These words escaped from the mouth of a child — but not just any child. No, this child's mother is Jessica Montell, the executive director of B'Tselem, the "Israeli information center for human rights in the occupied territories."
It is an organization focused almost entirely upon chronicling human rights abuses suffered by the Palestinians. It is a controversial organization amongst Jewish Israelis, to be sure, but an organization that, to the pained eyes of many, does the necessary work of recording that which the mainstream press does not record.
But Jessica's boy. An Israeli Jew. An Israeli Jew whose mother works for the preeminent Israeli organization charged with standing up for the "Arabs," the "enemy."
A boy who uttered, "I hate Arabs."
This is what happens in intractable conflict. This is what happens in societies in which people are at each others' throats, constantly. This is what I fight against, both here in America – Republicans and Democrats poisoning the waters with politically damaging speech, racists poisoning the waters with hateful speech, religious zealots poisoning the waters with homophobic speech — and in Israel, where both sides continue to poison the minds of their children with hateful rhetoric.
This is my war. And it is a war we know how to resolve.
A solution? Dialogue. Human interaction. Confronting the narratives, the stories, and the humanity of the "other." Not as the only solution, to be sure, for societal transformation must be matched by political boldness at the state level. But a solution, nevertheless.
We know this works. Psychologically. Sociologically. For hate, for conflict driven by hate, is fueled, by and large, by an ignorance of the other, by a lack of understanding the other.
We know this works. We know that this is one of the single most effective ways in which to counter the cultural hatreds and prejudices that swirl in our midst.
A study entitled “Psychological Correlates of Support for Compromise: A Polling Study of Jewish-Israeli Attitudes Toward Solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” by Ifat Maoz and Clark McCauley reveals that those Israelis and Palestinians who had met someone on the other side, who knew someone on the other side, were exponentially more likely to support compromised peace. Were far more likely to empathize with the other such that they desired a future in which both sides could thrive. Just by meeting someone. By knowing someone.
This is why one of my goals, as a writer, is to tell the narratives of both my people and of my "enemy," of the Palestinians. For these encounters with the other, with stories of the other, have as much impact toward solving intractable conflicts as any large-scale political solution.
And the irony: all this has been precipitated by my personal encounter with Palestinian terror, by the violent product of hate on the other side when my wife was bombed by a Hamas militant.It has been precipitated by my subsequent meeting with the terrorist's family, seeking to understand how this could have happened, seeking to understand them, to know their suffering, to transform the pain into something else.
I am not naive.
Nor are LGBT teens who try to meet with Christian fundamentalists picketing against gay marriage. Not to convince them of anything. Simply to let them see the other side. To put a face to the other side.
Nor is Jon Stewart, who goes on Bill O'Reily's program not to convince him of anything, but to show his viewing audience the face of a rational progressive, the reasonable thoughts of a progressive.
Nor are the parents of Palestinian and Israeli children killed by the conflict who have decided to meet one another naive. They are not. They are brave, they are the heroes.
They are the ones changing the narrative and working toward resolution.
They are the ones I try to model myself after.
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Jessica Montell's child is eight years old, and the utterance "I hate Arabs" is something he simply picked up on the playground, in a normative, social context, from children whose parents say this phrase, over and over, watching the news. Here is Jessica's take:
How to solve, in the micro sense, this dynamic being removed from the playground? Parents meeting the other.
There really is nothing more powerful than understanding.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: below, I'd like to add some examples of people who are working toward this mutual understanding, so that people can see that indeed such efforts are taking place.
This is a trailer for the documentary Encounter Point, an award-winning film showing the efforts of nonviolent reconciliation on both sides:
This is from The Parents Circle, a gathering of bereaved Palestinian and Isreali parents who have decided to meet one another and share their suffering:
This is from Hand in Hand, an amazing school: