Talking with our children about Israeli and Palestinian children
I organized a Youth Summit on Israel/Palestine with the Kids for Peace Foundation back in 2008. Something that really stuck with me from that experience was being told that if we didn't want to offend anyone, we should refer to "Israelis" and "Palestinians" and not "Israel" or "Palestine" because there were people on each side that believed the other place was not actually a legitimate place. While the experts we invited to lead sessions for the summit mostly focused on Israeli/Palestinian and Jewish/Arab intergroup dialogue, we still opted to keep the title as is.
When you have something to say
I've not sent an update recently or released another booklet because I've shifted my focus some. I've written another non-fiction chapter book and several picture book texts. However, now I'm starting to look into what it takes to get works professionally published and so those works are a part of a small portfolio I'm polishing off right now.
In the meanwhile, I did want to finally speak about the violence in Israel and Gaza. I know this is quite far behind the news cycle, especially now that, at time of writing, a ceasefire seems to be holding, but I didn't want to say something until I had something to say.
Civilian Deaths
© UNRWA/Mohammed Hinnawi - A street in Gaza on 8 October 2023.
The past month and a half has been frustrating at times for me. There have been spaces where people have openly expressed their very valid concern about the horrific murder of 1,200 Israeli civilians by Hamas, while completely ignoring the growing number of Palestinian civilian deaths.
As of November 13th, the Israeli Defense Forces had killed about 1 in every 200 people in Gaza. About 42% of those killed were children with a significantly higher child death rate than other conflicts. Twice as many women and children have been killed in Gaza in the past month and a half than have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine 21 months ago. As of November 24, the death toll had reached approximately 14,800 people. Many more have also been wounded or are missing. According to the UN, 1.7 million of the 2 million people living in Gaza have been internally displaced.
The frustrating part for me was also not feeling safe to speak up or acknowledge what the Israeli government was doing to the people of Gaza because of all the local and national reprisals and accusations against people who do speak up. It was also feeling like a coward for not saying anything when so many people are suffering.
Sharing uncertainty with our kids
This internal conflict of mine actually recently led to one of the more tender moments with my seven year-old son. A couple months ago I started the habit of asking the following three questions to each of my kids before bed:
Was there anything tricky or difficult that happened today?
Was there anything uncomfortable that happened today?
Was there anything fun or surprising that happened today?
The specific questions provoke more thoughtful answers in my kids than a mere "how was your day?" But soon after I started asking the questions, I realized it's just as important to model honest answers and have a reciprocal relationship with my kids and so now my children ask me the same questions.
One day, my uncomfortable thing was not feeling like I could speak my concerns about the growing loss of Palestinian lives and not knowing what to do. My son was wonderfully supportive of me. He didn't try to give advice. He just listened and acknowledged how that was uncomfortable. He then asked a little about what was happening in Gaza and I gave him a very abbreviated summary of the conflict. Afterward, I was worried I had shared too much with him but another parent friend with grown kids reassured me by saying he wished he had been that honest with his own kids when they were young.
Trust, or it's not about me (or my conclusions)
So where does that leave us? In need of one more side story to arrive at the point.
When I was in rural El Salvador in 2006 volunteering with the Salvadoran Lutheran Church, I met a man who was building a small cinder block house for a family member. He was working without a shirt on and had several scars on abdomen. As a young person whose curiosity tended to override a respect for privacy, I asked him what his scars were from. He told me a United States soldier shot him in the stomach during the 1980s Salvadoran Civil War. He must have noticed the sudden look of wide-eyed discomfort on my face and added, "But don't worry, it's not your fault, it's Reagan's."
When I reference conversations that were had with me, moments like that one as well as many other much longer conversations and relationships is what I am referring to. For one, that man understood that just because my government did something doesn't mean that I or my fellow US citizens are responsible for it. That is an important point to consider when people say, "but what about Hamas?" in regards to Palestinian civilian casualties.
But more importantly, for a long time I used to think that those conversations with me were all about people sharing their trauma. So I had it in my mind that sharing trauma was a good tool for educating people about important issues. Recently though, I realized I misunderstood what was happening in those instances. For all my directness, I was also very clearly compassionately curious and concerned about the people and their experiences. My presence, demeanor, and language conveyed that I was going to respect the dignity of what I asked them to share with me. They were also not just sharing their trauma with me but how they've dealt with it since, how they've grown from it, and what it meant to them. Together we were creating a moment of mutual respect, dignity, and trust.
Looking back, all that is what actually educated me. Likewise, the times I've been able to convey a meaningful lesson with a youth I've worked with or witnessed a breakthrough in an intergroup dialogue I've facilitated with adults have happened on that foundation of mutual respect, dignity, and trust. That foundation allows difficult topics and conflicts to be engaged with openness and not with defensiveness because we are not analyzing the topic but responding to the other human beings in the room with us. The facts and details merely provide information for the larger emotional and social processes of learning.
What's next?
So the next time I'm in an uncomfortable situation where I'm not sure if its safe for me to share what concerns me, am I going to start telling my opinions, listing statistics, or sharing links like this about the concurrent violence against Palestinians in the West Bank?
WHO oPt Emergency Situation Update as of 23 November 2023, 17:00
No. Or at least, not until they actually ask for them. For anything we do or say to have any affect, we need to build trust with the people around us. We need to sincerely listen to and acknowledge their concerns and understand why its important to them. Maybe they have family there? Maybe they fear for their own safety here?
Then as our emotional intelligence says is appropriate, we can meet them where they are at and start walking a new path together with them. We will probably learn something as we do. Then start sharing some of ours concerns not as a "but" but as an "and" because any loss of human life is tragic.
An important consideration here is that while I've known Palestinians and Israelis in the past, I don't have any friends or family in those places now. It's not a personal issue for me. Building that trust in the wake of our own trauma is a difficult task and we don't always have the emotional capacity to do it and that is also okay.
Talking with our children
To return to conversations with our children, when we do talk about topics like the violence and destruction in Israel and Palestine, what are we actually sharing with them? After all, they may have already heard things about it from school, media, or friends.
First and foremost, we are implicitly invoking that foundation of trust we hopefully already have with them by the way we talk about the topic and express our own emotions, concerns, and uncertainties while also acknowledging our own knowledge gaps. We talk about such topics because we want our children to be empathetic about them and so we model that with them.
Then we educate ourselves. I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic but I can say the public discourse in the US about the Israel/Palestine conflict is shockingly narrow. People who frequently look the other way about antisemitism sudden see any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Here is a broad spectrum of resources I have found helpful in educating myself:
It's eye opening to follow the conflict through the Israeli newspaper Hareetz where you can read damning opinions of Netanyahu and his deep unpopularity.
For an Arab perspective, there is always Al Jazeera.
The United Nations and World Health Organization also have resources with frequent updates.
For US resources, there is the Jewish Voice for Peace. The Zinn Education Project also has a list of resources on the Israel/Palestine Conflict, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.
President Carter, who negotiated a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, wrote a book titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Apartheid may feel like a strong word to some, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who understood apartheids quite well, also used the term to describe the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.