Immediately after landing at Ben Gurion Airport in May, we encountered an enormous display of large posters of the hostages still held in Gaza. Concern for the hostages remains a constant presence in Israel.
Minutes after arriving, we were immersed in Israeli society’s deep grief. Soon after that, we encountered the powerful anger toward Hamas and the searing sense of betrayal by the Israeli government.
I had ached to come to Israel since Oct. 7. I finally found the right opportunity, so my husband and I joined the New Israel Fund Study Tour. We have long been enthusiastic supporters of the New Israel Fund, for its extraordinary work in providing money and guidance to a whole family of organizations that comprise the Israeli civil society sector.
As on previous NIF study tours, we spent our time visiting with activists and organizational leaders, who told us about the challenges of pain and injustice they face in Israeli society — and their work to overcome them, even in the midst of so much pain since October 7th.
The tour offered us a portrait of people, projects and perspectives that are not well known in the American Jewish community. There was a great deal to learn about Israeli human rights work, peace activism and those building a vision of hope at a time when the situation seems hopeless.
We met with a range of passionate, powerful and impressive Israelis who work every day to protect the human rights of all people who live under Israeli control, even in these times of war. Several organizations work to press Israel to comply with international law in Gaza, monitoring civilian casualties, access to food, water and fuel, and the severe problem of access to medical care.
We learned from Israeli Bedouins in the “unrecognized villages” in the Negev, whose connection to their land has long been undermined by Israeli governments. We met with organizations that provide “protective presence” — that is, groups of Jewish Israelis and internationals who accompany Palestinians who face severe settler violence in the West Bank. In the human rights sector, we encountered the suffering created by government policy and the inspiring work of those who work for the dignity of all people.
Polling shows that a large percentage of Israelis (especially Jewish Israelis) continue to support the goals of the war. But we were able to meet with people who represent large swaths of Jewish Israeli society who are deeply opposed to the current government and believe that the current leadership is perpetuating the war in order to stay in power. And yes, there is still a very active and powerful, though small, peace camp in Israel.
We met with Maoz Inon, who embodies this hope. His parents were incinerated in their home in Netiv Ha’asarah, very close to the Gaza border, on Oct. 7.
Maoz, now an impassioned and celebrated peace activist, told us about a dream he had on Oct. 9. In his dream, he saw himself drenched in his own tears, which flowed down his body before turning into blood. He watched the blood stain his body and flow into the earth, where flowers began to bloom. And then he watched the new flowers form themselves into a path that led away from the place of unbearable grief. It was, he said, the path to peace, the path that he was to follow.
Since then he has traveled the world — including a TED Talk in April and an audience with the Pope in May — declaring his profound conviction that Israelis and Palestinians can offer each other acknowledgment, dignity and safety, and build a shared future together. He rejects the path of never-ending war.
Inon had a key leadership role in leading “It’s Time,” a massive peace event on July 1 in Tel Aviv. The event was sponsored by 50 Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations. People who lost family members on Oct. 7, families of hostages and many others spoke eloquently of the imperative to stop the war, bring the hostages home, and turn toward planning for peace.
Jonathan Zeigen’s mother, Vivian Silver, was among Israel’s most beloved and impactful peace activists, who founded and led several of Israel’s most significant peace and justice organizations, led collaboratively by Jews and Palestinians. At first it was thought that she had been kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri, but it was later discovered that she had been killed in her own home. Zeigen, not an activist by nature, got up from shiva and discerned that he needed to reorient his life in order to carry forward his mother’s legacy.
Based on the news we read and hear in the U.S., I would not have expected to find people in Israel talking about hope. But I heard many leaders asserting that it is often in the aftermath of disaster that possibilities for peace present themselves. Many reflected on the case of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel suffered a devastating surprise attack. What followed was a low point in Israeli history. But just four years later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem, building the basis for an enduring peace between Israel and Egypt that persists today.
May Pundak, the Israeli co-director of A Land for All, told us that now, in the aftermath of the horror of Oct. 7, is precisely the time to try something different. For 100 years, we and the Palestinians have sought to annihilate one another, to wish one another away. Precisely now, when we have seen that the most sophisticated of fortified borders was still vulnerable to devastating attack, it is time for a new vision. She proposes a vision of “Two States, One Homeland,” in which a confederation — two states with defined but open borders and the willingness to collaborate for the well-being of all — would co-create a better future for all the people of the region.
It is a vision that acknowledges the fundamental rights and undeniable interdependence of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples — and the utter failure of attempts to divide the land in two. It will take time, of course, to lead people past their practiced modes of fearing, hating and dehumanizing the other. But a sustainable future is possible, in partnership. Only then, she said, can we tell our children that this terrible war will be the last.
(A previous version of this post appeared in J Weekly, 7/17/24, https://jweekly.com/2024/07/17/visiting-israel-i-discovered-that-hope-for-peace-still-exists/)
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