Michael Schulder: [00:00:00] Right now, today, given where things are at, like, what do you want to learn?
Ori Nir: One thing that I always, you know, almost always the last question that I ask when I interview people for my podcast is “Where is hope? What gives you hope? What makes you keep going with…” you know, because usually I interview people who are somehow involved in efforts for peace reconciliation, better Jewish-Arab relations or
Israeli-Palestinian relations and so on. And I think that that's, that's a question that I keep asking myself, and I think it’s a question worth asking today. Is this doomed to fail? Are Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians doomed to end up in a morass of bloodshed and violence, and unending conflict, or is there some hope for a [00:01:00] resolution in the future? I think that that's a worthy question and it's something that, if you'd like, we can try to sort of figure out together and talk about it.
Michael Schulder: Well, it's a worthy question. And, but the question is, it almost seems on the one hand, like it just doesn't fit today because today is just like, “Whoa, stop the bleeding,” or “stop the carnage.” And yet if you're in that situation, I mean, other than “I want to survive,” you probably are looking for reasons to hope, but as you said in your essay today that you sent to you to supporters of Americans for Peace Now, this isn't really necessarily a time to try to identify silver linings. Is that what you said?
Ori Nir: I said that it's hard to talk in the language of silver linings. You can't really say there's a silver lining when so many people are [00:02:00] killed and maimed and such destruction, and such destruction both physically, but also in terms of the tissue that binds, and there is a tissue that binds, Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel together, and even Israelis and Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza and Israel proper. So to talk about the silver lining today sounds, not only sounds, is, you know, just not the right way to frame it. But to talk about some of the things that can and should, as a peace activist, I’m saying this, be a conclusion of what we've just, what we're witnessing now. I think that that's something we can talk about. We can already start talking about some of the lessons that we've learned in the past few days, in the past couple of weeks and about how we can [00:03:00] implement them to try to better relations between the two peoples. I think that that's something we can start doing.
Michael Schulder: What have you learned in the past few days, in the past few weeks that could, in some way, fuel something positive, moving forward?
Ori Nir: Okay, so I'll start with- and I know some of it will sound, some of it could be superficial and naive, but I'll take that too, because, you know, I'll take anything, any kind of positivity now, when things are so dark. So one thing that we've seen is, as violence was raging in Gaza, in Israel, inside Israel, between Arabs and Jews, the intercommunal violence that was going on, at the same time, Jews and Arabs in, I think on Saturday night, if I remember correctly, um, Jews and Arabs throughout Israel, went out at a hundred locations inside Israel to together demonstrate [00:04:00] for peace, reconciliation against violence, to try to instill some sensation of normalcy and of coexistence. So again, it's kind of hard to look at it and to look at that in the proportion of the, or in the context of the extreme violence that was going on and to say “Oh, that is a hopeful thing,” but it is somewhat hopeful that you still have that. And I think it's- one of the things that I'm learning from that, or one of the things that I'm trying to underscore for me and for the people who support my organization is that while there is a great deal of resentment and hatred and acrimony between Jews and Arabs and between Israelis and Palestinians, there still is also a lot [00:05:00] that brings them together. We can talk a little bit if you'd like about what is happening inside Israel, and it's a trend, it's actually a trend that has been taking place over the past two, three decades or something like that. It is going on simultaneously as the estrangement and tension is growing. There's both tension and acrimony that is growing, and at the same time also bridges that are being built. I know that it sounds mutually exclusive, or it sounds like those things cannot exist together at the same time, but it actually is happening and it can co-exist, in other words, those two trends that I'm talking about.
Michael Schulder: Give me an example, that you're intimately familiar with, of a bridge that is being built, and the people specifically who are behind that bridge building.
Ori Nir: I'll give you one example, and there are many, but [00:06:00] one that always, that's close to my heart and touches my heart is a network of bilingual schools inside Israel. They are bilingual and that's how they are defined. They're Jewish and Arab- they teach in them in Arabic and Hebrew, the students are Jews and Arabs, citizens of Israel. There are six such schools, so it's not a big, it's not a large network, but there is such a network and it's based on equity. It’s based on complete equality between the staff, the students, and maybe most importantly, the parents. Those schools bring together a huge community, a really large community of thousands of families that interact around the school, do things together, learn about [00:07:00] each other, obviously learn each other's languages. That is something that has been growing and there is huge demand. As far as I know, the schools cannot meet the demand for students- for families want to send their kids to learn, to study in those schools. Those are elementary schools so far, they haven't yet reached the, you know, middle school and high school level. But that's something that is beautiful, that is incredibly constructive, and that I know for many families has really become a game changer in the way they view the relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel.
Michael Schulder: Have you been in touch with- what's the name of the school system?
Ori Nir: It’s called Yad BeYad, Hand in Hand. There are six schools in this network. One of the schools, you know, one would think that, well, one of the [00:08:00] schools is inside really deep inside an Arab village in the Galilee, in the North. Jews, you know, come- it's very rare that Jews would come to an Arab village inside Israel. There's a lot of, you know, segregation in Israel between Arabs and Jews. When Jews come to Arab villages, it's usually to either, you know, fix their car or eat at a restaurant or something like that. It's not to socialize and definitely not to come and learn. And here, you know, every day parents are bringing their students into an Arab village to study and to socialize with other kids, with Arabic kids. That's, I find, a very positive thing.
And I have to say, you know, having said all of what I said about the rays of light, and there are some rays of light, there's a lot of darkness. There's a lot of darkness in the sense [00:09:00] that Israel has become a more polarized community overall in the past few years. And particularly in the past, particularly during Netanyahu’s rule, I would say. The chants of death to the Arabs, which were, you wouldn't hear that much on the streets in Israel, have become ubiquitous. You hear them a lot in demonstrations, and chants, I have to say, by Muslim Arabs, who talk about, you know, they commemorate a massacre of Jews in the Arabian peninsula in the days of Muhammad, the prophet Muhammad, and they chant that, you know, “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud,” it was a massacre that happened in a place called Khaybar, and they say [00:10:00] Muhammad’s army will return, in other words, we will commit another such massacre. So you hear horrible chants coming from both sides. What is the exception and what is the rule? It's hard to tell in the past two weeks. The rule, at lest in terms of- well, again, I don't… what we've heard that was more vociferous was those hateful chants coming from both sides. And again, I would say, you know, while that is happening, there's also a counter trend happening at the same time of building bridges.
Michael Schulder: And so I think I told you, the first job I had out of college was as an intern for Egyptian ambassador, former Sadat, aid to Anwar Sadat and peace activist, his name was Tahseen Bashir. At the time I worked for him, he was, right around the time he was Egyptian ambassador to Canada. He had recently left the Arab league, very much into [00:11:00] conflict resolution, very much into peace between all the peoples of the region. And he always used to use this one phrase, “Constituencies for peace.” And he would say every side has every community has constituencies for peace and you need to do what you can to empower them and make them grow. And it sounds like this network of schools that you just alluded to is one of those constituencies for peace. You have had the chance to be on the ground. It was in the 1980s, I think, when we first met and you were the chief correspondent in the West bank and the Gaza strip for Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. You were able to, because of your intimate knowledge of the people at that time and the politics and everything, you would be in as good a position as anybody to know how large were the constituencies for peace then, and is there any way to assess what they were then to what they [00:12:00] are now in the West bank and Gaza strip?
Ori Nir: You know, in the late 1980s and into the mid 1990s, the constituency for peace, both in the West bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem was obviously much larger than it is today. It was the consensus among Palestinian society. I saw it. I know it. I experienced it when I covered the West bank at the time in the late eighties. I used to go to the West bank almost every day and talk to Palestinians. So that's something I can say with a great deal of certainty, there was a conviction at the time that peace is both possible and warranted and that a solution could be found and that Palestinians would ascribe to a solution where a Palestinian state would be established in the West bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem side by side with Israel, with some kind of a [00:13:00] compromise over the other things, including refugees and so on. Yes. So there definitely was a constituency for peace. And I can, you know, talk about anecdotes, things that I have seen and experienced that make it tangible. That has eroded-
Michael Schulder: Well give me just one anecdote from your memory, that we might even be able to put a picture to, that sort of typified the constituency for peace that you experienced back then.
Ori Nir: Sure. In 1994, when Israel’s army gradually withdrew from the West Bank and transferred the authority for West Bank towns in what is called Area B – that is the area in which the Palestinian authority has full control – gradually transferred it to the PLO. I covered each and [00:14:00] every town that was handed over. It started in the North and went down South. And one of the last downs to be handed over was the town of Bethlehem. And in Bethlehem, I remember seeing, and I remember being in tears when I saw it, young Palestinian women standing and instead of throwing rocks at the soldiers, which Palestinians obviously did during the first Intifada that preceded that, they threw flowers. And there was definitely a feeling that Palestinians were gaining a modicum, a sense of independence, and that they were on their way to sovereignty, to statehood. And the reaction was, again, you can say that this was in some kind of a momentary euphoria, but still there was a sense of- there was a sense of euphoria, and there was, I think what it [00:15:00] symbolized, that act of throwing flowers was, yes, we can make peace and our hand is extended in peace. There were many, many other such, you know, from the- there were joint patrols that the Israeli and Palestinian armed military or police, you can call them, forces did, you know, when Israel transferred those towns to the Palestinians. There were many such gestures. And more than anything, there were negotiations. There were actual negotiations that went on for years. And we tend to forget, you know, you talked about the piece that I wrote to our constituency. I reminded people there that those negotiations, at least twice that I know of and I think that probably more, came quite close to a resolution. They were, they came close to actually signing a dotted line. [00:16:00] It seems like, it seems far today and yes, gaps have, you know, re-broadened or re-deepened or whatever would be the correct way of saying that. But having seen such sights, having seen Israelis and Palestinians collaborating in a constructive manner toward a peaceful resolution, I do believe that it's still possible, that it's not something that is completely vanished.
Michael Schulder: I just want to read you a 45-second excerpt that I had from an interview I did with William Ury a while back. He was the co-author of Getting to Yes, [00:27:00] which for a lot of people is like the ultimate handbook in negotiation. And he helped, he was part of a very small kitchen cabinet that helped negotiate the end to the Colombian civil war, just recently. And I interviewed him on the eve of the signing of that peace agreement. And he told me about an exercise that he and his team engaged in with the brother of the Colombian president, who was one of the main outreach people to the FARC guerrillas. And he said “We were trying to figure out to put ourselves in the shoes of the other and just start imagining we reach an agreement and imagine that the FARC leaders had to describe this agreement, give a talk to all their people as they've just done this past week…” Well, this was at the time,” …in which they described this agreement as a kind of victory for them. Not that it couldn’t be a victory for the government as well, but it’s like, it had to be something that [00:28:00] they could sell to their own troops and explain ‘Look, we’ve been fighting for 52 years, we’re laying down our weapons.’ They can’t say it was all in vain. And so we worked backwards from that speech. We even simulated that speech, I asked the president’s brother to give that speech to us as if he was the leader, the guerilla commander. Then we said ‘Okay, so how can we make it easier for them to give that speech? What are the key interests, what are the key needs that they have.’” And then they went on. Knowing how much you know about Palestinian nationalist motivations and how much you know about Israeli nationalist motivations, what speech could an Israeli leader give to his people and what speech could either Hamas or a Palestine [00:29:00] national authority leader give to his people that would bring them along to what ultimately we will get to with Americans for Peace Now, which is: a just two state solution?
Ori Nir: It's a great question. And it's something that I've been asking myself a lot. So there are two ways- I want to say two things about it. The first thing is that we have to be very modest and realize that a speech, even if it's going to be a very dramatic and a very effective speech, is only going to go that far because both sides are cynical, suspicious, and extremely disappointed with the other side. So, you know, there's not going to be a game-changing speech. But what kind of- but that brings me to the other thing that I wanted to say, and that is empathy. I think that what is needed and what is extremely important for the two sides to try to roll back the [00:30:00] incredible accumulated amount of hatred and negativity, and try to rebuild some kind of a trust, is empathy. Empathy is one of the main things, in other words, that are needed. You know, when I was covering the West Bank years ago, we used to drive around in groups, typically two people, sometimes three or even four journalists together, because there was an element of danger, and we wanted to, you know, be there for each other. And one of the games that we used to play a lot was a kind of a “imagine if.” And the “imagine if” was: imagine if, in 1967, Israel lost the war and the occupation was not an Israeli occupation of the West Bank, but [00:31:00] let's say a Jordanian or a Palestinian occupation of Israel. It’s an exercise, obviously, this is something that's hard to imagine, but let's just imagine what would Israelis do? What would Israelis do to try to fight for their independence to try to fight against the foreign occupation? What would Americans, who are friends of Israel, particularly American Jews, would do to help them. And I think that if you try to play that game, you get to a place where you empathize much more with what Palestinians feel, think and do. So let's go back now to the question about the speech. I think that the speech that packs in it a great deal of empathy. From the Israeli side, I think that what is most important, and I think what would make the most difference would be a true expression of [00:32:00] empathy, understanding and internalizing of the traumatic experience that Palestinians suffered in 1948 when Israel was established. I'm not talking necessarily about an expression of regret or even, you know, asking for forgiveness. I don't think that that's in the cards, and I don't- although that, you know, that would be- obviously would go a much longer way. But I think that even just an expression and acknowledgement that Palestinians suffered a terrible, terrible loss which, you know, still casts a shadow over what is happening today, that's something that would go a long way. And then expressing empathy for the state of Palestinians under occupation, the [00:33:00] kind of helplessness, powerlessness, humiliation and so on and so forth and a true resolution, you know, to- an expression of resolve to tackle it and try to bring it to an end. On the Palestinian side, I think something similar, in terms of an acknowledgement of Jewish suffering in their, you know, traumatic experience, which is the Holocaust. There was a Knesset member, an Arab Knesset member who years ago, several years ago gave such a speech. His name is Ahmed Tibi, and the speech was really truly truly heartfelt and beautiful, acknowledging and talking about his understanding of the Jewish Holocaust and it made a huge impact on Israeli society. [00:34:00] So I would start there and then talk about how that experience casts a shadow, even today, over the psyche of Israelis and how they feel and think about their need for security and so on. And then, a clarification that what Palestinians are seeking is, in fact, statehood in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, and not an attempt to erase Israel by a mass return of refugee into Israel proper. I think that those things, interestingly things that mainly have to do with the experience of 1948, would go a long way to create a new- to allay some of the fears on the [00:35:00] other side, and play an effective role in trying to reach future reconciliation.
So as we wrap up, your journey from journalist to then really peace activist, and now you're Vice President Of Communications for Americans for Peace Now, correct?
Ori Nir: Mm hm.
Michael Schulder: And so just, just give me a thumbnail, as you've put it in the past, the elevator pitch for Peace Now is what?
Ori Nir: Peace Now is Israel’s preeminent movement. It was started in 1978, when the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat extended his hand in peace to Israel. And then, the government of Israel then was hesitant and a group of, interestingly, 300 and something Military officers got together and signed a petition to the prime minister [00:36:00] then, Begin, Menachen Begin, urging him to reciprocate and to sign peace with Egypt. That nucleus of 350, if I remember correctly, military officers and the IDF, uh, reserve military officers, I should say, was the nucleus that started Israel's peace movement. Peace Now for quite some time served as a kind of a pressure group to encourage Israel, the Israeli government to sign peace agreements with its neighboring countries. But then pretty early on in the seventies particularly, became a movement that pressured Israeli governments to negotiate with the PLO and to sign a peace agreement with the Palestinians for a two state solution. In the early eighties, an American organization was established to mainly raise funds for Peace [00:37:00] Now to help it grow inside Israel. It was called American friends of Peace Now and gradually it grew to become an independent American Jewish organization that supplements, compliments what Peace Now does in Israel here in the United States. It's an advocacy organization that works mainly vis-a-vis the Washington establishment, but also within the Jewish community in the United States to try to build that constituency for peace that we talked about earlier.
Michael Schulder: The theme I started with, and this is, I'm probably gonna title this “Don’t Give Up on Us,” and the woman who said that, when you think of that, ‘cause you're, you're sort of in the same camp, she's with your organization, what does that mean to you? “Don't give up on us.”
Ori Nir: What it means to me [00:38:00] is- and again, it takes us back to something that we tried to explore earlier. There is within both Israeli and Palestinian society, I think when Hagit Ofran was saying “Don’t give up on us,” she was talking about Israeli peace activists, but on both sides, both in Israel and among Palestinian society, there is a robust camp of people who are committed to peace, to a peace that would accommodate both societies. In other words, to either a two-state solution or some kind of a Confederation or something where both peoples would enjoy sovereignty and independence. So I think that when she talks about “don't give up on us,” it means that. The other thing that it means is, you know, that’s the “us” part of it, “us” meaning those on both sides who are committed to peace. The other [00:39:00] thing that it means is you are friends in the United States who for all these years have helped us try to achieve peace. Please stay committed. It's not a lost cause, it can still be done and your help, particularly your help vis-a-vis your government is something that could help us a lot. You know, Michael, I want to say something about this sentiment, this sentiment that there are peace activists and people who are committed to peace on both sides. It's something that today has eroded, no doubt, but there were moments in history where that feeling was very, very strong and one of them, and I'll tell you a little story about it, has to do with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. Rabin was assassinated in 1995. I'm going to tell it differently. The night Rabin was assassinated in November of 1995, I was sitting at my home. I had [00:40:00] a kind of a quiet evening, because I knew that everyone was focused on that demonstration in Tel Aviv where Rabin spoke. And at some point I get a call from my editor saying Rabin has been shot and he's injured. We need reactions from Palestinians. So, you know, I pick up the phone and I call my Palestinian sources. And the first one I called was Saeb Erekat, who was the chief Palestinian negotiator, and a great friend of mine. I've [00:41:00] known him for years. And I called him and told him what happened. And he was shaken and we started talking. And as we were talking, I heard that Rabin’s communications advisor came out of the hospital to give the famous, you know, statement to the press where he, told the Israeli public that Rabin has passed away. And I found myself simultaneously translating to Saeb Erekat on the phone as, Eitan Haber was, his voice breaking, telling Israelis that their beloved, admired prime minister was assassinated. And both Saeb Erekat and I were crying as we heard that. We were [00:42:00] crying and I remember that what Saed said to me was, through the tears, he said something like “Everything's going to change. Nothing's going to be the same, but one thing that you and I know now is that we, the supporters of peace on both sides have more in common together then what each one of us has- than the common denominator of each society, between those who support peace in the society and those who oppose peace.” In other words, there was a constituency for peace that transcended the national divide.
Michael Schulder: Ori Nir, Americans for Peace Now, and my friend, thank you. Thank you for sharing, you know, [00:43:00] a real sweeping history really, personal history and your knowledge of Israel and Israeli relations with the Palestinians. Thank you for joining me on Wavemaker Conversations.
Ori Nir: Thank you, Michael. And thank you for not giving up on us.