surely qualify as an ‘expert witness.’ In 1996 I worked for the International Council for Peace in the Middle East, a now defunct entity established and run mostly by liberal and left wing Zionists. For six years, corresponding with ‘the good years’ of the Oslo peace process, I was immersed in programs that were wholly or partially related to the influx of funds to promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. (Magic phrase: ‘People to People.’) While there is so much I could say, I’ll restrict this story to one of those organizations: The Parents Circle.
Briefly: in 2001, while leading tours of American Jews in solidarity with Palestinians and Israeli peacemakers, I was offered a job with the Bereaved Parents Circle, founded by Israelis who had lost children to terrorism or war, but that worked in partnership with Palestinians in similar circumstances. This brave group had to deal with an enormous amount of emotional trauma (as any survivor of a family member who died violently must) yet they came together around a message of hope. If people who lost first degree relatives can come together for peace, then surely other Israelis and Palestinians can overcome the otherwise ‘natural’ desire for vengeance.
I only worked for this group for six months, before resigning in disgust and leaving for the United States, never to return.
Much of the funding for this organization came from budgets distributed by governments (including the US and EU) specifically to promote dialogue projects. In this instance, all the funds would be deposited in the bank accounts of the Israeli entity. Then the Israeli nonprofit would pay the Palestinian partner in small amounts using a fee for service model. While ostensibly to prevent misuse of funds, it well reflected the distrust between the cooperating organizations. The Israeli organization was the only one legally recognized as the Parents Circle, while the Palestinian partner could be any organization or group of individuals we wanted to use as a subcontractor.
Since all the decisions about what kind of programs would be run were made by the Israeli side, if the Palestinians ever started to demand inclusion, or to reject the political content of something done in the name of both sides, they could be replaced instantly. And they were. While I was there, the Gazan group that represented the official ‘other side’ was replaced by new group of people from the West Bank. (And after I left, they too were replaced. For all I know this has happened many times since.)
The Israeli side also employed an Israeli Palestinian who had previously worked for the Israeli government as an advisor. This young man with a bright future, was by no means a leftist or nationalist. He was wholly committed to the mission and program of the organization, and to the integration of Arabs in Israeli society and the pursuit of a two state solution. But as he learned more about how it operated, there was an increasing amount of tension, which resulted in him being abused and then fired while on a tour of the United States. In fact, he was fired during the annual Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee which had invited the Parents’ Circle for an honor.
The executive director at that time, and the leading figure in founding the organization, was Yitzhak Frankenthal. He was an heir to a small fortune in Israel, an industrialist, and the father of a soldier killed by Hamas in July 1994. (Arik Frankenthal was kidnapped by Hamas members and then killed.)
I knew Mr. Frankenthal as I had worked for him briefly when he was leading Netivot Shalom, an Orthodox Jewish peace group based in Jerusalem. His vision was to use his own status as a bereaved parent to mount an impressive public relations campaign in Israel that would finally shift public opinion. The only obstacle was money; raise enough money for paid media, get enough earned media through the efforts of the Parents Circle’s other members, and enough of the public would shift to supporting a negotiated two state solution, more or less in accordance with the vision of Oslo.
But as the Oslo years went on, I grew more cynical about how the money was being used– pet projects. By then, ‘People to People’ project funding was a line item for a number of foreign aid agencies and governments. What had begun with hope and enthusiasm in the early Oslo years had turned into a gasping effort to reignite the peace process.
One of the last productive things I did for the Parents Circle was to connect them to members of a family in a West Bank village between Bethlehem and Hebron. I had met them as they were committed to peace and happily hosted internationals learning more about the occupation. They were also (as so many families are) bereaved, with children, brothers and parents killed by Israelis. The Parents Circle was in need of a new Palestinian entity to work with, having cut off the Gazans for some reason that was never clear to me. So they asked members of this family to come on a tour to the United States, and continued to work with them afterwards.
Only, the work of this group caused problems. It was not long after the start of the second Intifada, and the dialogue activities were controversial in the village. Long story short, as payment for standing up for peace and working with this organization, some were exposed to threats of violence from within their own village. And for what? Paltry sums to cover cell phone lines, a trip or two abroad, and promises for more. This was not a unique situation, but given the power dynamic between Israelis and Palestinians in this organization, it was clearly exploitative. To this day it makes my stomach turn.
It’s kind of sad writing this. One movie featuring the work of this group, Encounter Point, is full of poignant reminders of the good that this organization has done. Most of the people involved, especially those in charge today, are well intentioned, brave, and deserve to be supported. (It’s also notable that the list of founders on the current website lists the founding date of 1998 and excludes Yitzhak Frankenthal.)
Having said all that, I think Weiss’s article presenting the PACBI side of the dialogue programs is woefully incomplete. Before Oslo, in the 80s, I was part of many efforts to get to know Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a member of Re’ut Sadaka, I traveled in 1986 to the West Bank to meet with young members of Fatah and the PFLP. In 1985 I was somehow on a bus organized by Sons of the Village to visit Gaza and learn about the lives of refugees there. (Most of my fellow travellers were Israeli Arabs, but I wasn’t the only Jew.) For a few years, I met with Palestinians from the OT during solidarity work camps in the city of Nazereth. I’ve also attended events at the International School for Peace in Neveh Shalom/Wahat al-Salam) a number of times.
Framing dialogue efforts as primarily descended from the efforts of Israeli government and propaganda entities is absolutely false. The entire growth of the dialogue sector of Israeli civil society predates Oslo, predates the first Intifada, and was led by strong proponents of a two state or one state solution at a time when even talking to the PLO was a crime. The leaders of these efforts on the Israeli side were, in my personal experience, brave thought leaders who moved the needle forward by fighting against anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism inside Israeli society. The goal of ‘dialogue’ was not to normalize the relationship between occupier and occupied but to heighten the contradictions inside Israeli society, and make the choice to remain an occupier more untenable from a moral and human standpoint.
When dialogue programs started to expand after Oslo, the entire community around these programs was united in a desire to ‘bring Israeli public opinion along’ with the new political reality. This was less of an issue in the Occupied Territories because (ah, the good old days) public opinion there was massively in favor of the peace process. (Side note: One of the reasons for Hamas terrorism in those days was precisely the absence of popular support. The anti-Oslo violence was a desperate gambit to derail a two state solution under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Just as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was a desperate gambit on the part of right wing Jews.)
The sad story about the Parents Circle is that despite the ugliness taking place behind closed doors, it brought the right people behind the right cause: seeing the other as a partner instead of as an enemy. Showing that those who ‘dance upon the blood’ crying revenge aren’t the only legitimate voices of those who have lost loved ones. Dialogue can be a cynical strategy in the wrong hands. So articles pointing to specific flawed efforts are important, but supporting a generic opposition to dialogue efforts isn’t really helpful.
Is dialogue inherently flawed? Were it not for the efforts of my elders to initiate such programs back in the 80s, and the willingness of American and European donors to fund them, I and many of my generation would never have matured politically, would not have then become refuseniks, Palestinian solidarity activists, and fighters for human rights.
One memory I have from a dialogue program was seeing Palestinian youth singing songs in a circle. Only a few of the Jews in the program had bothered to show up for some reason. Someone whispered in my ear the Hebrew translation of those songs, which echoed the Israeli song book I had grown up listening to. Songs about home, family, the land, love of one’s people and everlasting commitment to freedom and independence. It shook me to the core in a way that no political manifesto or angry diatribe ever could.
Kill dialogue, and take that moment away – and so many others – from future generations. Just who precisely can call that a victory? The story at Brooklyn College, the line supported by PACBI, are examples of organizational interests turned into ideological talking points. The portions of Palestinian civil society that support working with Israelis (selectively, appropriately) are not represented by some of those speaking on their behalf. The effort to squelch dialogue efforts should properly be understood as a political fight amongst Palestinians who disagree on a range of issues, one of which is the utility of interacting with Israelis under various circumstances. Take a side if you wish, for one group of Palestinians over another, but be careful not to portray it as an argument between supporters of Palestinian rights and their opponents.
A final point is this. Within many Hillel chapters, there are Jews passionate about Israel who have doubts about the official line spouted by Hillel and other Jewish community leaders. Those doubters are likely to attend dialogue efforts, in part to defend Israel, but also to learn more about Palestinian arguments. What a shame to demonstrate that supporters of Palestine are uninterested in a free exchange of views with supporters of Israel.
