Long before the events of October 2023, thousands of people, both Palestinians and Israelis, have been active in the peace movement. Amidst today’s heightened tensions, peace groups remain active but are operating under more challenging conditions. Undeterred by bans on protests and blowback on social media, peace activists are pursuing distinct visions to construct new realities for Palestinians and Israelis. Through their passion and commitment, they are attracting support from around the world. A panel of leaders, teachers, and scholars will discuss the experiences they’ve had bringing people together and bridging gaps.
SARAH BANSE: And I now turn the event over to Professor Melani Cammett, director of the Weatherhead Center.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much, Sarah. Welcome, everyone, to the Weatherhead Forum. I'm Melani Cammett. As Sarah said, I'm the director of the Weatherhead Center. And I'm also Professor of Government at Harvard University. And it's really my great pleasure to introduce this forum.
So let me just say a little bit about the Weatherhead Forum. This is our platform at the Weatherhead Center to address pressing topics of the day and, also, the path-breaking research that is done in those areas here by our affiliates. These special sessions that we're doing on important topics, like Israel-Palestine, are open to the public. And we very much appreciate your joining us for this session today.
Today's forum is the fifth in our series on Israel-Palestine. And our focus today is on peace activism. And by this, we mean the individuals who are doing the work on the ground, organizing, speaking out, and sharing their vision for how Jews and Palestinians can share a secure homeland, so individuals and organizations that they direct and work in and so forth.
So a key element of peace-building centers, often as we think of it on negotiations among political leaders at the state level, often with international involvement, but efforts to promote mutual understanding are already happening on the ground even if we don't have political leaders talking to each other. And this has been happening for a long time in different places, between individuals, across community groups, and institutions and organizations thanks to activists and educators like the ones that we have on our panel today.
So today, we will have the opportunity to talk about the successes and, of course, the challenges they are facing and the tremendous work that they see lying ahead of them. So just a brief note about the format, each speaker will have about 5 to 7 minutes to present. And then I will start the conversation with a few questions of my own.
After that, we're going to open it up to questions from the webinar audience. And so those of you attending the webinar can write in your questions in the Q&A function on Zoom. I'll do my best to group the questions together so that we can cover as many as possible in the limited time that we have.
So very briefly, I want to introduce the speakers in the order in which they're going to present. First is Rula Hardal, who is the Palestinian co-executive director of A Land For All, Two States, One Homeland. This is a shared movement that recognizes that both Jews and Palestinians share the same homeland and supports a joint framework for two independent states.
She is a research fellow at the Kogod Center for the Study of Jewish and Contemporary Thought at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Hanover in Germany where she was a lecturer. In 2015, she returned to Israel as associate professor of political science at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem until 2021. So thank you for joining us, Professor Hardal.
Second is Alon-Lee Green, the founding national co-director of Standing Together, a progressive grassroots movement in Israel that mobilizes people around issues of peace, equality, and social justice. Alon-Lee was the organizer of Israel's first trade union of waiters and also helped to convene large scale rallies for the social protest movement in Israel. Prior to this, he worked in the Knesset as a political advisor for five years. Thank you for joining us.
Third, we have Mohammad Kundus, who is the principal of the Kfar Saba School, which is part of the Hand in Hand network of six integrated bilingual schools that represent 2,000 students across Israel. He has a bachelor's in art and social studies from Netanya College and a master's in film from Brandeis University, so clearly no stranger to the Boston area. Mohammad previously managed the Alsaraia Jaffa Theater and the Manar center for at-risk youth while working in bilingual theater productions. Today, he combines his work in social change with the arts. Thank you for dialing in.
And last but not least, we have Dr. Oded Adomi Leshem, who is senior research associate at Hebrew University in the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Conciliation Lab. He's a political psychologist and scholar who studies, teaches, and writes about hope and despair as political phenomena. He gives lectures on hope to a range of academic and nonacademic audiences, including last semester here at Harvard when he was visiting. Earlier in his career, he was a documentary filmmaker and news cameraman covering conflict and war.
So we're very grateful to all of you for joining us, and I look forward to your remarks. I'm going to turn it over to Rula now. Thank you so much.
RULA HARDAL: Thank you. Thank you, Melani. Thank you, Sarah for having us in this webinar. I will start maybe with two comments before I tell you a little bit more about A Land For All, the organization that I represent in this sense today.
I have to say something about the whole conceptualization of the event and the speech and the discourse around the term peace and peace activism. I'm not a peace activist. And my organization is not a peace organization.
We are a political organization, Palestinian-Israel joint organization cross-border if we consider that we do have still borders between Israel and Palestine. But when I say Palestinians, it's not only Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel. But our organization is shared between Palestinians from the West Bank, from Gaza, from within Israel, and from the diaspora.
This is one. The second point I really don't like the concept peace because the first imagination when you speak about peace, you know, it's about people-to-people work. It's about love and accepting each other. And it's not the reality. And it's not the discourse that I would like to start this webinar with.
And furthermore, when we speak about peace, in our imagination, we are speaking about two parties, two groups, that are fighting on something. And we need to do peace between them. And the symmetry in this sense is not correct.
So before speaking about what we do and about the future and about changing the reality, the terrible reality that we are all facing as Palestinians and Israelis since a half a year, we really need to refer to the origins of the problem. And again, it's not only a conflict as the majority of the people here in the land and outside try to conceptualize it, actually.
And we cannot ignore what's going on on the ground now and go further to speak about peace. We are witnessing now a very violent escalation and a historic moment in terms of the Israel-Palestine question. And we need to understand it, analyze it, in a very realistic and brave way in order to speak about solutions or maybe about peace if you wish to.
What's going on now is not only a war against Gaza and Hamas. According to my analysis, it's an ongoing Nakba elimination of the Palestinian people, being Palestinians, and continuous denial and negation of their most basic collective right for self-determination. And speaking about the situation now cannot take October 7 as the reference point to start any discussion.
Having said that, still, in order to speak about the future of this place and about the future of the people here, the two groups of the people, the Palestinians and the Israeli Jews, there is a need to speak about how can we go out from the situation. And my organization, which exists as an organization since 2, 2 and 1/2 years, something like that-- but as an idea and initiative of Palestinians and Israelis exist since more than one decade. And we advocate for a political vision for Palestinians and Israelis between the Jordan and the river based, again, first of all, on the two-state solution.
Because we do believe that the majority of the Palestinians in Palestine, in historic Palestine, and the majority of the Jewish Israelis, because of many reasons, still emphasize their need for self-determination in two sovereign Democratic states. But we cannot refer back 30 years in our history and speak about the two states in the same language, in the same understanding, and in the same paradigm that we understood or the same way that the classic two-state solution was designed and shaped before 30 years based on separation and racism, actually, if you want.
But we encourage a paradigm shift when we speak about the two-state solution, which based on sharing the same homeland, sharing the same place, and partnership instead of separation. And also, because the reality is not about separation. The reality on the ground that has been developed between Israelis and Palestinians, because of the interrelated connections in terms of sharing the same piece of land, because of sharing the same natural resources, and climate, and even economy, and even currency, we support establishing or offering or advocating this two-state solution on different principles of sharing the homeland, of equality, both individual and collective, recognition, acknowledgment, and reconciliation and then to build, to emphasize that separation, only in terms of having two political separate entities.
But in order to offer something much more sustainable and viable for the future and to share the shared already resources and place, we offer a confederative model or shared super structure of institutions to regulate all the issues that we have shared, actually, and that will continue to be shared between the two people and accordingly between the two states.
And the last point that is specific about our political vision-- that we unlock in a very creative, equal, just way the deadlocks that we had 30 years ago when people from both sides started to speak about the two-state solution, such as Jerusalem and the status of Jerusalem, the settlements, the right of return of the Palestinian people, and so on.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you so much. Great. I appreciate your remarks. And I completely understand what you mean about thinking in terms of solutions rather than peace, activism, and the dynamics of the asymmetry and so forth. And these are really excellent points.
And in fact, in order to move forward, you have to deal with the reality and not in some sort of Utopian vision of everyone singing Kumbaya together. So thank you so much for raising those important points. And I'm going to turn it over to Alon-Lee now.
ALON-LEE GREEN: Thank you so much. And thank you, Rula, always nice to listen to you. So I represent here Standing Together [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is a Jewish-Palestinian grassroots movement operating in Israel to bring people from both communities against the occupation, against this war, for peace, for equal rights, and for social justice.
And before I will speak about ourselves, I do want to say something about this moment. I think it's important. We are here, also, we are here, and we are everywhere that we take part in to advance our call for a ceasefire agreement now, to stop the killing, to stop the destruction, to stop the starvation in Gaza, and to bring back the hostages alive, home to their families.
It needed to happen months ago. It needed to happen before one drop of blood was spilled. And it's urgent. And it's something that we look at this reality and it becomes unfathomable already, the price that the Palestinian people is paying. And it is something we're working on to organize our society every day in the past five months.
So Standing Together is a movement that understands that, in order to achieve change in our society, we need to organize. It's not going to happen that one morning the Israeli government or the Israeli prime minister or the Israeli parliament will wake up and say today is the day we want to end the occupation and to grant freedom to the Palestinian people and safety to the Jewish people. Because those two are connected. It's not that one day a president of the US or some kind of a leader in the world will say this is the day I'm going to finally put the pressure needed to achieve those goals.
If we want to see those changes, if we want to see an end to the occupation, an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people, an end to this war, and also prosperity and safety to both Palestinians and Jews living on this land, we need to organize and to build the power to achieve it. There's no way to bypass both the Palestinian society and the Jewish society living on this land.
And we understand one very basic fact. 7 million Palestinians live on this land, and they are going nowhere. They're going nowhere despite all the fantasies of the fascists and the genocidal groups in our society calling them to at least be expelled or even disappear in worse ways from the land. But next to them, also, 7 million Jewish people live on the same land. And they're going nowhere, by the way, despite all the fantasies of some other crazy people thinking that somehow they're all going to disappear and come back, back to their homes.
And if this is the reality, we need to work towards a solution, not a discussion, not theorized ideas, not a terminology kind of fight, but towards a real solution of how can we both, all these people, live together on the land. And how we can come to a real solution that, for us, must include equality, freedom, and independence for all the people that live on the land and, of course, safety?
So we understand that the powers that are preventing us from achieving these realities have a lot of power. They have a lot of resources. They are heavily funded by our groups in the world. They sell a lot of guns, and they make a lot of money out of these realities. They grab a lot of land from Palestinians, and they really have something to gain.
But if we ask ourselves the question of, Who are the people that are paying the price for this reality? And I'm going to say to say something that maybe not everyone will agree with me. We understand that the Palestinian people is paying, again, an unfathomable price.
They pay a price of 31,000 Palestinians dying in the last 5 and 1/2 month. Almost 14,000 of them-- listen again. 14,000 of them are children. They're paying a price of 70% of all the homes in Gaza destroyed, 2 million people displayed, mass starvation. And that's only in the last 5 months, right?
Before October 7th, the reality was bad enough. I mean, in the West Bank, we're talking about the deadliest year in two decades when it comes to Palestinians. And by the way, it's easy to say that it's all because of settler violence. It's also because of settlers' violence. But most of the Palestinians that died in the West Bank in the last year were because of the IDF, not because of settlers, right? And we need to remember that.
We need to remember it's not legal to demonstrate in the West Bank. And if you are a youth Palestinian that is going to demonstrate, you can find yourself dead because of not having the right to protest. So we understand the Palestinians are paying a much higher, much, much higher price. And we are acknowledging the power dynamics and the power differential between Palestinians and Jewish people on the land.
But then when we ask ourselves, Does it mean that the Jewish people are benefiting because of this reality? Do we have what to profit out of occupation of oppression?
The answer is no. We also pay a price. And we also lose out of this reality. And we understand the basic fact that we both have what to gain out of ending and changing this reality, out of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, out of ending the occupation and achieving a reality where everyone is equal and free and independent. And this is why we create a struggle, a joint struggle, of both Jews and Palestinians, understanding that it's not only a struggle to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, which we do, but it's also a struggle of self-interest of the people, of all the people that live on the land, including Jewish people.
So this is the kind of frame we're working. And organizing people on the ground means training people, means having thousands of members in our movement growing daily. We are really growing since the war started, having a lot of Palestinian youth joining our movement in the last few months.
It means training people. It means building chapters in all the universities and colleges in Israel. And it means asking the question of how do we build the political will within the Israeli society, both Palestinians and Jews, to end the occupation.
Because drawing lines on maps and asking one state, two states, it's nice. It's only asked by people outside of Israel. No one in the land-- think of a person in Gaza. Do they ask yourself, One state or two states? No one actually asks the question.
What we need to do is to build the political will, the political intention within the Israeli society, to put our leadership, which have to be a different leadership, of course, in the room with the Palestinians with the intention of ending the occupation. And that's the mission that Standing Together takes upon itself. Thank you.
SARAH BANSE: Great. Thank you so much, Alon-Lee. I'm going to turn now to Mohammad.
MOHAMMAD KUNDOS: Salaam, everyone. Special salaam to Boston. First of all, I want to thank Alon, and Rula, and Oded, and all, and Sarah, and everybody for making this happen.
It's very difficult to try to put in words what we as people, as people who try to make a change, dream of. Rula mentioned the complicated vision of the word peace. And Alon described how difficult when you just realize numbers and how this war is just went too far in every sense.
I want to talk about education I'm coming from two backgrounds, education and arts. In Brandeis, I did film, music, and theater. And in the Netanya College, I did the education. So for me, I combine both languages in order to try and answer the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because it's the most difficult question and the most interesting question if we talk about history and education and future.
And if we all agree on freedom and equality and independence for everyone, the main question that we should ask-- Where do we start? And for me, the first step in order to talk about any political solution or any correction to the reality starts with education.
Now, in terms of numbers, in Israel, there is more than 5,000 educational schools, education places. Only eight of them are bilingual, that brings Arabs and Jews together. So just imagining this number, this few number when you were talking about the whole country, only 8 out of 5,000 schools are bilingual. 6 of them are part of Hand in Hand, which I will elaborate in a minute. And another 2 belongs to Hagar, Hagar NGO, and the Wahat al-Salam Never Shalom near Jerusalem.
The idea of Hand in Hand is to start teaching kids, Palestinians and Jews, Israelis, together since kindergarten. Because if we want to really correct, to make a correction, to make a difference, you have to start by bringing both sides together to study together. And when you're talking about education, having Jews and Arabs learning together in elementary school, since elementary school, since kindergarten and into high school, it's not just to have a nice picture of kids playing together.
It's an idea that the kids will not only understand the language of their neighbor. It's weird. Because when you're talking about Israel, the education system is separated. You know, Jews learn in their schools. Arabs learn in their schools.
So a real meeting point only happens in college when they're 18 or 25. And for us, it's too late. If you want to make a real connection, you have to start from education. You have to start from little age to be able to give those kids, this new generation, the opportunity to really understand to know each other.
Now, the Hand in Hand schools aim to really expose both sides, Arabs and Jews, to both narratives. And that takes a lot of courage because most of us prepare one story, one truth, one narrative. And when we open or invite people to join us, we say clearly our goal is not to solve the conflict right now.
Our goal is to build the foundations to create a stage, a common equal stage, for kids, for the new generations, to grow up together, to learn about each other, speak each other's language fluently, know each other music, food, poetry, history. And by giving them this opportunity, we believe that we are raising the leaders that in 20, 30 years will be able to come up with a political solution. It can be one state, two states, whatever it is.
But if we want a real solution, a long-term solution for all of us, we have to start doing it right. And doing it right is starting with education, allowing those kids to start facing the conflict in a way that, of course, is very built up in terms of how old they are.
But when we're talking about the Independence Day versus the Nakba, for kids to start practicing this conversation, this complicated conversation, since early age, it will lead them to a place where, when they turn 18, this topic will not be a new topic for them. This idea of talking about things and trying to solve things is something that will not be new for them.
And by creating a space, a place where they grow up together, they develop respect to each other. They develop responsibility to each other. They develop love to each other. And those foundations are really basic when you're talking about meeting points, when you're talking about making a change.
If Gandhi said be the change that you want to see in the future-- so what I see in our schools is that we're building this change right now, although it's only eight schools. But those eight schools in this number of 20,000 students are there. They're living the future. They're living together, respecting each other, learning about each other narrative story.
They disagree. They sometimes talk about sensitive issues, especially now. We have the most crazy war that we're dealing with.
And guess what? Everybody that is in Hand in Hand didn't leave the schools. Why? Because what we're doing in the school is the most specific answer, political, social answer, to solve the war outside. And by creating this opportunity, we allow ourselves, as adults, as kids, as parents, to really see how the future could be if we all, as Alon and Rula said, if we all just think about each other from a point of a humanitarian right or responsibility to each other. I would elaborate more, but I think my 5 minutes are done.
RULA HARDAL: Great, thank you. Well, we'll have opportunities for you to elaborate. And I'm very impressed that you're able to continue this work and that not a single family has left the school. That's great. So that's very impressive.
So I'm going to turn it over now to Oded, who's coming at this more from the perspective of a researcher, a psychologist who works on the psychology of hope and despair. And I'm sure you have a lot to say on these topics, as you have already written extensively on them. Thank you.
ODED ADOMI LESHEM: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Melani, Sarah, for inviting me. And thanks for the speaker, for Rula, and Alon-Lee, and Mohammad. And I have to say that I'm humbled because you guys are doing the work.
You know, I'm writing about it. I'm teaching about it, speaking about it. But really the work on the ground is done by these wonderful people that we just heard.
And I want to perhaps provide some context to these things. So first of all, like Mohammad said, these activities and more activities that are happening in Israel, in the occupied territories, that have to do with future solutions, peace, conciliation, et cetera, are unfortunately really on the margins. Currently, they are the margins of what is happening in civil society or in the two societies.
And not only they are in margins in terms of the number and, unfortunately, the influence currently. But also, they are mostly frowned upon by the majority of the people that are living between the river and the sea, certainly inside of Israel, certainly from the side of the Jewish-Israeli society. Most of the time when people say, I'm sending my kid to a bilingual school to learn with Arabs, people say, oh, are you sure about that?
When people hear about a solution that Rula and her team are working on, which is both a two-state solution and a federation, people will frown about that also. And also, grassroots movements, people will say, what, Arabs and Jews, Palestinian and Jews working together? Eh.
This is a tragedy, of course. Because all these movements, initiatives, and programs, they actually hold the future, right? So I write about hope. And one of the things that is innate to hope is that it is future oriented.
We know in conflicts that many people deal with the past. And the past is important for many reasons, identity, and narrative, et cetera. But one of the things that combines all of these activities that we heard right now, whether in education, or grassroots, or in politics, these are future-oriented initiatives. And they take the perspective and include the perspective of the people in order to find something that is better for the future.
So this is one thing that I wanted to say that in terms of context. I saw the introduction for this webinar, and wanted to say these initiatives, unfortunately, are not mainstream, right? This is not mainstream in the society. That's one thing.
The second thing is that talking about the war, talking about October 7th and the war that is going right now, we are, of course, in a state of shock in a sense that this is the most tragic event in terms of number of casualties, in terms of atrocities, in terms of the extreme movements that are happening in both societies. This is a tragic moment and the worst episode probably.
And we know from the history of conflicts that these kind of really acute events could go in two directions. One direction is further escalation, further aggression to the point of exclusion, to the point, in some cases, genocide. So you know, fascist regimes thrive on these kind of events, right? The nationalistic and messianic movements, for them, these wars are good in a sense that they propel their aim and promote their agenda.
So this is one pathway, extreme and escalation. But another pathway is what these are going to organizations are trying to do, political pathways, educational pathways, grassroots pathways, towards resolution, towards conciliation, towards peace. And this moment, if we are just observers and we just look and kind of say, oh, it's interesting, Where will it go? We are not actually doing the right thing.
The only right thing is to support these types of initiatives to make sure that the future does not go in this direction of escalation and extremism, but will go in the path of these organizations and other organizations, other initiatives and political movements that are working on the ground. It won't happen by itself. In fact, if we leave it like that, it will go probably-- the default is going to go to the escalation and extremism paths. So we have a responsibility.
And when I say this, I also am kind of-- I guess that most of the audience that is listening to this webinar and attending this webinar are not from Israel-Palestine, are from abroad. And I will say that this responsibility to support initiatives, organizations, movements that are working for conciliation, resolution, peace, whatever you want to call it, democracy, equality, there is a huge need for support for these movements and initiatives also from outside.
So we know, of course, that since the 7th of October, the world has been split. And you need to be either pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. This is, of course, a huge, huge, huge mistake. It's a huge mistake.
And the people that are going to pay the price for this mistake are the Palestinians and the Israelis that are living here, right? So any support that these types of movements and organizations initiatives could accumulate will help the people here in Israel-Palestine and encourage people to rethink or reevaluate the kind of their position and listen to the opportunities here that the leaders of these organizations are presenting and support these. So this is it for me.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much to all of you. So I think what we'll do-- we have about 45, 50 minutes left. So I think I'll start by posing a question to each of you, and then maybe we'll do another round of that. And then I'll open it up because we're getting some very interesting questions in the Q&A from the webinar participants.
So just in light of what Oded just said about how the efforts, the important and valuable and brave efforts, that all of you are engaged in being rather marginal and not mainstream, I'm curious to ask how October 7th has changed your work and how you're fighting against-- or maybe you're not even paying attention to it-- this situation in which there's deeper polarization and the work that you're doing is perhaps even more difficult to pursue. So what kind of strategies are you pursuing, or are you just business as usual? It's always been hard, and you keep going.
So that's my question I'd like to pose to everyone. And then after that I have a specific question for each one of you. So why don't we go in the order in which you spoke starting with Rula.
RULA HARDAL: Yeah. Thank you again. No, business is not as usual, not at all. On the personal level, I decided to join and to take this position actually following October 7th. Because I had the feeling that being with these people and advocating for another future than the expected one-- and the expected one, because of what we see on the ground and especially in Israel, the increasing power of the ultra nationalist and religious-- and maybe I will also add another term-- fascist groups in Israel represented inside that the political system and designing and shaping our life and probably our future is one of the reasons that made me actually take this personal political decision. It's maybe to do something for myself and for my people keeps me able to breathe in this disaster that we live in.
And believe me, I speak about both societies. But my disappointment from the Israeli-Jewish society where I work, where I was born and grew up, is very big and difficult to handle, that we are now about 6 months after the beginning of this war. And not in any way to underestimate what happened to them October 7th, but to see the majority of the Israeli Jewish society encouraging killing of people in Gaza, encouraging and accepting and saying nothing politically, morally, ethically about the mass starvation of kids and women and people in Gaza, actually, it's not only a moral failure of the Israeli society, but the whole world.
And we are watching that. It's not '48 where we had the Nakba and we don't know a lot about it. We know now about it because historians have read and people started to speak about it. But we are watching that on our screens every day.
And if we don't do that, actually, we know where, the other people who are now in the government in Israel, are they going to take all of us. Because they have a clear vision and not only a clear vision for all of us Palestinians and Israelis. They do have action plans. And they started to implement them, and it's not new.
This is also something to consider when we speak about the whole political activism and the political parties and analyzing the Israeli society. And I didn't even start speaking about the Palestinian society, but the Palestinians has their own failures, not putting them on the same level. Because I don't want to do this comparison between the oppressed and the occupied and the oppressor and the colonizer. But it's not in any way to romanticize the whole picture within the Palestinian political national project. There are a lot of problems there.
But the one side that actually has the power and the ability to change what's going on on the ground and to end the occupation, to accept going for a political settlement and political solution, is the Israeli side. And we know that. The last several governments in Israel, at least since the mid of 2000, 2009 maybe, we witnessed the last efforts or maybe before that. But especially since the first government of Netanyahu, who actually was on the head of the regime since then except one year, two years ago, these governments did everything in order to prevent any discourse about negotiations, about ending the occupation, about any political solution. That's why I'm focusing my discussion on the Israeli side.
Because of the developments on the ground since October 7, we see a very narrow opportunity to make much more efforts. And we do it, actually, these efforts on the national level in Israel and Palestine, but also on the international level trying to advocate for the need for political solution that can come from outside through pressure, through instruments and tools that are available within the European Union, Western countries, as well as the US administration.
And we've been doing that. We've been in the United States for a political tour. I just came a couple of days ago. From one week, we were invited to the European Union to speak to people there, and politicians, and stakeholders. So, no, we are working in a much more intensity and under urgency feeling that we have to see this very small narrow opportunity to start working on something different. And offer both people, Oded, as you say, offering an alternative to the disaster that we are in and that might continue shaping our life in the coming years and maybe decades is very important in this sense.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Alon-Lee.
ALON-LEE GREEN: So, of course, everything changed after October 7th, the sense of urgency, our understanding that we are facing the biggest crisis and darkest moments of our lifetimes. We move directly to operating in emergency capacity.
First thing we did was just to bring together to shared spaces Jews and Palestinians to even just feeling the trauma together, acknowledge the pain of both what Hamas did on October 7th, the massacre, and then the immediate retaliation, aggression against Gaza even at the beginning before it was in this magnitude. And then we understood. We understood that there are forces within our society that are wasting no time, not even one second, to drive our society into very dangerous places, saying on the 8 o'clock news that there are no innocent children in Gaza, that all the children of today are the terrorists of tomorrow, that "the ones we didn't kill in the War of 2014 are the ones that committed the massacre of 2023." And that's a quote of the minister.
And we understood that as not only a war waging on Gaza. There's actually a war over the soul of our society. And we started fighting this war. We started organizing, trying to bring people together, trying to speak about basic solidarity, basic empathy. You know that it is still a controversial thing to say that all the children in Gaza are innocent.
If I will write it now in my Twitter, I will get attacked by hundreds of people within an hour. And do write it all the time. And it is something that we need to fight. It is something we need to fight, and it's something we need to understand.
It is a moment for radical empathy, not to take the moral high ground over our society and to morally lecture people, tell them we are the enlightened ones. We know something you don't know. We have a truth you didn't discover yet. No-- to understand the trauma, to feel the same pain because we do feel the same pain. And then from within our society-- to organize our society, to point towards pointing on a different direction.
And think that the beginning needs to be this understanding that, if you don't have an option in the menu, people cannot choose this option. And for so long, for so, so long, there wasn't any other option in the menu. We've been told that, if we want our safety, we need to control them. We need to oppress them. We need to have occupation. The settlements are for our safety and so on and so on.
And even the left wing and the opposition in Israel seized to create competition in politics. But politics, eventually, is about competition. It's about competing ideas. And there isn't any competing ideas. So the role of Standing Together is to put this option, this idea, on the menu and to create competition.
And even if we get attacked and death threats and brutalized by what we do, and even if we're small and not mainstream, we speak in an hegemonic way. We are representing the interests of the majority in Israel. And we speak as if we are the majority.
Because the Jews and Palestinians living on this land have the same interests, eventually, of ending the occupation, of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, of achieving an equal society. Because I know that, if someone is not equal, if someone is not free in this land, none of us will be equal. None of us will be free. And actually, none of us will be safe.
And this is the equation we're trying to create right now in our society. Jewish safety is dependent on Palestinian freedom. We hit this historic junction. We have to wake up and to understand.
So this is what we're trying to do, to organize our society, to point, to push as strong as we can towards this idea. And Oded, I agree with you. We are not the majority. We're not mainstream at all. Our idea are radical ideas.
And I know that from the outside-- and we're speaking to an American, mainly, or international audience. From the outside, we can be criticized for not speaking radical enough and not choosing the words you want to hear us using. But we need to understand that the most radical way to speak about a radical idea is to say it in words and in ways people can hear, people can understand, and people can open minds. And this is what we're doing.
RULA HARDAL: Thank you. That's a really profound way to put that statement to speak about a radical idea in ways that people can hear, a very important point. And I'm sure, Oded, as a social psychologist, that makes a lot of sense to you. OK, Mohammad, I'd love to hear your perspectives.
MOHAMMAD KUNDOS: Well, it's just very touching to hear you guys speaking. I want to continue this line of how can you really create a dialogue where people can really understand and listen. But yeah, if I go back to your questions, everything changed, everything, everything, everything.
The little details, the big details, the way we dream, the way we think, the way we talk, the way-- Alon mentioned just how he can get attacked if he posts something on the social network. The Palestinian community doesn't even have this privilege of posting something. Anything that you post-- now, it's Ramadan. So if you just post something religious, the police can come and get you and say, you support Hamas, or you did something against Israel.
So how can we make this dialogue really happen? How can we make people listen? It's something that we deal with it on a daily basis. Because after October 7th, the first thing that happens is that everybody was silent. If I'm talking about my staff-- the kids came the next week, started playing.
But the adults were silent. The staff didn't talk. Jews, Arabs didn't talk for a month. Parents came, put their kids, went home, didn't talk. It was like it was a very loud silence that people couldn't even ask questions towards each other.
And one thing that we did is to try to create dialogue groups with the parents and with the staff to allow them to share their traumas, share their fears, share their pain, and mostly invite them to ask the unquestioned questions, if you feel comfortable, to ask questions to this Jewish teacher that is teaching in the same class with you or asking question to the Palestinian that is standing with you every day in the school.
And if the goal, in my opinion, of education is to help kids, help people, really deal with their question and go on a journey to research this question and try to present their answers, on a practical level it's to allow them to ask about each other's narratives and each other's perspective about what's happening in the war.
For example, in my staff, the Palestinian staff has families in Gaza. I have one Jewish teacher that his brother is a soldier fighting in Gaza. Another staff member was recruited by the Israeli army to fight in Gaza. So when we're talking about education, sometimes it feels like this is the easiest. Or this is, you know-- so you're talking about hope.
But in order to speak these words of hope and dialogue, we do a lot of dialogue work in terms of bringing the adults together to allow them to start sharing, to start talking, to start crying together in order for them to really understand that they're in the right place. Because the main question that was raised after October 7th is, are we doing the right thing? Are we relevant?
And the most sad thing that this war did is it allowed us to see how easy people go to the extreme, how easy people go to the comfortable zone of having one narrative, one story. I don't want to hear even about the context. Oded said, you know, the context. The word context is something that people don't want to touch. And we're talking about before October 7, talking about the future after October 7.
We don't live in a taboo. Everything has happened. We're living in this conflict for the last 100 years. We cannot-- we don't have the privilege to-- give up. We don't have the privilege to say, we'll just wait. No. We have to do it right now. And what's happening in this panel is the right thing.
Because if I'm doing it in education, I cannot do it alone. You know, I need to put my hand in Alon's hand and in Rula's hand and Oded's hand and with all the people of this panel in order to make a bigger change.
Now, we're having difficulties recruiting more people to Hand in Hand. Why? Because if before October 7 people were like afraid of this binational idea, now people are just scared to even talk about it.
And that's why I say we want to raise the sensitive questions. We want to raise the doubts about what we do as people who believe in change. We should doubt everything we think of in terms of is a two-state solution is the right thing. You know, where do we start in terms of really convincing people to join the demonstrations against the war, to really convince people to stand up and say out loud that we're against any kind of violence or any kind of occupation?
And it's time. If not now, when can we do it? You know, we reach the highest level of cruelty in terms of treating each other in both sides in this circle of blood.
That's why, in my opinion, what's happening now is a waking call for all of us that we don't have time to waste. We have to fight for a solution in every term, in every way, in order to make a real change. And it has to be radical. We can adjust wait on the side. It has to be radical.
And the education tool is a radical education. It's education that doesn't afraid to look in these politicians' eyes and tell them, you need to step aside. You know, we have something to do.
And the last thing I want to say is about how you deal with corrupt leadership, how you can really move people to go outside and fight this and be able to also bring alternative to this kind of field. Because in order to really make a change, it's not enough to say the leadership is not doing well. We have to bring alternative. We have to create from nothing alternative leadership that will lead us to something that is better than what we're living now.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. And Oded, if you could comment on the question? And then I'll open it up with more specific--
ODED ADOMI LESHEM: Yeah. So I have I want to continue this conversation and talk a little bit about magnifying the voices that we are hearing now. We live in an age where media is everything, right? You can do so many things. But if it is not talked about, reported, discussed, criticized, anything, it didn't happen.
Because we are living in such an extreme circumstance, then extreme, I would say, even fascist, fascist-like politics is ruling the public discourse. And many times what we do and we tend to do-- and this is very natural-- is say, look at this minister. What he said is so racist. Look at this person. What he said is so horrific, et cetera, et cetera.
So the extreme fascist-like politics are talking. And what we're doing is only reacting to them, in many ways, is kind of saying again what they said in a critical way. However, what Alon-Lee, for example, suggested and others here suggested is to magnify the alternative voice and celebrate it. There is nothing more radical and courageous than celebrating a Jewish-Palestinian partnership. This is radical.
And if you celebrate it and put it on the front and report it and talk about it and magnify the voices on social media, on traditional media, in the streets-- it doesn't matter. But the more you talk about it and magnify these efforts, this could be Standing Together or the idea of a shared school, bilingual school, or the idea of a political solution, even saying a political solution is radical right now. So magnifying these voices as much as possible, this is the only way that, what people say, move the needle, right, change the balance.
These things need to be celebrated. Conciliation, peace, justice, independence, end of occupation, partnership needs to be celebrated, magnified, talked about even with a smile I would say, right? So with a smile in terms of a radical smile in a way that confronting these atrocities, confronting the war, standing together Jews and Palestinian and infuriating the government and making them kind of mad about it, this is a great kind of way forward. And so, again, the audiences that could hear us and magnify these voices as much as possible, I would say this could be really helpful.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. So now, I'm going to turn to some specific questions that I have for each of you. And I think what I'll do is I'll weave in some of the questions that have been popping up in the Q&A as well.
So starting with Rula, you quite rightly opened your comments by calling attention to the asymmetry in the situation and then pivoted to the work you're doing to promote a political solution. So tell me, how does that work in the context of an asymmetry to bring together this structure, a confederal structure, where the confederal unit deals with issues of shared concern? Because it strikes me as challenging when you've got such asymmetry in the actors involved. And I'm sure this is very much on your mind and what you think about. And we do have a question in the Q&A from one of the participants asking about the confederative model of governance, if you could sketch it out further.
There's also some questions in there that I'll throw in here just in case we run out of time about leadership. So a couple of the participants say they see the possibility for leadership change in Israel because there is a democracy. OK, we can unpack that and talk about that further. But how does this work among Palestinians given the landscape of leadership?
So there's some people, I think, asking questions about what the leadership looks like in Palestine, in the Palestinian territories. And one person specifically asks about how you change the policy and leadership of Hamas. So you know, particularly focus on the confederalism question. But if you have thoughts about leadership as well, that would be great.
RULA HARDAL: I do, yeah. I will start from the last point, and I will say another few comments about the confederation that we suggest. And unfortunately, we don't have a lot of time to discuss the whole components of our political vision, be it the component of the two states, the separate two states, sovereign two states, and the confederation that we suggest. Actually, OK, maybe I'll start with that.
You can imagine confederation between the two states. You can imagine a kind of union like the European Union. And in this sense, I will encourage you to remember the history of Europe until before maybe 80 years or 100 years, not anymore. And when people in Germany and France were told at that time that they will have a kind of union between different countries in Europe now, they would laugh in our faces.
That's why we believe that it's not only doable, but it's also a very, very important component. Because as I said before, we cannot separate the people. And we cannot divide the small piece of land that we live in.
And we cannot also ignore the very strong attachment of a lot of Jewish-Israeli people to the whole land as, you know, Eretz Israel. And I'm speaking now only about the attachment. I'm not speaking about the history of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel and the Nakba and so on.
I'm speaking about the very individual and collective attachment of one group of people according to their beliefs, according to their Torah, theology, whatever, and even the sense of belonging of people who were born in this place, as well as the Palestinians. We have a connection and sentiment to historic Palestine, not only to Ramallah and Nablus, but also to Haifa and Nazareth and what whatever, all places.
And having this confederation is not only to be able in terms of economy, and politics, and human rights, and borders, and freedom of movement to build shared and accepted arrangements. We have another component beyond these practicalities when we speak about confederation that can ensure belonging of both groups, both national groups, to the whole entire homeland in the term that we see the whole concept of citizenship and residency, which is going to be flexible in order to be able also to ensure these very, very strong attachment and in order to solve the deadlocks that we have in the classic two-state solution.
For example, if some part of the nonviolent settlers would like to remain living where they live now in the West Bank, in the future Palestine or Palestinian state, they will be able to be residents in the state of Palestine and keep their citizenship in the state of Israel as well as the Palestinians who are going to practice their right of return. They would return to Palestine as a state and have an automatic citizenship there, but they will have also the right to practice their real return to Haifa, for example, by applying and having the right to have residency in Israel, but not citizenship. So it's beyond practicalities. It's also more to do some justice and to be sensitive to the needs of the people and to their attachments.
To the question of the leadership, I will say only a few things. I do believe that we need a new leadership in order to be able to start speaking about any political solution or about changing the reality that we are located in and both people are located in. And one of the reasons why we are stuck in this place is our political leadership on both sides, in the Palestinian as well as the Israeli and in different ways and because of different reasons.
I don't think that we have a lot of differences between the two political systems in Palestine under occupation and in Israel. We can have another five hours webinar analyzing the two political systems in terms of democracy and citizenship and human rights.
So in Israel, yes, we do have to have another political leadership. And I'm afraid that, without having a radical change within the current existed political parties in Israel in terms of their political agendas and without having maybe new political leaders and new political parties, it will be hard to change the whole political scene in Israel.
Also, when we speak about the confederation and about the power imbalance in terms of politics, economy, and so on between the two political entities Palestine and Israel, and when we speak about the situation now and any kind of change of the political leadership, we need, first of all, to suggest something like a Marshall Plan for Palestine in order to move from this situation that we are in not only in Gaza, in Gaza and in the West Bank, including having a political leadership that maybe can be more functional, bureaucratic, more than political in terms of representing the people.
And within this Marshall Plan and transition period, people need to know two things. What is the end vision of this transitional period? And the second is, by the end of this transitional period we need to have, again, a democratic election in Palestine. And what the Palestinian people choose or elect, we should accept it. And the whole international community actually should accept it.
I don't see any chance-- and this is different between Palestine and Israel. I don't see any chance for speaking about elections now in Palestine under the circumstances. But I do think that there is a need for a new political leadership to be much more technocrat to take the Palestinian people into another stage where there is a little bit more balance on all levels in order to start speaking about the future and about the political vision.
And at this stage, when there is a kind of stable situation, we can speak about democratic elections. And we do have, or the Palestinian people had in the previous years, elections. So it's not going to be a huge problem to have, again, democratic elections in Palestine. And I cannot guarantee anything in terms of the involvement of Hamas or any other political party in these elections. It's up to the Palestinian people. And it's up to the development on the ground following what we are having now.
We are speaking while the war is still going on. And all the points that we are speaking about need to be reserved according to the way this war is going to end and in which results or to what results this war is going to bring us.
Because if the war ends now, yes, maybe it will be a lot of what we are speaking and discussing now will be relevant. But if there will be any further escalations in terms of this specific war in Gaza and also in other places, in the north, for example, then we will be in another scenario that needs from all of us to reconsider what we are even now speaking about.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you. So Alon-Lee, I'm going to ask you also about this question about political leadership. I know that you have this prior history of working in the Knesset, so you have some intimate familiarity with the way politics work. So I'd love to hear your perspective on how political leadership might change starting with Israel in particular.
The other thing I'd like to do is throw out this question to you that's in the chat by one of the participants who said, Isn't the return of the hostages the number one priority that we should be focusing on? So I'd like to see if you would respond to that one. Thank you.
ALON-LEE GREEN: And we'll start with the hostages one. In Judaism, we have a saying that we say every human being, every soul, is a universe by itself, meaning everyone is important enough because there are human beings. And of course, yes, the hostages need to return right now. And they need to be home with their families.
And it is scary like hell to just imagine what they're going through. They're in Gaza right now under Hamas in the tunnels. But saying that they need to come first is not something we can say. All of it needs to stop now, the killing and the destruction in Gaza, the starvation in Gaza, and to bring them home. And we're in a reality that we don't need to choose because we understand it's actually connected. There's no way to bring the hostages home without a ceasefire agreement.
And the reality speaks for itself. 5 and 1/2 months of war, of military campaign in Gaza, brought back three hostages alive. It killed at least five that we know of and probably much more. Eight days of a ceasefire agreement brought back 108 hostages alive. So that is the equation that we are seeing, and it speaks for itself.
So we are calling for a ceasefire agreement not only because of the hostages, but also, of course, because the killing needs to stop. Because the killing needs to stop. The destruction needs to stop because the destruction needs to stop.
You cannot say that, as long as you don't bring them back home, we're keeping punishing them. Because collective punishment and killing in this historic levels is not something a person can agree with. And there's a point there.
And then I will say that, in terms of leadership in Israel, of course, we need elections. Of course, we need a different government right now. Of course, even we recognize the fact that a government of Benny Gantz or Yair Lapid will be 1,000 times better than a government of these messianic lunatics that are leading Israel right now in our darkest moment ever.
But is it going to be enough? The answer is no, unfortunately. We can say all we need is a personnel change in Israel. And there are a lot of people that are going to the streets right now saying that what we need is that Netanyahu will pay the personal price, that we'll have a change in personnel in the leadership of Israel. It is not going to be enough. Sorry to disappoint.
But what we need is a change of paradigm, is a change of ideas, is a change of way, of path. Because even if Gantz will-- probably, he will be elected as the next prime minister. There's a question of coalition. We need 61 seats in the Israeli parliament in order to form a majority.
Who will be those 61 seats? It will be people like Lieberman. It will be people like Sa'ar. It will be people like Bennett. And those people will say no.
Clearly, they will say no to an offer of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, which needs to probably be the next step to stop the bloodshed. They will say no to a permanent ceasefire. They are saying no right now to a permanent ceasefire.
So we need to understand that what we need to do is not have the dreams about the leaderships, that it will start from there, but to actually build the political will, the political majority, the intention within the Israeli society to convince people, to be a force within our society that is building this understanding that our safety right now depends on Palestinian freedom. Our safety, our prosperity, depends on changing the equation of controlling Palestinians so people here can walk freely in the streets. And by the way, it doesn't work anyway. It really doesn't work. It exploded in our faces.
And I think that some people come to Standing Together, who-- we really grew. And we are vocal right now. Many more people know what is Standing Together not only in a good way. A lot of people know us, and they don't like us.
And some people ask us, ah, so you're going to become a political party. And the answer is that, even if it will be nice to see a kicking and very strong left party in parliament, which we don't have right now, the occupation will not end. Because we will have, you know what, seven amazing parliament members that are very good in what they do and very good in what they say.
In order to create the change we want to see in the Israeli society, in the Palestinian and Israeli spaces in this land, we need a bigger change. And this change requires a social movement. It's kind of change like the civil society movement, like the feminist movement. It is a change that needs to come from a shift in our society. And this is what we're aiming for.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you so much. Mohammad, I have some questions for you and the work that you're doing. Some of the participants have asked, first, is it possible to mainstream the approach that you have? It seems like in this current political moment that would be challenging. But how, nonetheless, do you think about mainstreaming the approach?
And then the second thing that one of our participants is asking is whether there's a way to frame the work that you're doing, the initiatives you have, in a way that makes it more acceptable. And so the two questions are interrelated in a lot of ways, how you mainstream it. And also, how do you frame the work you're doing such that it is more appealing given the context that Oded has provided about the marginality of these kinds of initiatives all along, but particularly in this historical moment? Thank you.
MOHAMMAD KUNDOS: Thank you for the questions. I think what we're doing now is just to make it more radical. And when I'm saying radical is to really say it out loud clearly, that for any kind of change to happen, it has to start in the right way. And in the right way, I mean giving respect and place for people, for educators, for artists, for protesters to do their job in their own fields.
But I cannot imagine a way to make it more not threatening. It feels like Oded said-- It's funny that people see us as a radical movement. It makes it complicated to try to convince people that what we're doing is the most peaceful way to talk about the conflict and to raise awareness towards the need for ceasefire or the need to stop the war and start thinking differently.
What I think, personally, is that we should publicize our work and try to open more spaces in order for people in Israel, in Palestine, and around the world to see us more and to listen more on how it works. I want to take those parents that are working with me and give them world stages where they can really convince other people that what we're doing in this bilingual school is the right thing in terms of opening another perspective for their kids. So a lot of people are asking, if Jews and Arabs are learning together, they will lose their own identity. There's a paying price of losing their own identity.
And what happens in reality is the opposite. When you're giving a comfortable, safe stage for people to connect, and it happens in kids and in my example, they come to a point where they're really proud of their story, of their narrative, of their history. And they're emotionally free and ready to really understand the other.
And the most important things that happen in this process is being able to see the common ground between both cultures. Rula mentioned the idea of that both nations have this attachment to this land, to the history, to the idea. And just touching this idea of having a lot of common points between both cultures, that we should put a lot of focus on.
Because, now, what's happening, because of the extreme [INAUDIBLE] sides, everybody is seeing just the differences. Everybody is just focusing on the battle between two stories, two ideas, that one cannot live with the other. And what's happening in a real meeting point is that people can really see the advantage, the benefits of doing something together.
And in terms of history and both nations or both identities' connection to the land and to the history of this land, you can see a lot of meeting points that can connect us. And that's something that we should put more focus on. Because if we're imagining a shared destiny, a shared future together, we have to face ourselves. We have to face the differences.
We have to put light on the common ground between us. And if I connect it to the leadership question, we have to make a safe environment for people, like in this honorable panel, to be afraid to take a step forward and to be the next leaders. Because, now, the leaders on both sides are not enough. And that we all agree on.
But in order to bring alternative, we need to create a safe zone where people can be courage enough to say I'm the next leader. And we have to push people that we believe in to do that. If not, we'll just continue the circle, continue the fascist, extremist circle. And we need the alternative now. We have to create an alternative, but it's our responsibility to push the right people to do that.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you. And clearly, you're creating a generation or more of those people. So Oded, we're going to close with you. We're actually a little bit over time. And I think I'll close with one of the questions from the participants that speaks to a point that you raised when you opened your remarks, which was that the work of these organizations and people needs to be supported. That was one of your opening remarks. And we have a question from one of our participants about how Americans and others outside of Israel and Palestine can support these important causes, support peace, equality, justice for all Israelis and Palestinians.
ODED ADOMI LESHEM: Right, so I'll be really brief. And again, there are all sorts of ways to support. And these organizations probably also need financial support. But I want to say something again, kind of repeat, I think, a crucial point.
Everything is happening on-- the arena is the public discourse. The arena is the public consciousness of Israelis and Palestinians and people around the world. If the public discourse changes and shifts and starts to celebrate these ideas, promote them, put them front and center, keep talking about them, repeating it-- this repetition is important-- these three initiatives and others, of course, right, that will be a remarkable way to support.
And for example, Mohammad, you are asking, how could you promote? There is nothing more powerful than the kids and the children in your schools. That exemplifies what partnership is, what the future could look like.
So this is like putting these, again, children, teenagers front and center. That will be great. Standing Together, in Israel, Palestine people are starting to know the colors and the specific font of Standing Together.
But putting this even more forward-- the faces, right? Many times, we're engaged with faces, not only ideas, but with faces. So the faces of members of Standing Together, Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Jews, that would like-- putting them forward front and center in the public discourse, traditional media, social media, et cetera.
And last, I will say another thing. If I could bet on the political configuration that will happen eventually, hopefully, in Israel-Palestine, it will be the type of configuration that Rula is talking about, two states with some sort of federation and movement and citizenship. And my bet is this is what's going to happen. We need to act like this is now happening.
In many ways, we need to act the future as if this is now the present, as if this is almost unavoidable, as the truth, right? So if we talk about these things, if we talk about Arab and Jewish kids together, if we talk about the grassroots movements of Palestinians and Jews, if we talk about a confederation, et cetera, we need to talk about them as if they are a blessing and, also, the truth and the way that the future would look like and act as if it's happening now.
And this is very powerful. It mobilizes people and mobilizes support, creates attention, infuriates the people that don't want these things to happen, which is good. And again, this is, I would say, the way to support these efforts.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great. Thank you so much. I think that's an excellent note to end on. And I cannot tell you how grateful I am to all of you for joining us here today and for the important work that you're doing. You are all incredibly brave, courageous, and brilliant individuals. And I thank you very much.
MOHAMMAD KUNDOS: Thanks a lot.
ALON-LEE GREEN: Thank you.
ODED ADOMI LESHEM: Thanks for the invitation. Thanks so much, everyone.
SARAH BANSE: Thank you.