Welcome to another school year of YAAS! We are so excited to bring you even more ways to engage with your community and beyond. If you are interested in writing for us in the future, please fill out the form HERE. Otherwise, enjoy our atypical September article.

In mid-May, eighteen students from CWRU and I went on a Fact Finders trip, sponsored by Case Hillel, to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to learn about the conflict. The first thing we were told by our tour guide on the subject was, “it’s complicated,” and we continued to hear those words throughout the trip. It was not meant as a cop-out but as the truth. We found ourselves in the middle of a situation intertwined with thousands of years of history, an entire middle eastern narrative, and the hearts of each Abrahamic religion. This newsletter is in no way able to cover the vast intricacies found in this region, so instead, we hope to present differing viewpoints, stories, and ways of thinking. We will also include some of the lessons we found essential to take back with us, as well as the thoughts we found important in order to understand the people we met. To gain some background on this conflict (because we are in no way experts or trying to be your go-to source) I suggest using Vox, the global conflict tracker, and traditional narratives. But, take each source and article with more salt than there is in the Dead Sea. While this article is a little different than our usual interactive newsletter, we believe it has some important ideas to carry with you as you become more and more active in your community.

Oded Reviv, Mayor of Efrat

Reviv has a commanding presence when standing in his conference room. He holds himself like any other politician: confidently. He is the mayor of an Israeli town in a unique position--within the green line denoting the Palestinian territories. It is in an area marked as “Area C,” meaning it is partially under Israeli control, although the international community considers settlements like these in occupied territories to be illegal. However, he sees himself and his town as an important part of the process to de-escalate the conflict. He works to unite the Arabic and Jewish people, despite what the governments say. This has taken many forms, including a party at his own house. Government officials from both sides were seen mingling in his own backyard. But now Reviv has been forced to keep his close ties with Palestinian leaders underground because the last time Palestinian and Israeli government officials were seen together, there were severe punishments.

Matti Friedman, Israeli-Canadian Journalist

Friedman focused on the divide between the press’s perception of an issue and the reality. He spoke of the press’s desire to simplify stories into two players rather than however many there may actually be. This creates a story with a villain and a victim, as well as oversimplified storylines. But, depending on how zoomed in or out a journalist’s focus, the characters can easily switch places from being bad to good and good to bad. In the case of Israel and Palestine, both can be victimized or both can hurt the other, depending on the storyline. His advice? Read books, not the news as this avoids the news-echo chamber that has slowly developed. And even more important: get to know both sides.

Avi Melamed, Author, CEO, and Political Analyst

            Melamed is an Israeli author and expert on Middle Eastern affairs. He also served as the Salisbury Fellow of Intelligence and Middle Eastern Affairs for the Eisenhower Institute in the US. He spoke as if he knew it all. That may be because he did, at least in regards to the history, but not necessarily with the people. He tried to tell us that narratives mess with us, make us feel things we shouldn’t and obscure facts. Still, I think there’s a reason our mind accepts narratives so readily. Numbers and figures cannot tell us what an experience is like or how someone believes a political decision will affect their life. If higher-level decisions affect people on the ground, shouldn’t their narratives matter?

The Bahá’í Gardens in Haifa, Israel

Khaled Abu Toameh, Journalist

         Abu Toameh is an Arab Israeli journalist with a relaxed demeanor and an upper-hand in his field. He has the trust of the people on both sides of the green line because he was raised by an Arab Israeli father and a Palestinian Arab mother within Israel. He is known for speaking out against extremists on both sides: the Palestinian Authority for arresting and harassing Palestinian reporters as well as Israeli officials for not fighting for greater rights for Arab Israelis. Ultimately, he fights for freedom of speech. Abu Toameh has also called out “pro-Palestinian” college students for often not supporting the Palestinians, but rather encouraging hatred for the Jewish State. He routinely receives threatening letters of people both inside and outside the middle east telling him to “shut up” despite them admitting to him telling the truth. When we sat down with him, he told us with an air of certainty that this division of people may never end. He explained to us that the Palestinian government wants 100% of the land and the control that they believe themselves obligated to receive and will not settle for less. They do not have an authority figure with enough power to give up or work out a compromise in regard to land control or right of return without the figure being labeled as a traitor. He told us that the best thing we (the US and the rest of the world) could do was sit back and watch, essentially. It is a course that is difficult and messy, but outside interference will always end up angering one side and messing with the natural order of things. For the fall of Hamas in the Gaza strip, he says it must come from the people. For elections to occur, it must be by the wishes of the Palestinians. All we can do is sit back and watch and “wait for a divorce” in this unhappy marriage. That is perhaps the most difficult idea I approached: sometimes you cannot help. It is most often worth the effort, but in rare situations, there is little more that can be done without making things much much worse first.

Fatah Official

            While this official will remain nameless, the organization the man represents will not. The Fatah is a Palestinian nationalist political party that makes up the majority of the current government, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and is the party behind their current president. In the City of Bethlehem, the group and I were led up a dark set of stairs and hustled into a conference room with harsh, fluorescent lighting. All the adults surrounding us spoke rapid Arabic into their phones while directing us into a room painted with patriotic images. We sat at a long table in front of a mural of high officials in the Fatah’s history and their symbol. At the head was a well dressed man with a heavy accent and a large buffer of empty chairs around him. I set the scene here not to create distrust with the group, but to paint a picture of what we were working within this foreign place.

It was not this man’s words that I saw with great importance, but the emotion behind them. His responses were not rehearsed nor polished, but instead left a bitter taste in your mouth as he struggled against difficult questions with anything but political correctness. Jewish students later said that they did not feel safe in his company as he threw the word “Jew” around with blind anger. Still, he had a desperation to be trusted and heard. To him, his land had been wrenched out from under his ancestors and colonized by people that continued to deny them a chance to return and legitimize their identity. This same narrative of the greedy Israelis was echoed in the words of each person that we spoke to in the Palestinian territories. It is impossible to deny that he and others believed this narrative to be 100% correct. In his mind, they were constantly fighting an evil force where all avenues must be used to succeed, including violence. The most important message I took away was with regards to how each person’s emotions are valid, despite causing death and destruction. A justifiable struggle in one person’s mind is terrorism in another’s.

A photo quickly taken of the conference room as we left.
 

Fanta, Ethiopian Jewish Woman Business Owner

Fanta owns an Ethiopian restaurant in Tel Aviv called Balinjera, or “fellowship,” and her main goal is to unite people by way of food. This restaurant tells the story of one of many Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel in 1991 in the airlift known as Operation Solomon. 14,000 people were brought by plane within 36 hours to escape the anti-Semitism they faced at home. Fanta spoke of the struggle she felt finding a place for herself in Israel after she was forced out of her home as a young teenager. She eventually became a lawyer but ultimately felt unfulfilled. She decided to open a restaurant to teach others about her culture and teach her new community about her old one as the Ethiopian population makes up less than 2 percent of the Israeli community. They stick out on the streets because they are dark-skinned, compared to other Europeans that immigrated to their religious homeland. Some equate their position to those in the US but without the backing of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Fanta hopes to take steps towards resolving this conflict through food, celebration, and even some traditional dancing. After our shared meal, we followed Fanta’s lead in dancing with our shoulders, hips and big smiles.
 

Dana, Palestinian Citizen

            Dana joined our tour bus early one morning in Ramallah, a city in the Palestinian Territories, wearing stylish, almost revealing clothes (meaning a tank top and a long skirt) and a big smile. She looked to be around 25 years old and told us that she is an electrical engineer that works in Jerusalem, AKA Israel. While Dana was with us for the majority of the day, she didn’t begin to tell us about her life until the afternoon when we stopped at a workhouse. There, she voiced the feelings and concerns of the average Palestinian. She lives in a Palestinian Territory but works in Israel as an engineer because it is difficult to find a job in her hometown. She is held up at checkpoints between the two locations for hours at a time and must always be ready for power outages or hold-ups of water from Israeli companies. It is also important to note that she is a part of a new generation that is even further from the 1948 Catastrophe War, which was the point where Palestinians were officially displaced. Why might this be important? She speaks with a distance from the events that leave her echoing her ancestors’ feelings with no experience of her own. Her experiences of traveling through checkpoints and power outages and droughts and violence are very much true. Still, she is unable to take a step back and look for a solution to this long-existing problem because of these feelings that have been ingrained from birth. You could hear the hatred, disappointment, and stout nationalism flowing through her voice as she spoke of the difficult spot her people were put in before she or her parents were even born. Her opinions are important, now more than ever, but after listening to her, you are left to wonder if she had a chance to make them herself.

Peres Center for Peace and Innovation

The “Innovation Center,” as some call it, is meant to showcase the discoveries of Israel and the people behind them. This center’s namesake, Peres, was Israel’s ninth President. He was nicknamed one of Israel’s last links to the founding generation. He won the 1994 Peace Prize for his peace talk efforts with Palestinian officials after flipping from an initial anti-Palestinian position. It may seem as if peace and innovation have little to do with each other, but for Israel, innovation is their path to peace. As a country largely composed of a desert, water is the main concern and causes strife for the Palestinians because the Israelis control their water supply. If there’s none to give, there’s none to receive. The Peres Center also works to form partnerships with government ministries, multinational corporations, and the start-up community.

Ehab

            Ehab a man who is considered somewhat uncommon in his community: he is an Arabic man married to a Jewish woman. We were led into his house at the end of a winding neighborhood by a regal woman with long, wavy hair and a welcoming smile. She wore a flowy white dress that followed her as she glided across the floor. She took us to a room within the cavernous building that overlooked a large group of children and teachers. She introduced herself only as Ehab’s wife.

The two met in a whirlwind love story and were married in less than 24 hours from when Ehab seeing her dance around a fire. The long and difficult process, in this case, was letting Ehab’s parents know about their relationship. Everyone in his Arabic community had felt persecuted by the Jewish state and had learned to hate Jewish people. They had some family killed and displaced from the 48 War and had no reason to feel anything other than disdain. When he told his family, they threw shoes and furniture at him until he escaped through a window of their house. Little by little, Ehab brought Jewish people over to their house, including his wife. It was only after a year of meeting this smart, charismatic Jewish woman that Ehab’s parents found out she was his wife. Part of his family refused to see him for years after finding out. They had felt betrayed. But, as the years passed, a majority of the family had accepted the marriage. Now, Ehab and his wife run a kindergarten in their spacious home for others that find themselves between cultures. In this Waldorf school, they teach both Arabic and Hebrew, something unheard of in the public schools, which often split children based on their ethnicity. They hope to bring peace between cultures by letting future generations work together now more than ever.

We learned three big takeaway from this trip that we hope to carry with us: everyone’s opinion is valid and cannot be denied; a government does not necessarily represent its people, but the people often echo the words of a government; and, biases are everywhere. I encourage you to continue learning about this subject by reading multiple sources: take action for your own knowledge and never settle with half-assed answers.

Considering the Flavors Beyond the Black and White, an opinion piece by Nathan Rhude

When I heard the news regarding the denial of Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel, I was simultaneously confused and curious. I had seen first-hand the stringent security measures Israel implemented towards non-Israelis entering. I still have a visa given to me that I was told to keep on my person at all times. Denying someone a visa implies that they have the potential to be a threat to the national interest.

The implications of the denial provoked many questions. I know some people in Israel see the United States as an ally. I saw at least one “Thank you, President Trump. Thank you, America,” banner in Jerusalem that echoed pro-American sentiments. So, if Israel sees America as an ally, why are two influential American legislators seen as such a threat? While I can not say for sure because I am not the Prime Minister of Israel, I can propose a mechanism which I think is paramount to a deeper understanding of both Israeli politics and American politics. We divide political classifications into dichotomies because dichotomies are much easier to understand. Instead of having many different opinions to analyze, we, the busy citizenry, are often shown just two flavors (e.g. ally or foe, liberal or conservative, authoritarian or libertarian) in hopes we will more quickly make a decision. However, on polarizing issues, the dissent and the ensuing consequences of the dissent reveal much more than a preference based on what is shown. The dissent and its consequences also reveal much more about what is not shown. So, in order to fully comprehend the recent denial of Tlaib and Omar into Israel and the ensuing fallout, we must first set aside our own dichotomous political constructs and understand the comments made for their own sake, not with the intent of labeling them based on our own dichotomies.