Israel and Palestine: The Bereaved Unite - A Conversation with Robi Damelin, The Parents Circle – Families Forum by Elyssa Paige
If you choose to turn on the news while comfortably nestled in your living room, you’re bound to hear about the casualties of war in faraway lands. These death tolls are not just numbers on the rise—they represent mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.
Can you imagine what it’s like to lose a child through war? That’s what Robi Damelin experienced. Her son, David, was an Israeli soldier killed by a Palestinian sniper on March 3, 2002. He was 28 years old.
It’s easy to get angry, to crave the taste of revenge. But this is precisely what perpetuates violence and it was not the choice that Damelin made.
Originally from South Africa where she had been active in the anti-apartheid movement, Damelin came to Israel in 1967, raised two children, and ran a successful public relations firm. Needless to say, when David was killed, her priorities began to change. That’s when she discovered The Parents Circle – Families Forum.
Since its inception in 1995, The Parents Circle has been uniting Israelis and Palestinians who have lost immediate family members in the conflict. Rather than using tragedy as a motive for revenge, The Parents Circle’s 500 members work to promote reconciliation through education and the exchange of personal narratives. They are changing the mindset that led to the violence in the first place. Some of the non-profit organization’s groundbreaking projects include high school classroom sessions; a toll-free telephone line for Israelis and Palestinians to create a dialogue; “Cartooning in Conflict;” an international art exhibition; seminars; workshops; and “Good Intentions,” a television series in Arabic and Hebrew.
Damelin’s path has led her to become one of The Parents Circle’s leading voices for reconciliation and peace. Two and a half years after David was killed, the sniper was caught. What was Damelin’s reaction? She sent a letter of reconciliation to his family—a true test of her beliefs in action. Recently I had the great opportunity to speak with her about her personal journey, the progress The Parents Circle has made, and her hopes for the future.
Vision Magazine: What does compassion mean to you and how does it help to create a transition from battlefield to common ground?
Robi Damelin: In a way, you can intertwine the word compassion with empathy. If you don’t have empathy and some form of understanding, you can never come to forgiveness. For me, compassion is not feeling sorry for anybody; it’s empathy and understanding, which leads to forgiveness in many ways. And what does forgiveness really mean? Does it mean giving up your right to justice? Does it mean that the person can do it again? Or that we should turn the other cheek? I’ve asked great thinkers from all over the world for their definition of forgiveness, from archbishops to rabbis to imams. The definition is such a personal one; this is why I tend to use the word understanding more than forgiveness—because if you understand, this brings you back again into compassion and empathy.
VM: Can you talk about the importance of being what you call “pro-solution,” rather than pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian?
RD: It’s the most natural trait for human beings to take sides. It makes you feel good about yourself. The only problem is that it isn’t really helping anybody to be pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. Neither of us is going to disappear in a puff of smoke. And it’s not only on the ground level; it’s also the politicians and policy makers who find that taking sides is much easier than being part of the solution. I think that people who take sides are part of the problem. It doesn’t help either of us. But if you wanted to support something like a Palestinian hospital or an Israeli school, that is not side-taking—that is support, which is very different. It would be so much more helpful for everybody if Muslims, Jews, Christians, or people who don’t believe in anything would stand together against violence in the Middle East.
VM: Why is it not enough to have, as you write, “another handshake on the White House lawn?” What will it take to create reconciliation on a grassroots level?
RD: I’m not certain that there can be a dignified solution to this situation without political agreements. But alongside the political agreements, there has to be something between the people on the ground to gain empathy. If you look at all of the agreements that were made—the Oslo Agreement, the Geneva Initiative, and many others—there isn’t room for any reconciliation process between the people. And without that, all political agreements will be temporary ceasefires until the next shot. Peace has to come from the people and that’s why the framework for the reconciliation process needs to be in place for after the agreements are signed.
VM: How did you move past the anger and the pain of losing your son?
RD: You never move past the pain. You learn to live with it next to you. Everybody has a recipe for bereavement and what you should be feeling. I found that a little bit difficult because everybody’s different. I searched very deeply into myself to see where my anger was coming from. It was really from the situation with my son because David didn’t want to serve in the Occupied Territories and I certainly didn’t want him to go. It was a huge dilemma for him. We had a long talk and he was absolutely torn. Sometimes I wonder who is in more pain or who is more frightened: the Israeli soldiers standing at the roadblocks or the Palestinians. I understood really early on that the man who killed David didn’t kill him because he was David; he killed him because he was a symbol of an occupying army. It’s not easy for me to say that. I have said it many times, but each time, it is difficult.
I can’t think of a better way to commemorate David’s name and to commemorate his spirit than through the work I’m doing. His whole being was in education and his whole way of looking at life was to say that Israel should become an example to the world of what democracy really is.
VM: How did you get involved with The Parents Circle?
RD: I was looking for something. I knew that I wanted to contribute to stop the violence but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Then Yitzhak Frankenthal, [the founder of The Parents Circle] invited me to a seminar. I was a little bit skeptical because I didn’t think that I wanted to mix with other bereaved people; I thought it would be very depressing. When I went to the seminar, it was the first time that I’d met bereaved Palestinian mothers and families and the first time I truly recognized that we shared the same pain. It brought home the fact that we could be a very powerful force if we worked together and spoke in one voice to stop the violence.
That was really the beginning of my journey with The Parents Circle. At the time, I had a PR office, but the work didn’t seem important to me anymore. I closed the office about five years ago and today, this is my whole life. I spend many months of the year traveling all over the world speaking, going into schools, creating new partners, and looking for ways to spread this message so that people will understand that there’s another way.
VM: Can you share a bit about The Parents Circle’s success with outreach and education?
RD: We do about 1000 classroom dialogues a year with 17-year-old kids in Israel. We were doing quite a lot of work on the Palestinian side but it has become very difficult since the Gaza War. We go into the classrooms of kids who have never met a Palestinian and suddenly they see a human being telling a personal story of loss. This creates a completely different atmosphere. Israelis don’t know Palestinians and vice versa. It’s hard to believe, but that’s the truth. Even though we live so close, we hardly know each other. If you go into an Israeli classroom and ask, “How many Palestinians do you know?” there will probably be none. They don’t know who’s living on the other side. It is true of the adults as well; they don’t know each other, so how can we ever create a situation of quiet and peace here when there is this fear of the unknown? Fear breeds violence and violence breeds more violence. Just knowing the person on the other side creates humanization.
We also had a toll-free telephone line between Palestinians and Israelis called Hello Shalom/Salaam, and there were more than a million telephone calls. We’ve been given a grant from the European Union, so we’re going to upgrade the telephone line and call it A Crack in the Wall. It will probably start in April or May via Facebook, Twitter and the Internet so that the whole world can be involved through our Web site [theparentscircle.com]. We may start with a question such as: “What do you think of the Arab Initiative? Let’s discuss.” There will be two virtual walls—one Palestinian and one Israeli, and you can send a note between the walls with what you think. There will be some translation and only violent language will be censored. Something I imagine that will come out of this will be a crack in the virtual wall.
VM: In terms of peace efforts, has there been any support from policy makers in the region?
RD: This is the thing: People are really detached. Of course we’ve got politicians who agree with what we’re doing. We’re not affiliated with any political party so that we can embrace anybody who wants to come and be a part of what we are doing. We’re not a huge group. We’re 500 families, but we do a lot of work. We’re now working with Georgetown University, our academic partner, and this year, we’re going to do a lot of lobbying to create a committee in Parliament so that the reconciliation process can be in place. We’re just the ants on the ground working to create a future agreement. Everything we do is geared toward that.
VM: Do you believe that there will be peace where conflict has raged for thousands of years?
RD: If I didn’t believe that, then what am I doing? Miracles happen all over the world. In Germany, they talk to each other without walls—the wall is past between them. Who would have thought that it could happen with Jordan? And look what happened in South Africa. So I really think that miracles can happen for us as well. I can’t afford to give up hope.
VM: Do you have any advice to offer people who are seeking reconciliation and a compassionate path in their own lives?
RD: I don’t think that I’m qualified to tell people what to do. It’s very personal. I can only tell you one thing: When I wrote that letter to the family of the man who killed David, I gave up being a victim and that’s the beginning of the path of reconciliation. I think that for your own personal health and creativity, if you let go of that terrible block in your heart, you can, in a way, be healed.
There is an uncertainty in all of this. It’s not black and white; there is a huge area of grey. Sometimes I question my own feelings—not sometimes, but often. I received a very vicious letter from the sniper, out of the jail. I’m not sure if he wrote it, but I realized that it’s another test, like when I asked you about the definition of forgiveness. Does it mean that the person you want to understand has to become repentant? It’s not that simple. Regardless of who sent the letter, it’s the beginning of a dialogue. I don’t know where this is going to go. The one thing that I’m completely convinced of is that what we are doing is the right path to take.
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