Dialogue Transcript
Fears about Zionism and more...

The following is an edited transcript of a portion of dialogue meeting where we were getting to know each other and beginning to voice our fears. This was only the third or fourth meeting of our group, so people were not comfortable with identifying photographs or tape recorders. As my first attempt at taping, much of the tape was unaudible anyway, but what appears is representative of our group beginning to listen to each other and deal with difficult issues. Participants have been identified only by letters of the alphabet. At some point in the meeting, each participant had the opportunity to speak at length. Parts of A, B, D, and F's more lengthy participation are included.

A: There are assumptions that are ingrained in all of us. I have not heard an Israeli or a Palestinian yet in this gathering really trying to understand the other. We haven't done this. The urge to respond, reject, correct is very strong. We have got to recognize that that's what's happening. We have to be aware of our backgrounds. Another thing I noticed was my own conditioning. I hear the word Zionist and my hair stands up. I have been conditioned to hate that word.

B: Absolutely, the word Zionist scares me.

A: Yes, it makes you angry. Then C, your urge is to correct everybody about history.

C: I agree with you.

A: But that's not what we're here for.

C: I think what you said is right. But before we can get to the point that you're talking about you have to hear what the other guy's problem is. If you don't hear the problem then getting to where you are is baloney. You have to hear what the issues are.

A: I actually agree with you. The way I started listening to you is to understand how you see things as the other side. We need to practice that, all of us, to understand the biases, the conditioning. We need to see the automatic reactions we have to certain words. What to we hear in certain words, how do things get triggered? To really have a dialogue, it takes brutal honesty about ourselves. I urge us all to be aware of this.

B: We all have pent up emotions about how we feel. We need one whole day to release it all.

D: But then it builds up again.

A: There is so much negative stuff going on.

E: We have to have emotions if we're caring people.

A: To be honest with myself we are more conditioned to debate. The Jewish community is less biased.

B: I don't know about less biased.

A: That's what I've seen. We have a tendency to want to argue and win the point.

Several Jews respond: So do Jews.

B: I was raised Catholic. We were afraid of the Jews. I was raised to be afraid of Jews. Especially I don't say the word Zionist. I don't want to bring it up again but I have to. When I was growing up you didn't say that word. We were raised that Zionism meant all of the Middle East. We were raised to feel that Jews wanted all of the Middle East. My family and friends really felt that this is what the Zionist movement really was.

A: We learned that the Zionist vision of Jewish state is from the Euphrates to the Nile. I don't know if that's true but that's what we learned.

B : So where is that written? Is that in the mission statement? It's a real fear, that exists. Do you understand?

D: That has nothing to do with Zionism. But I want to make another point. The conflict has only been in existence a hundred years. It doesn't go back that far. There is not that generational thing. Quite the contrary, when nationalist movements began to develop on both sides, that's when the conflict emerged. It's probably not more than fifty or sixty years old.

C: So where did that belief about Zionism come from?

F: I was raised with it too. I don't know where it comes from.

C: It sounds like the Protocols of Zionism, frankly.

E: Can ask a question? Did your family live side by side with Jews? Was that fear not a feeling before '48?

D: When I was a kid, this was before '67 there was a fear on the one hand of Al Fatah gangsters coming in to kill Jews. On the other hand you couldn't imagine travelling anywhere in Israel and not seeing Palestinian Arabs and not wanting to go into the cities and buy in the market and sit in the restaurants. So there was a dual message. On the one hand the Palestinians were always part of this country, the land, but on the other hand there was this fear of somebody that you never saw. I remember some stories as a kid about the kafea and the machine gun, so there was that dual conflict.

I want to say a quick word about Zionism. I come from a family where Zionism is butter and water and air. My grandfather was very active, my father was a general. I knew the ranks of the Israeli military before I knew my ABCs. Zionism is the right of Jews to have a Palestinian state. As far as I'm concerned they've achieved that so it shouldn't be an issue. There is a state, so lets move on. Zionism as a word, as a concept has evolved since then to mean other things. Certainly if you are an Israeli and you grew up on Israeli heroism and Zionism there is a sense of pride about what they've achieved. They achieved incredible things-an educational system, a health system even before there was a state. They were all speaking Hebrew twenty years after they revived the Hebrew language. I always tell people that my parents only seventy-five years ago never spoke Hebrew before they went to preschool. Before that everyone spoke different languages. When I think of it, I have a tremendous sense of pride....

What pains me, you can't imagine, when I see the pictures and when I read the stories about the things that Israeli soldiers do, the atrocities that Israeli soldiers commit, not just now but in Lebanon twenty years ago. When I see the uniform and the symbols that I grew up as a child to admire. It¹s a mythology beyond what you can imagine. It is a real break down of a lot of things that you grew up to admire. It's very very difficult, very painful. But does it mean that all of Zionism is bad, that all of Zionism is wrong? Again, that's a different issue....

I would say this When an Israeli prime minister comes up and says that there will be peace, here's what we're going to do....I don't want to get into the details, Perhaps there will be a Palestinian state here, perhaps Israel will give back some of the settlements there, but when there that person has the conviction to say that there will be peace, that person will have all the support. Let's say it was Ariel Sharon, I doubt it, but let's say it was Ariel Sharon and he said this is what were going to do and this is how we're going to do it, he would have popular support....

Ben Gurion was the first prime minister. He said this is going to be the state, we are going to agree to this. There were serious divisions within his party but he stuck to it. After January '49 when the war was still going on many people wanted to continue. He said we are going to stop the war right now. Many people thought that we should have kept on going. He said that we're going to stop the war right now. There were serious divisions, serious debates. But when the leader leads, the people will follow.

C: But, what I'm saying is that whether the Palestinians or the Arab nations will settle for anything less than the demise of Israel is the issue. I thought that the goal of the Arab leaders was to rouse people. How do you negotiate with that?

G: What about the Saudi piece proposal?

F: Palestinians agree with you we've been mistreated by the Arabs. Palestinians paid for Arab government deeds more than the Israeli's did. Saddam Hussein threw a few missiles at Israel and people cheered and then there was a massive expulsion of Palestinians. They were sent into Diaspora because of Arab leaders. That's how much disrespect they have for us. Palestinians pay for Arab government deeds more than Israelis do. They were further uprooted, further sent into Diaspora by the actions of the Arab leaders, more than the Israelis. Palestinians have never had any respect for the Arab proposals....

C: You might call it one thing, phrase it that way, but if there are a lot of dead Jews....

F: Israel in the sense of a political entity when the authority is only Jewish and the land ownership is Jewish, yes we want to destroy that. We're talking about the destruction of a state, not a people. Arabs didn't even know state. Statehood is a modern concept. Arabs didn't even know state....