TRANSCRIPT
Interview with Parent’s Circle Forum
Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content.
Today we’re talking about reconciliation in the face of deep conflict, and we’ll be talking with Robi Damelin. Spokesperson and director of International Relations for the Parents Circle Families Forum joined the organization after her son was killed by a Palestinian sniper.
All her work on the ground in Palestine, Israel, and internationally is geared towards non-violence and reconciliation Robbie was named as a 2015 Woman of Impact by women in the world, Layla Alsheikh. lives in Bethlehem in the West Bank in 2002. Her six month old son.
Sai became ill and Israeli soldiers prevented Lila from taking him to the hospital for more than five [00:01:00] hours. Sai soon died from the lack of timely treatment. Lila joined the Parents’ Circle in 2016 following her son’s death. She never thought about revenge, but rather has devoted her time and energy to ensuring a better, more peaceful future for her children.
The Parents Circle Families Forum is a joint Israeli Palestinian organization made up of over 800 bereaved families. Their common bond is that they have lost a close family member to conflict, but instead of choosing revenge, they have chosen the path of reconciliation. Through their educational activities.
These bereaved members have joined together to take tens of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis on journeys of reconciliation. it is often raw and always emotional, but out of these interaction comes change. Not the kind of change that makes headlines, but a more [00:02:00] personal and profound shift in perspective.
As a joint Palestine and Israeli peace organization, the PCFF models, constructive dialogue around shared values. Even since October 7th, 2023, its staff members and thousands of participants are still committed to peace in a way forward that centers around empathy and humanization. The PCFF focuses on the shared value of the sanctity of human life.
This conversation brings our attention to the values that Palestinians and Israelis can agree upon, even in the darkness of times. Please join me in welcoming Robi and Layla. Hello. Hi.
Robi: Thank you for Yes.
Gissele: Oh, no. Thank, thank you so much for being on the show. Your message right now is, is so, so important. I wanna to start by giving each of you an opportunity to share your [00:03:00] stories.
Layla: Thank you. First of all, we are so honored to be with you today. my name is Layla. Alsheikh, I live in Bethlehem, but I was born and raised in Jordan. ’cause my family, they are originally from Bethlehem, but they went to Jordan ’cause my father was a teacher and he went there to teach the children in the refugees camps.
But after that war started in 1967, so, The government during that time, take a decision not to allow the Palestinian to return back. So they lost their citizenship and they become, Jordanian. I didn’t visit Palestine before that, but my father have thousands of stories about Palestine.
Layla: So I love Palestine from what I hear from my father. And for me, it’s become like a dream to return back and to, to visit all the places, all the people that my father talk about. And that dream come true in [00:04:00] 1999 after I met my husband, he’s originally from Bethlehem too. And, I returned back, after we engaged to get married and to start our new life.
And I was really being so happy to be here to, to return back to my roots and, That happiness become much more after one year when we have our first daughter. And when you start to have children, now you start to plan for their future. So, that, that happiness become much more when we have our second son.
But during that time, the second or the uprising started and during that time, the Israeli government take a decision not to give people like me who came from Arab countries, a Palestinian id. So that meant I can’t go field from place to place.
I can’t even visit my family in Jordan. But during that time, the only thing that I care about, I think about to take care of my family [00:05:00] here, all my children, my husband, and I thought that will, like this uprising will end like after just a few days or a few months. But unfortunately it last for longer time.
That happiness was ended. 11th of April, 2002, four o’clock in the morning when I woke up and I saw my son, he was in a very critical condition. ’cause at that night, the Israeli soldiers came to my village. They were tear gas and at that time he was just six months old and that treatment in our village wasn’t good enough.
So we tried to take him to a hospital on inside Beth because we live in a village outside. So, um, when we tried to enter, the Israeli soldiers prevented us and they said, it’s militarism when you can’t enter. The next chance was to take him to ha the next city to Bethlehem. But again, they, the Israeli [00:06:00] soldiers told us that the main road is closed, so the last chance to take him to ha but the rough will be long and, tough ’cause that will be between village.
During our, in our way to, to Hebron. For the third time, an Israeli checkpoint stopped us. They searched the car, they searched the idea of my husband and my father-in-law. We tried to explain to them that our son should be in a hospital as soon as possible. They didn’t listen. They stopped us more than four hours.
And when we reached the hospital, the doctor said it’s too late to save his life. Few hours later, he died because lack of treatment as a new mother, my family away from me, I was really devastated. I was. Who I like crazy didn’t know what to do because as a mother to feel hopeless, you can’t do anything to help your son.
That one of the things that [00:07:00] I can’t explain, whatever I could have words, I don’t think there’s a word could explain my feeling that day. Even I start to convince myself this is a dream. When we return back home, I slept in the car and this is just dream. I, I will walk up again and bring my son and everything will be great, but unfortunately, that was the truth.
At the middle of the night, I was really so tired. I slept maybe for five minutes and I saw a white dove came and stand on my shoulder and said to me, mom, don’t cry. I’m so happy I couldn’t stop crying from that day until today. Every time I think about him, every time I. I start to imagine if he’s still alive until today, how he looked like, what kind of study he could have, what kind of job he could think about.
Even sometimes I feel jealous when Robi start to talk about David and how much memories he have with him. But, but I [00:08:00] don’t have all that much memories. And that night I was really full of hatred, anger for all the Israelis for me. All of them were responsible about his death, but at the same time, I didn’t think to take revenge.
’cause revenge will never bring my son back. And if I will take a revenge, I don’t know the names of those soldiers. I don’t know anything about them. So if I will do that, I will do it with other innocent people and I will bring another innocent families to this cycle of violence. I will never let anyone to be in the same situation that I was really in.
But at the same time, I didn’t know what to do. I try to live again, but it’s not the same. There’s always something missing. The life will never be the same again. Life continue. during this three years, my husband, [00:09:00] my family, my family in-law tried to convince me to have other children and I refuse.
One day my doctor called me and he said, why didn’t you, when I have other children? I said, why? I will have them if finally I’ll lose them if they are not died because of like treatment or gas, tear gas or something like that. Maybe they will do something and then they will go to jail for the rest of their life.
But after. Those years. I have another boy. I give him the same name because I, ’cause I didn’t wanna forget his story. I didn’t wanna forget all the details about that day. Time passed. And, we tried to continue our life. After 16 years I met one of my friends. We didn’t saw each other for a long time, so we start to talk about family life.
And then he mentioned that he participate in, um, an organization called the Parents [00:10:00] Circle for Greek family from Palestine and Israel. And I stopped him. I said, are you crazy? How could you ask me
Wow.
Layla: To participate in this organization? And he said, I’m gonna ask you a question before, why until now you didn’t tell your other children about what happened to their brother.
I said, because I didn’t want them to be part of this cycle of violence ’cause. If they know, maybe they start to think to take revenge and I lost one of them and I’m not ready to lose another one. So he said to me, maybe this will be a good chance for you, not just to protect your children, maybe other families.
To be honest, I didn’t think that this is true. I thought that this is something he imagined or he saw that in a movie or something. So he kept calling me every three days, four days, speak about the organization, but I let him just speak about it. I wasn’t really convinced. I [00:11:00] didn’t, I didn’t wanna be there or even go there.
Just one day he invited me to a conference in Bethlehem for the organization and I said, yeah, of course I’ll go there. Just to make him stop talking about that, that day in the morning I started to think what kind of excuse I should give him just to leave me alone. Then he called me and he said. Layla get dressed.
I’m waiting you in the car. I know that you tried to find some excuse and you didn’t wanna go there. And I said, oh, my son, oh my God, he’ll never leave me alone, so I should go there just to make him stop talking about it. So when we arrived, there were just Palestinian. We sat with them. I start to listen to some of them.
And, uh, you know, these kind of stories. I know it before or I know what they were talking about, but when the Israeli tried to enter that room, I felt there was something acting in my chest. I didn’t wanna be with them in the, in the same room. I didn’t wanna talk to them. So when I tried to leave [00:12:00] my, you know, my friend, he said to me, please, just sit down, listen to them.
And since we were arguing about that, I saw something amaze me for the first time. I, I saw that the Palestinian, they Israeli talk with each other. They laugh, they hug each other like the family members, not just as friend. I said to myself, oh my God, they’re so crazy. How could they do that? Like, and I said to myself, just say, ’cause I wanna know what’s the thing that make them so close to each other like that.
So as I told you when I listened to the Palestinian, these kind of stories I know before, or I know the situation that they were talking about. But when the Israelis start to talk about her, how they lost their beloved ones, I was really touch and move. ’cause that was the first time really for me to meet a brief families like Robi and the others.
[00:13:00] So from that day I decided to participate one of the project called the Per Narrative project to learn much more about the Israeli ’cause. As a Palestinian I met just soldiers and even. When I met there, I don’t have like a chance to, to talk to them. We just talk about the permission or about the ID or these kind of things.
So, um, it wasn’t easy to sit with them at the same room for the first time. This program is about to give a chance for the Palestinian, even the Israel, to meet face-to-face, to talk about everything, to listen to like two professors from one from Palestine, one from the Israel, to talk about the history of the two nation.
We even went to visit ya VMI museum in Jerusalem to learn about the Holocaust. There’s many Palestinian, they deny the Holocaust and they think [00:14:00] that the Israeli fake it because they wanna justify what they’re doing in Palestine. We even went to visit a Palestinian village was existed before 1948.
It’s not about comparing the pain, it’s not about telling who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s first, who’s second. It’s about to learn about each other to to understand where everyone came from. So I remember the first thing ask us to do, to talk about something happened during the conflict affect our life, and that was the first time I spoke about my son, even between me and my husband’s, since his death.
We didn’t spoke about him, and that was so hard for me to talk about him even after all these years. It’s like to open the wound again and bring the memories back, the pain, the anger, everything. I couldn’t complete the story. And then I start to cry, and then an Israel woman come forward and she [00:15:00] start to apologize.
And she said, yeah, I didn’t hurt you, but the people who hurt you were my people, I’m a mother too. I could understand your pain. I could understand the word that you couldn’t say. And she hugged me. Both of us start to cry. And to be honest, that was the first time I felt someone care about me. Someone could understand my pain, even I, if I didn’t say a word.
And then, um, I decided, continue that program. I decided even after that to
remember on the forum and start to give lectures side Palestine and Israel, and even travel around the world to spread the message of peace and reconciliation. And I thought, that’s it. And I did everything right, and this is the only thing that I, I’m gonna do all my life. When life didn’t leave me alone I can to remember maybe three or four years ago, me and Robi, we’ve been in Jerusalem with other NGOs.
We tried to [00:16:00] talk about our personal stories, and after we finished, I saw an Israeli man. He is a friend of mine. He cry, but not like the others. He look at me all the time and I felt there’s something about him. So after he stand up and he started to talk about his personal story, that was the first time I listened to his story.
And then he mentioned that he was a high officer in the Israeli army, and he served in my area. And then he mentioned that he prevented a Palestinian car from going to a hospital, which included children. Then I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I start to cry because. Like, in my whole life, I didn’t think that I will, I will meet one of those soldiers to be him in front of me, even if he wasn’t there that day, just to do the same things.
Then I [00:17:00] start to cry and Robi asked all of us to go outside to talk and to, to explain everything. Then he said to me, I know this is hard for you, but it’s so important for me to tell you that part of my story. And then he mentioned that after time his son become sick and when he tried to talk him to a hospital, the guard stopped him because he wanna ask him a few question and he was in a hurry.
And he said, just that moment, I understand what I did to the Palestinian. He quit from the Army. He, they sent him to jail because he refused to serve again. He established another organization with ex Palestinian prisoners. And they start to work on the ground to, end the occupation, to, to do many things.
So I looked to him and I said, uh, look, then this is so hard for me to listen to you, but at the same time, I wanna thank you. I wanna thank you [00:18:00] to have that courage and that honesty to speak in front of me, and, um, because you’ve been really so honest, I could forgive you. And then I realized this is the real reconciliation.
It’s so easy to spoke about love, peace, and all these lovely words, but sometimes we ask ourself if we really meant every word we say or everything we did. And that give me a power to continue, even in these dark times that we have it even after the 7th of October until today, I know what’s going on. And, in gaza right now, everyone talk about, about starvation, about genocide, about whatever you wanna call it.
But no one pay attention about what happened in the West Bank since the 7th of October until today, we’re still under closure. So all the people who work inside Israel, they lost their jobs. I spoke about more than 10,000 [00:19:00] person. Most of the time the children couldn’t go to their school if they are lucky, they could go just for one day.
We didn’t have shelters. Many rockets fall down in the West Bank. Uh, we didn’t know if it’s from Iran, from Hezbollah, from Hamas, or from even the Israeli Don because this kind of will never recognize if you are a Palestinian or Israeli. ’cause. We live mix most of areas. And the worst part of all of this is the settlers.
They attack the Palestinian every day in a different, territories. They attack them, they burn their cars, they burn the houses, they do whatever they want. And the Israeli soldiers, they encourage them, they protect them. Even like yesterday or the day before that, they killed, um, someone in a place called Theta, which been attacked every day since a [00:20:00] long time.
And the person who killed the settler who killed that person, they release him. They don’t do anything for him. But if, if the situation was the opposite and the Palestinian who killed the settler, they will jail him. They will, uh, demolish his house. They will maybe take many of his relative to prison.
So the situation become really complicated. It’s become very sad. People are angry people. They feel hopeless. They don’t know what will happen next. But I think most of the people now desperate, they think that the worst will comes. Even if the war in Gaza stopped now, Now they will start in, the West Bank, especially now when the Israeli government spoke about area C, that they will take it.
And I live in area C, which [00:21:00] like this area exactly control by the Palestinian authority and the Israeli authority. But now they spoke about to take it and if they will take it, we will never have the same rights for the people who live in Jerusalem or other, any other areas. So every person who left his house nowadays, they don’t know if they will turn back or not, or what will happen next.
So that situation, whatever I say or whatever, I try to find words. I can’t really explain it. Thank you for listening and uh,
Gissele: thank you for sharing that.
Robi, I wanted to give you a chance to share your story. It
Robi: is so difficult in this terribly dark period. I can’t actually remember a worst time in Israel and Palestine, [00:22:00] and yet there are things that I want to understand why, why did this happen? I want to tell you my story, but I want to connect it in some way to what happened on the 7th of October because I tried very much to understand how that could happen.
So when the Army came to tell me that David, my son, had been killed by a Palestinian sniper, apparently one of the first things that I said is, you can’t kill anybody in the name of my child. And I already said that on television and wherever I was interviewed, I didn’t really know that I said that because that wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t really conscious of what I was doing.
I made a whole huge monologue on television about, uh, revenge that it wouldn’t bring my child back. And just very unusual things, but probably created from a background of growing up in South Africa in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [00:23:00] and, um, working in the anti-apartheid movement and understanding, you know, that violence just begets more violence.
And so I spoke at a, a huge demonstration, something like three months after David was killed. Because I already knew I wanted to do something to prevent other families from experiencing this pain. Mainly mothers. And I spoke about the fact that we had to have a partner. There’s no way that we can have peace if it’s one sided.
We need the Palestinians to be together. So that predicted what I would do. And the people from the parents circle heard me at that demonstration. There must have been 60,000 people there. One of the things that happened to me personally, when I lost David, I lost fear because what else could happen that would be worse than that?
And they all invited me. The [00:24:00] parents suddenly invited me to come to a weekend in East Jerusalem to, um, to meet other bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families. And I went, and I remember sitting around the table and looking, especially at the mothers, and thinking to myself, wow, if these women, if we could stand on stage together and talk in one voice for reconciliation and for non-violence and for ending the occupation, how powerful would that be?
If two people, a Palestinian and Israeli, who paid such a high price can say what we say, then surely that should be an example to other people. So I closed my office that weekend was very pivotal in what I would do with the rest of my life. And so I, I started to travel all over the world with the Palestinian partner, and we spoke in parliaments all over the world and in hip hop concerts, wherever anybody invited us, synagogues, mosque, [00:25:00] churches, my father must be killing himself.
He tried all his life to get me to go to synagogue and later will tell him a story maybe later on about synagogues. But, um, he tried and I wouldn’t go. And I found myself talking synagogues everywhere. So I thought I was really quite special. You know, I was very pleased with myself traveling all over the world and being able, you know, this message is not just for Israel and Palestine, this is universal message.
And one night I, when I was home, I was sitting next to my computer, there was another knock on my door and I went to the door and there were three soldiers standing there. And when there are three soldiers can only mean one thing. And I thought, I can’t, I can’t lose my other only son. So I slammed the door in their face and they kept knocking and I kept slamming the door.
And then eventually I opened the door and they said, [00:26:00] we came to tell you that we caught the man that killed David. That’s when it became really difficult. You see, it’s exactly what Layla told you. You can walk around the world and you can talk about love and peace and usually most NGOs read bad poetry and do all of that stuff and be very pleased with yourself.
But do you actually really mean it? And this was really terrible because now there’s a face. So this isn’t like it was before. Am I gonna walk the talk? I didn’t sleep for about three months and at some stage I decided I’ll write a letter to the family of the sniper who killed David. In the letter I told him about the parents circle, we are now, as Laila told you, more than 800 families and uh, more than, I think it’s close to 90 of those have joined since October the seventh, which is.
So sad and yet [00:27:00] so extraordinary that these people, so freshly bereaved, could come and be a part of our message. In fact, the woman who is the chairperson of the parents circle is an Israeli who lost, both of her parents were burned to death on the 7th of October and they were already talking out for peace the next day almost.
And so I also told them about David. David was a student at Tel Aviv University and he was studying for his master in the philosophy of education, which will give you an indication what kind of person he was. He was part of the peace movement and he played the French horn, which I tell everybody because I suffered that for so many years.
You can’t imagine how awful that is. Yes. And um. He was just this lovely kid that, you know, it doesn’t matter. People say to you, well, so [00:28:00] much time has passed. I said, aren’t you over it? You know, and I say, he’s still dead and I still love him. You know, it’s not in any event in the letter I also ask the parents of Thao, that’s the name of the man who killed David.
If we could meet because we owed that to our children and grandchildren to stop this madness, two Palestinians delivered the letter. And you can imagine how shocked the family were because they didn’t expect to get that from the mother of the son who’d been killed by their son. But they said, if everybody signed on this letter, we would have peace.
So I’m not a very patient character. I have to admit, I expect next day to get a letter from fire within minutes, you know? And of course it took three years. People think reconciliation will happen overnight. Mm-hmm. It doesn’t necessarily happen like that. And it may never. [00:29:00] And, um, it took three years and Thao wrote me a letter over a very important, Palestinian website, in which he said I should stay away from his family, and that he killed 10 people to free Palestine.
Now, here comes the thing about understanding, which doesn’t mean that you condone, okay? We knew from the parents of Thao that when he was a little boy, he saw his uncle violently killed by the Israeli army. And when he grew up, he saw, he lost two further uncles. So for me, this was an act of revenge. I don’t think it was political.
He didn’t actually belong to any specific political party. That was for me a moment of release when I got this letter because it was like giving up being a victim. And so I was now free. [00:30:00] And so two filmmakers came to see me and they said they wanted to make a film about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and would I come and be a protagonist in the film?
And of course, I knew so much of the history and so many of the people that had been involved, and I also wanted to explore the meaning of forgiving. What does that mean? Does that mean you give up your right to justice? Is it okay? Well, the person did. Can he do it again? You know, there are all these mad questions that go around in your head all the time, and I’m very, very involved in restorative justice.
I wish the world would understand how important that is. Yeah. In any event I met this extraordinary woman in South Africa who’d lost her, her daughter. She was killed by the [00:31:00] African wing who belonged to the uprising.
She went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and she stood there and said to the people, the three people who killed her daughter, I forgive you. And I wanted to know what she meant. And so part of the film is that we went to meet her, an extraordinary woman, and I asked her, what’s your definition of, forgiving?
And she said, for me, it’s giving up your just right to revenge. And then I met the man who actually sent the people who killed her daughter. And I thought he’s gonna be some kind of monster. You know, it turns out this extraordinary man says to me, by her forgiving me, she released me from the prison of my inhumanity.
I think that’s an extraordinary statement. By her forgiving me, she released me from the prison [00:32:00] of my inhumanity. So I came back to Israel now and now, the film came out and was all over the world. And I decided well, that I wanted to meet Thaa. And so I tried everywhere to do this, but unfortunately the law here says that he has to ask to meet me.
I can’t, there’s no forcing of anything in this, which in a way is good. But if it could have been opened up with some kind of debate or some kind of dialogue so that he would understand the reason why I wanted to meet him, it wasn’t for him to have to go on his knees and say, please forgive me. It was about closure.
Closure. It was about understanding why he did that. And here he bring me to the point about the 7th of October. So the 7th of October for me was almost, my reaction was very similar to when David was killed. I [00:33:00] gotta change the world overnight. So I started to travel back and forth to America since October.
I’ve been to America seven times because of the polarization, because of the side taking, because of the great experts in the world who know everything about Israel and Palestine. And it doesn’t seem to matter that Sudan and Ukraine and all of these other places have dreadful things happening as well.
I’m not condoning what’s happening here, but I’m saying we’re not exclusive in our cruelty. And so then I try to understand how could a little kid growing up in Gaza, say he’s 12 or 13, every two years there’s a bombing. He doesn’t have a shelter. He watches his mother running away with his siblings.
They have no shelter to run to, so she can’t protect him or his, or his brothers and sisters. And then he has no freedom of movement. And that’s a basic human right. [00:34:00] You know, he can’t leave even if he wants to. And so what kind of adult grows up out of that? What would you expect of him as an adult? And then I look at the kids who grew up on the kibbutzing that surround Gaza.
They lived in a semi paradise. So these kids who lived on those ki thought they were invincible. The 7th of October happened.
And so there’s this whole new generation traumatized, like, I don’t know who will deal with it. And then you look at the kids who grew up in the town surrounding Gaza, that is Ash. His names are not familiar maybe. But nevertheless, the kids that grew up there from a, from almost birth have been exposed to rockets.
And so what happens to them is they wet their beds at the age of 12 and what kind of adults will grow out of that? And so there’s so much trauma [00:35:00] on both sides. and the children in Gaza, I cannot begin to tell you how sad I am and how guilty I feel because whatever I’m doing, I’m part of the system.
It’s like every white person benefited from apartheid in South Africa, regardless of what they did. And Layla told you a little bit about, the West Bank. I think it’s terribly important that the world will look at that as well, because if they don’t, they won’t realize that there’s a cauldron just waiting to explode.
And the fact that that guy who shot this young man who was actually a peace activist, you know, it is just horrific. But I also think of the consequences of what happens to kids who served in the Army. And if you don’t mind, I will read you a little piece that I wrote yesterday because I think it’s very important [00:36:00] that people understand what it’s doing to the Society of Israel, and that Israelis will start to understand the pain and the horror of a starving child.
So it’s, think of those young men and women whose lives will be changed forever. Once they’ve don the khaki uniform, we send them off with ease to a wall of destruction, to dehumanization and barbaric killing. Keep going. Don’t stop slips easily off the tongues of those who have probably never served in the army.
After all, it is not their sons and daughters or husbands and wives whose lives are at peril. What wounds will these soldiers and reserves carry when they, and if they come back, how many nightmares will they suffer before they stand in the queue? Outside the trauma clinics run by the Ministry of Defense?
Or will they join the ever-growing list of suicides? You have no idea how many kids, [00:37:00] army soldiers have committed suicide because of what they did. Put yourself in the shoes of a young conscript being exposed for the first time to bodies of the dead civilians in Gaza. Will someone take responsibility for the carnage Picture?
These young soldiers, some of whom have just begun to shave, imagine them looking into the eyes of a starving and emaciated child and thinking of their siblings who are more or less the same age. Imagine being exposed to the destruction of Gaza, the home, and to the homeless civilians wondering about in search for water, what will these young men and women bring back to their communities when it ends?
They have been part of the massacre of innocent women and children. Nothing, absolutely nothing can expiate their crimes. Can we not see what is happening in our society? The violence in the streets, the domestic abuse, the anger [00:38:00] and fear? Try to imagine how this will affect the moral fiber of Israel.
These young people have been given a license to carry weapons to kill and destroy. What kind of traumatized behavior can we expect from them? All of the children, both Palestinian and Israeli, are screaming from their graves. Beware, you might be next, just ask a bereaved mother like me, have the courage to ask what it feels like to lose a child.
Just ask how life is never the same. How some die with their children, not physically. They simply never function again, just how many more families must experience the scar in their heart that never heals. We are by now, so accustomed to the army, announcing the death of yet another soldier. We barely take time to look at their name.
And what are the deaths of Palestinian innocent civilians and children? Do we even give pause [00:39:00] to care for one minute? How accustomed we are to the violence, we hardly bat an eyelid. How will the generations that follow cope with this terrible episode in our history? Well, they also accept that we could not save the hostages and the distress of a war, which should have ended long ago.
The world looks on with horror and we in our provincial ignorant bubble don’t even begin to understand the consequences for Israel and the Jews in the diaspora. We are fast becoming the pariahs in countries who have in the past supported and looked upon Israel as democratic and humane. All eyes are on Gaza, but how about the West Bank?
For how long will we also ignore the barbaric behavior of the settlers who are running rampant without accountability? Sometimes with the encouragement of Israeli soldiers, how long will the closure continue? Freedom of movement is a basic human right. The economic [00:40:00] situation is dire. Children are not attending school on a regular basis.
Gates outside villages are a new form of torture just to add to the cruelty. Now, people are forced to wait sometimes for hours till the soldier will let them through. Palestinian mothers are in constant fear for the safety of their children as are Israeli who will in turn grow despising their neighbors.
This is what we are creating for the future of our children, a life based on hatred and fear, which will naturally lead to violence and death. I’ve been part of the parents circle ever since I lost my beloved son, realizing that revenge would never be the answer. Violence begets more violence. I’ve also wanted to prevent other families from experiencing the dreadful consequences of loss.
I find it almost impossible to look into the eyes of our Palestinian bereaved [00:41:00] partners in the forum. The sense of shame is boundless. Nevertheless, we will all continue to work for an end to the madness, which we have collectively allowed to happen.
Gissele: That was so, so powerful. First, I wanted to acknowledge the courage that it takes to forgive and to be willing to get curious about another, especially an other that we deem an enemy or someone who is hurtful. I think it takes extraordinary courage. My first question is, what helped you be willing to even entertain that aspect of forgiveness?
Layla: I think maybe the first thing, when you stop thinking about who are a victim all the time. And why that happened. I, I asked myself many times, but I didn’t have any answer for that. What give me the courage, [00:42:00] the power to forgive when I know that person that he try, like he didn’t say sorry for me because this is one of the most important thing because he didn’t like broke a glass and he said, I’m sorry.
No, he responsible about the death of a person and this person is my son, part of my heart, part of my soul. But what helped me when I saw his action, what I saw that, what he tried to do, a kind of, sorry, but by his action, like he tried to, in this occupation, he tried to do best that he could. To let the other Israeli understand the situation of the Palestinian.
’cause many Israeli, they know nothing about our lives. And, there’s not just walls of hatred, anger, There’s not just [00:43:00] that wall from cement between us. There’s walls of hatred, anger, uh, and unknown each other. So, sometimes to put yourself even at the truth of the other that give you even a chance to understand what happened.
I know it’s not easy and, it’s not something like in the parents circle. No one is ask people you should forgive. No, it’s like a personal choice to do. So I could forgive. Maybe there was other people who can’t. Some people they immediately forgive. It depend about your beliefs, about how you raised, about the situation, about knowing the other person.
Gissele: Right. That’s great. Thank you very much. Robi.
Robi: There actually isn’t a recipe. You know, it’s about so many different things for so many different people, and what [00:44:00] Layla told you is completely correct. It’s not contingent to belong to the parents circle that you have to forgive.
What it is important is that you will be for non-violence, for reconciliation, and for ending the occupation that is. What you would align to if you became part of the parents circle. But I can tell you that, you know, when I look at how to build up trust with, I remember on the, like the ninth of, of October, maybe even before we had our first staff meeting, we have in the parents circle two offices, two women directors, which make me very happy.
It’s the first time they’re both women. And, two of everything virtually. another, two people who deal with education like Noah’s arc. This is our way of trying to be fair in an unequal situation. You know, it’s terribly [00:45:00] easy for the Israelis to come tell the Palestinians what they should be doing, but that would negate all the purpose of this organization.
And so. What we, what we do is nobody can sign anything without the other or decide on the project without the other. It makes life very difficult, but it’s a question of trust. And so on the night of, October, I was really worried when we had our first meeting because I thought, what’s actually going to happen?
The Palestinians have all been watching their media and we’ve been watching ours, and that’s like a parallel universe and so what will happen when? And we had the meeting and, and we have about a staff of about 20. And there was so much pain and so much anger and so much sadness. And um, what was extraordinary was we all listened to each other with [00:46:00] empathy, even if we didn’t agree.
And that was the beginning. And since the war, we actually haven’t stopped. We about next week, we have kids that are off to Palestinian and Israeli children that will be going to the summer camp in Cyprus. We have to have it in Cyprus because of the, closure in the West Bank and looking at these kids how much they need healing.
It’s so extraordinary that they are going and they will have the opportunity. I mean, I can tell you that my grandson, who is pretty spoiled not lacking in goodies, let’s put it that way. He is part of the summer camp, and he told me last year that this was the best week he’d ever spent, and I didn’t understand.
I wanted to understand again, why. It’s the alleviation of fear of the other. Once you begin to know each other, there’s so much of a cuddle here. If you will go into an average Israeli [00:47:00] classroom of kids of 17, and you say to them who you have ever met a Palestinian, probably nobody. I mean, I’m not saying they haven’t gone into a shop and bought a falafel or humus or something that’s not a conversation or a friendship.
Who of you speak Arabic? Almost nobody. Maybe one in the class who’s been overseas almost the whole class. So where does that leave us? It’s this cutoff. And when you don’t know, you fear. And what happened to the Israeli army on the 7th of October? They lost the war, and that leads to humiliation. And what happens when you are humiliated?
You want revenge and they couldn’t save the hostages, which is one of the most awful things. This war is this terrible hostage taking and looking at that, the fact that they couldn’t rescue them, you know, like there was this big rescue in tbi. I don’t know if you know about that, [00:48:00] but that was like 70 Israelis who were hijacked on a plane and that was this huge army era.
There was this whole feeling that the Israeli army would do that, and so they couldn’t. And that’s an extra frustration. Not that I’m saying that it’s okay. No, I’m not condoning any of the violence, not in Israel and not what the Hamas did, but if we don’t understand that, if we don’t change the circumstances of how people will grow up and what values we will give them when they are children, they will never change.
Just, it’s so important to get this message out. Please stop taking sides. Please stop importing our conflict into your country and creating more hatred than is necessary. Yes, if you want to demonstrate, I’m all for it. If you think things are bad in Israel, I am all for [00:49:00] what you are doing. But then I would think it would be great.
This is what I say to the students in Columbia and Harvard where we’ve been since the war began, and I say to them, look for an NGO on the ground doesn’t have to be the parents circle. It can be women wage peace. It can be breaking the silence. It can be a Palestinian NGO. Look at them. Find one that really speaks to you and start to morally support them.
I’m not talking about even money at this point that will make a difference in the life of Layla and myself. And for this very purpose, we created a program with Georgetown University. It’s called Listening from the Heart. It’s an online education program, and when you listen from your heart, it’s very different from when you come with your opinions and it’s three dialogue meetings with question and answers and a manual that was created for the [00:50:00] facilitator.
And anybody can go into our American friends, uh, of the parents circle and find listening from the heart and try to adapt it in their country or in their place of work, or because we had thousands of people turning to us, wanting us to bring hope. But it’s really the other way around. That’s pretty ironic.
would advice if somebody brought some help here. So there’s so many things, and so forgiving is very personal. It’s about yourself really. Do you also forgive yourself sometimes? You know, I’m complicit in what is happening here. Even if I’m against it, I don’t know how, you know, the way that I can maybe be in touch with it is by talking to people and showing them another part of Palestinians and Israelis that they never have been exposed.
And that’s why I’m so glad that we, on your [00:51:00] podcast, I will talk to the devil, even if he would listen to me.
Gissele: Thank you. I just wanna point out to my listeners how fundamental the work that you, you are all doing is, you know, you talked about violence begets violence, it’s a downward spiral. Violence breeds more violence, breeds more violence, and so on. But what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to stop that spiral by getting curious, but being willing to listen to one another and to change our mind potentially, and to change our hearts potentially towards one another, and to stop seeing each other as the other, as enemies, and perhaps maybe someday see each other as brothers and sisters.
Because we can’t really create a world where equality and love exists if we are not willing to see all children as our children, all beings as our brothers and sisters. But [00:52:00] this fear of the other is so. It’s so ingrained.
You talked about restorative justice. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that can help us come closer together, rather than continuing that cycle of punishment,
how we can begin to sort of include that in the way that we manage conflict so that we can then come closer together and get more curious and be in more dialogue than what we do right now, which is separate, isolate, punish.
Layla: So I think this is one of the problem, the isolation the problem that I told you about the per narrative project is the main project in our organization because that will bring two people to the same room. The people who called them, the others, the enemy. I remember the first day when we in there together.[00:53:00]
There’s 15 Palestinian, 15 Israeli, and we all looked at each other and suspicious. We didn’t know what to expect, what, what will happen next. But at the end of that day, we’ve been dancing together. We laugh, we talk. I think every person need just one moment to change his life forever. And the most important thing to sit, to listen to the others.
I think this is the first step, and this is the key for everything else. ’cause you will never understand the other person. You can’t understand his situation until you just sit and listen to him and give him a space to, to talk about whatever he want. I’ll take it from my Palestinian side. especially for [00:54:00] women, maybe most of the time they don’t have time or they don’t have even someone to talk to.
So these kind of meeting, these kind of programs, I think it help many people to really, to give them a chance to talk and to express their feeling, to talk about their fear. And I think this is the first step to any other things even about the reconciliation. You can’t get to point of the reconciliation until you just sit, listen.
in our organization, not all the time, we agree about everything, but we still respect each other. We still understand each other. Like at the beginning of this world, we. There’s many, many words we were arguing about, but when we sit and talk about the meaning, like the word genocide, what it means for [00:55:00] the Israeli, what it means for the Palestinian, and the difference, the word Zionists, what it means for the Palestinian, what it means for the Israeli.
Even sometimes these just small words we arguing about, but when you just sit and understand what it means for the other, I think this is the beginning of any other things.
Gissele: I heard you both talk about the word fear. And I think that’s really at the foundation of everything. I think the fear of the other, and even I would imagine being afraid to even sit across from someone that you considered an enemy or someone that you can consider hurtful.
What helped you sort of address that fear? I think Robbie had mentioned that she had lost all fear when she lost her son. What helps the people that you work with sort of be open to even engaging in dialogue?
Robi: Maybe I’ll answer that. [00:56:00] Okay, Layla? Because I think the basis of what we are doing is storytelling.
When I would meet a Palestinian mother and we would each tell each other our stories, that’s the emotional breakthrough that we create and this is how we work in public. If you listen to listen to the heart, if you will go into that side, you’ll understand exactly what I’m saying. Restorative justice is something extraordinary.
Firstly, what we said about forgiving, you can’t force people to forgive. That’s actually immoral, but. It was such an interesting conversation. I belonged to the European Restorative Justice group, and there was a guy from Italy there and a guy from the Basque country. And, um, one had been in jail for 20 years, and the other one from Italy had, been a part of a murder [00:57:00] of a very famous politician.
I’m not going to that whole story, but what the Basque man said, I ask for forgiveness. And they Italian said, you have no right to do that because maybe the person doesn’t wanna forgive you. It’s a gift you have no Right. It’s an interesting thing to think about. You know, what do you do? What is forgiving?
Anyway, I kept asking myself, you can’t, you know, I’m not a saint.
Gissele: my experience of forgiveness has been one where I sort of release the story of how I thought it should have gone and release my attachment to my own victimization. And that sort of helped me. It didn’t change the person’s behavior, but I, I was no longer attached to them
Robi: I wanted to read something that found Yeah, of course Hannah, but I can’t find it now. If you saw the mess on my desk. Ah, [00:58:00] interesting. Hannah Rin was a philosopher. And she said, I never do this reading to people. I dunno what’s got into me to, I love it.
I love it. The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. And that’s really the bottom line. The minute that you can’t listen with empathy to anybody, you’ve lost it.
forgiving is also part of being able to have gratitude. Yeah, because it’s not grateful. You know, I’m, it’s extraordinary to say this, but I feel very grateful.
Gissele: So, so let’s talk about where did we as human beings lose our humanity?
Because when you do sit in conversation, you do get to see more commonalities than differences.
Robi: I think we just have to ask people to be part of the solution and not the problem. And if they can’t be part of the solution to actually leave us alone because they [00:59:00] create more damage than good. And to stop, as I said before, importing our conflict.
Think of what has happened, the, islamophobia and antisemitic behavior all over the world is terrifying. this is a result of the madness of importing the conflict. That doesn’t mean that you mustn’t try to look for the solution. Don’t sit at home on your couch and knit sweaters. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Yeah.
Robi: What I’m talking about is supporting, supporting peace, supporting the mad people like Layla and I on the ground believeing me. There are so many Palestinians and so many Israelis who think like us, just watch the demonstrations that are going on with Israelis holding pictures of Palestinian babies and being absolutely threatened by the police and attacked
So it’s not as if there’s nobody here to [01:00:00] listen to. There are always extraordinary people all over the world, and those are the people to look for and to support them. I’m not talking about money, although money helps a lot to work on the ground, but I’m talking about that feeling that people really understand and want to be a part of the solution.
Everybody’s become an expert on the Middle East.
Gissele: I think I wanna add to that the fact that I think many people feel very hopeless. They’re like the, the majority of people are stuck in survival, so it’s hard for them to even consider sometimes contemplate compassion. The other thing is, like you said. One person can make a difference. One person can choose to help, whether it be monetarily, even as little as $5 or whether it be, you know, sharing your work on social media, whether it be them actually actively participating on the ground with an NGO who is doing the [01:01:00] work.
I think one of the things that resonated with me about your stories is, is the importance of choice. Are you going to choose violence or are you going to choose to get curious? who are you gonna choose to be? And I think the majority of people feel like they have no choice.
Would you say to them,
Robi: well, revenge because people don’t realize that there is no revenge. I promise you I would hang from the ceiling on the chandelier if I knew that I could bring David back for one minute. But, and Layla the same. And so we can’t. And so what do you do with that energy? Do you take that energy and make further destruction, or do you take that energy and put it into making a difference in people’s lives?
And I can’t begin to tell you the, the sense of gratitude that I experienced from being able to meet with a [01:02:00] Palestinian who was filled with hate and to sit and talk and to, for her to recognize my humanity and for me to be a part of change where she can then become the person without the hatred.
Because hatred and anger is so destructive to health. So Layla will tell you about that.
Layla: I think sometimes people, they, they don’t know what to do and sometimes even their community, sometimes even. the people around could affect them, but for us, the people who choose to be in this kind of organization, they like swimming against the tide because many people, they were against us.
Many people, they ask us to, to leave these kind of organization. And especially after the 7th of October, many of my relative say to me, [01:03:00] is this the peace that you are talking about? Like, they try to make fun of me. Uh, you’ll make normalization. This is kind of betrayal. And, um, I could understand their anger.
I could understand how they think because I was there one day and I will never judge them. I will never be angry about what they were talking about because I could understand that. But sometimes I I make it like a funny game with them, like. When they said to me, normalization, I said, uh, I wanna ask a question.
What’s the definition of normalization? Some of them, they don’t know what it means, but they keep hearing these kind of, words and they don’t know what it means really. So I said, the person who work inside Israel and go every day to feed his family is this kind of normalization. They said, no. I said, so how’s different than [01:04:00] our work?
It’s the same.
But the problem is there’s many people have, benefit from this war and they don’t want this war to end. They don’t want this occupation and this conflict to end because if it end, what they’ll do nothing. So they wanted to keep it. Fresh, alive
Last night, the Houthis were at it again, so I don’t know what time it was or something. I’m off. I have to go into the safe room and Lala doesn’t have a safe room, and it’s mad. And how do you know where that rocket’s going to land or that missile? how many more people need to die before people will wake up and understand that you don’t actually have to love anybody.
Robi: Compassion’s a good word, but if you respect them, maybe that’s the beginning.
Gissele: I think that’s a perfect way to end. Thank [01:05:00] you.
Robi: That was Toba, which means thank you very much.
Gissele: Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you Robi and Lay la for being on the show that your stories are extraordinary and we know that our listeners are gonna be impacted.
And thank you for sharing your wisdom and thank you for the work that you do in bringing, helping bring the world closer together. And thank you everyone who joined for another episode of Love and Compassion with Gissele.
To find out more please go to: Website: www.parentscirclefriends.org
Instagram: @parentscirclefriends
Facebook + LinkedIn: American Friends of the Parents Circle – Families Forum