I caught up with my old friend Eliyahu McLean at his apartment in Nachlaot [Jerusalem], on Motzaei Shabbat, February 19th, [2005,] a couple of weeks after his return from the First World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace in Brussels (see www.hommesdeparole.org), and a few days before he was due to leave for another international gathering of peace activists in Edinburgh. As usual, he had a lot to share from his encounters with spiritual leaders, but first he wanted to talk about the dialogue circles that took place in Gaza the preceding week.
“We were with a circle of Arabs and Jews who went in to listen, with compassion, to settlers in Gush Katif. And we sat in their homes. The first home that we sat in was next door to a house where the father lost his wife and [four of] his children and an unborn child, who were killed by terrorists, just months ago.” He was referring, of course, to the wanton murder of 34-year-old Tali Hatuel, who was eight months pregnant, and her four children: Hila, 11; Hadar, 9; Roni, 7; and Merav, 2, on May 2, 2004.
“We were meant to even be holding our dialogue circle in the home of [David Hatuel]… but he kind of said it’s too much for me to have Arabs in my home right now, [though] he asked his next-door neighbors to host, and they did. Amazing. Four hours of blood and tears. Ibtisam Mahamid, a religious Moslem woman, peacemaker, activist, and Tamil Barghouti from Nazareth, and a Bedouin Imam from the Galilee were in the circle, and they gave such kavod – all three of them – to our settler hosts. We actually had two circles. But in the first one, in the morning [the settlers] were…really trying to say, ‘We want you to bring a message back – we’re human beings also. The media is making us out to be monsters.’ They especially wanted people who are left-wing, Arab – anybody – to come. It wasn’t even about changing anybody’s viewpoint. I don’t think any of the settlers left, saying, ‘Okay, we’re just ready to leave our homes,’ or any of the left-wingers left thinking, ‘The settlements need to stay.’ But it brought in a human element of compassion, to humanize [the situation]. Here are Arabs sitting in Gush Katif, and here are the settlers of Gush Katif, and they have a story…they have a real connection with this land, and it’s understandable why they would feel such a bond there….[They] have paid in blood.
“It wasn’t about trying to make anyone become a left-winger or a right-winger, but it was really that approach which I think is the style of these things that I do is the ‘two wings to fly approach’; it takes two wings to fly, meaning , uh – ”
“Right wing and left wing – ”
“Right – ”
“Both have valid points to make – ”
“They both have valid points to make, and there tend to be voices on both sides that demonize the other. Many right wingers tend to demonize Arabs and Palestinians and left wingers, and the left wingers tend to demonize the settlers – and you see that a lot in the media now with the disengagement [from] Gaza – ”
“It’s really true. People speak so harshly – ”
“Inflammatory, how the settlers in Gaza are now the new, you know, you know – ”
Eliyahu couldn’t finish the sentence, but I guess we can finish it for him – “the new obstacles to peace,” as if there always has to be someone in the way, frustrating everyone’s hopes, and now it’s their turn. He started saying something else, “They actually see themselves as – ” and again I’d have to guess at his meaning – perhaps “heroes and pioneers” or perhaps “ordinary people caught up in a situation not of their own making.” Either one could be an accurate representation of their feelings, but the example he chose next, to illustrate his unspoken description, suggests it was the latter.
“In the afternoon we sat with a woman…in her home [at] a second dialogue circle, with more settlers, in Neve Dekalim…and we broke up into three small groups – smaller dialogue circles – and then, [in]the second group [was] this woman who hosted us, [who] had fled in the middle of the night, as a small girl, from Tunisia, and her family lost all of her property, and she said, ‘I’m a refugee, from Tunisia. And the government said, “Here are some houses.” I didn’t know where I was going to live. They’re the ones who are responsible. I’m not this evil settler. I was a refugee, and now the government is not going to take responsibility, and they’re going to make me a refugee again.'”
I offered a plausible government response to Eliyahu: “So the government would say, ‘Not take responsibility? We’re going to pay you handsomely for your move and resettle you in another location. You won’t be a refugee anymore.'” And playing the other side, I responded on her behalf, ‘But it doesn’t feel that way to me.'”
And Eliyahu confirmed my sense of the situation: “‘It doesn’t feel that way to me.’ Right.” And again assuming the role of the woman, I continued, “‘It feels as though I’ve been dispossessed.'” And Eliyahu completed her defense, in her words: “‘This is a house we built with our own hands.'”
Eliyahu widened his memory’s camera lens to take in the whole room and offer a broader context: “It was really interesting, though, to have Arabs…in the room…some of the settlers couldn’t just say ‘Am Yisrael!’ They weren’t all Am Yisrael: they had to readjust, and Khalil – he’s a great guy – and speaking from the heart…he was giving them kavod/honor.”
Now I took a turn, trying to shift the ground of our discussion.
“You know, some people, Eliyahu, think that the evacuation of the settlements – the settlements in Gaza, I should say – is only the first step, that other settlements would be in danger [of being slated for evacuation], though people that live there would like to think they are untouchable, such as Gush Etzion.”
Along with his commitment to a spiritual perspective, Eliyahu is familiar with the world of realpolitik. He replied, “From all I gather, if there were, let’s say, settlements in the West Bank that would be more vulnerable in the future, my sense is, from all that I’m hearing, is that Sharon is specifically claiming [based on his understanding with Bush] that the four settlement blocks, that is, Ariel, Ma’ale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, and Gush Etzion – ”
“Those are untouchable.”
“Those are untouchable, yeah, those four.”
“And those that are more isolated – ”
“Tekoa. Tekoa.”
“Tekoa is on the table?”
“Is on the isolated list, yeah. And that’s the one that I personally am most connected to, because I’ve been there – ”
“That’s where Rabbi Fruman lives!”
“So for Rabbi Fruman, his dialogue with the Palestinians is of very direct interest because he wants to stay in his home in Tekoa, and it doesn’t matter where the borders of the State of Israel are; even if it’s the State of Palestine, his connection with the Land of Israel is greater than where the borders of the state [are going to be drawn].
My wife chimed in at this point: “Is that going to be possible? Or feasible – to choose to live in a Palestinian state?”
“In this current reality, of mistrust, probably not…it’s almost utopian to talk about it, but you never know, in a future time – ”
Yehudit continued, “Palestinians are living in Israel – ”
Eliyahu gave us the real skinny: “Most Palestinians who I talk to say that ‘If Jews were to come to us and ask for permission to live in our state, we would say yes.’ But whether it’s safe enough is another question.”
And I speculated in return, “Whether Jews would humble themselves enough to ask their Palestinian overlords – ”
“Exactly.”
“They don’t want to be a Dhimmi class. They don’t want to be second-class citizens in Eretz Yisrael, whether it’s ruled by a Palestinian government or not.”
“Right.”
“So both parties really have some fixed positions….”
“Somebody in Gush Katif [actually] brought this [question] up. ‘Would you stay if this were a Palestinian state?’ Well, ostensibly, in theory, yes, they probably would, but in practice, right now, it’s not so conceivable.”
Shifting the conversation away from confrontative issues, Eliyahu mentioned his trip to Baghdad last year, as part of an interfaith delegation to a religious conference where he was the only Jewish speaker, and of the Sulha, an annual gathering of peace-loving and reconciliation-oriented Israelis and Palestinians, among whom are many prominent clerics and community leaders, which last summer attracted over four thousand participants. (For information, visit www.Sulha.com.) He expressed the hope that Middle Way, an Israeli peace group that engages in peace walks and participates in Sulha and other interactive projects, would follow up the on the visits of the previous week and conduct more of these listening circles.
Eliyahu explains, “I think, for me, it’s the right way to go. It’s not necessarily going as a pro-settlement protester, and it’s not going as an anti-settler protest; it’s a different thing. [It’s] bearing witness – edut – and showing compassion for human beings in these situations, no matter where…empathy, the path of empathy, the path of the peacemaker. You have to really have empathy for people on all sides. It’s not about judgment; it’s almost like ‘sweetening’ the judgments. For them – let’s say the disengagement does go through and they end up losing their homes. For them to have us listening, hearing their pain and hearing their fear – ”
I get it. “You become a support group for them, before, during, and after their evacuation.”
“Yeah!”
With a rush of enthusiasm, I exclaim, “You could call on and you could visit them. You are people who would be interested in seeing them if they are obliged to settle in new homes elsewhere, and see how they’re getting along!”
Eliyahu responds, “I actually suggested that to the group, that maybe we could adopt a settler or two, like follow through, at least, stay connected to these families, before, during, and after. And like I said, many of the group, their own personal views, are more left-wing leaning. Nobody came out saying, ‘I’m going to move to the settlements today,’ or something. They’re taking a very different [attitude] – it was refreshing! Because most of their peace walks and stuff have been with Palestinians from the West Bank, so their views are very well listened to. To me, that added authenticity to the work. And it’s a pretty radical thing, as a lot of…peace activists would say, ‘How could you go into Gush Katif?'”
I tried to probe his own views a little more closely. “Well, I imagine that you don’t have a fixed position about whether the government is right or whether the settlers are right, whether the process is fair, whether the Arab claims are just, whether the outcome is going to be favorable if they do move, or be [the opposite]… if they don’t move.”
“Well, I take what is…almost like a mystical path, which is that there is an underlying [truth] – all of the sides are true, and there is a true Palestine – I’m not denying that – and in the physical world, [on] the Berkeley plane [we both spent considerable time there], it may seem to be contradictory opposites, but there are sparks in each, and it always seems to me that maybe there’s a way of connecting the opposites. Reb Nachman says,’Shalom bein hahachamim’ — Peace is between the opposites. And this is sort of [the] Reb Nachman philosophy that I take in all this work.
“And it’s also very Thich Nat Hanh influenced. Thich Nat Hanh, you know, sees himself as the – you know the story, ‘Know me by my true name’? He has a poem about the pirates of the seas off South Vietnam. He says, ‘I am the pirate who is capturing the boat and committing the rape of the girl; I am the girl who jumps off the ship to escape being raped; I’m the, I’m the,’ you know, he puts himself into all these different states.”
Eliyahu has the gift of being empathic with everyone he meets, finding their common ground, and building trust based on mutual interests and values. Because of this remarkable trait and his sense of responsibility for bringing people together, he has been able to facilitate events that break down the barriers of mistrust and enable people of different religious and cultural backgrounds to engage in dialogue and begin to address their common problems.
He is one among many who believe that this approach has the best chance of bringing peace between the peoples of Israel and the Territories and in other trouble spots around the world. A peaceful approach to peacemaking has the advantage of not creating additional grounds for resentment, inflaming the passions, and stirring up the desire for revenge, as terrorist attacks and armed incursions tend to do. If the parties to this dispute are ever to understand each other and live side by side in peace, a goal that most of those affected by the conflict claim to embrace, then a willingness to meet, away from the battlefield and the negotiating table, might be a necessary pre-requisite.
To find out more about the work of Eliyahu McLean and his associates, visit Jerusalempeacemakers.org. This summer, from August 1-7, Eliyahu, who received smicha (ordination) as a Rodef Shalom (Pursuer of Peace) from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, will lead a workshop called “Training to Become a Peacebuilder” at Elat Chayyim, in Accord, New York.
[This article also appeared in The National Jewish Post and Opinion. The workshop took place, as scheduled, in the summer of 2005 – RG]
