By Etz Greenfeld, Bogeret of HDNA, Member of Ma'agal Iftach and Dror Israel
My father told me he hates the Palestinians. His brother said the same thing. My mother and I were the only opposing voices at the table. This was just last week. I had gone to visit my family in Vancouver, Canada, coincidentally one day before the war broke out.
In Ulpan I felt the same way. A lone voice for the humanity of Palestinians facing the rampant fear and hatred many of my classmates were expressing.
It's not comfortable being in those spaces. It makes me feel hopeless and angry and afraid.
As I told my father, it's that same vitriolic rhetoric that brings about this terror and violence on either side.
Polarization leads to radicalization. Radicalization leads to violence.
I've spoken with my father on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict countless times. It can feel like I'm hitting my head against a wall. But last week my mother told me, she was at dinner with my father and his brother again. The topic of the war came up. This time, for the first time I can ever recall, my father contradicted his revered older brother.
My father said that civilian deaths should be mourned on any side. He said Palestinians are people too.
It seems so trite and obvious a remark, but to me it was huge. My father's hateful and bigoted stance had shifted. And he was using this new stance to influence his own community.
In one sense this anecdote is nothing. We're discussing war and people’s lives. We need urgent change and urgent solutions. But in another sense, this story means a lot to me. And for a conflict that seems only to worsen, it brings me hope to find small steps forward. Jews and Palestinians acknowledging each other's humanity. It's not nothing.
We need to hold these in-between spaces. If years ago I had given up talking to my father about this topic he may never have changed his opinion. We need to believe in people. Believe in their humanity. Believe in their ability to change. Believe that it's worth our time and energy to widen our scope and engage with that right-wing Orthodox Jew, or that left-wing Anti-Zionist. It's not nothing.
