The latest conflict in the Middle East has been raging for a year now, and it continues to reverberate here in Massachusetts, challenging communities and testing friendships. A year ago, WBUR’s Tiziana Dearing spoke with two local friends; Dr. Eman Ansari is a Palestinian woman and pediatrician, and Guy Ben-Aharon is an Israeli man who runs a nonprofit.
They joined Dearing on Morning Edition again to talk about the last year, and how it’s affected their call to our shared humanity.
Interview highlights
On whether they feel safe and understood:
Ansari: “It’s been a tough year for so many reasons. We both have families over there. And we’re very concerned for their safety. We’re very sad for the losses. We’re very distraught about the ongoing war and we want it to stop. But also here in U.S., in our hometowns, things have been, I would say, almost equally tense. And there’s a lot of polarization. So, Guy and I feel that we do have a duty to bring people together here while we’re hoping that things will calm over there.
Ben-Aharon: “Yeah, I think that the polarization in some ways, understandably, has grown, and I don’t fear for my own physical safety, but I fear for the future, and I fear for what people are advocating for.
“I think more and more people on both sides of this think that, oh, one of you doesn’t deserve to live there. And I think that it’s hard to deal with. You don’t really know how to respond to that. And especially since both of us have families there, when certain people attack Eman and say, Palestinians, you’re this way, you’re that way, and you don’t deserve this — it lacks a very basic humanity.
“And similarly, when I’ve had people come up to me in the past year and say, ‘How can you still call that place a home? Why are [Israelis] still there?’ I think, well, it’s not like we had such a wonderful journey through the diaspora.”
Ansari: “I would say it’s been tough on me, partly because, watching what’s happening over there is tough, but also watching my children here and other Arab, Muslim [and] Jewish children fearing what the conflict mean to them. In school, people look at them differently. All of them are scared and their parents are scared for them. And I feel we have evolved as humans, which is great. But whenever we’re afraid, we go back to being primal and that fear immediately cancels the other person. And that cancelation makes it hard to speak across differences.”
On the call to listen to each other’s stories:
Ben-Aharon: “I had an experience standing next to my mother at a protest very recently, a few weeks ago, and with a few friends in Tel Aviv — the protest of the families of the hostage in front of the defense ministry. And two things happened. One, a member of the families got up, [and said], ‘We have just been notified that five or six of the hostages who were alive last week are no longer alive.’ And you heard people burst into tears. And I put my arm around my mother, my 71-year-old mother who is protesting, not only weekly, but several times a week for a ceasefire, and my friend. And there was such a hopelessness.
“And ten minutes later, another member of the families got up and said, ‘Now we will do the reading of the names of the hostages who are still in Gaza, alive and not.’ And I had to deal with the moral inconsistency that I know the names of over 100 people who are my tribe, let’s say, and I don’t know the names of more than 41,500 Gazans who’ve been killed. And what does that mean?”
“We have a lot of foundational narratives to correct in order to reach a just peace between both peoples.”
Eman Ansari
On keeping faith in their shared humanity:
Ansari: “I see the positive in so many new friendships that I’ve made over the past year, people I didn’t know before, and I wouldn’t have come across. And they’re wonderful people from all walks of life who want to bring people together and end the suffering back home — many imams, many rabbis, many priests, many neighbors, many friends — all of them lift up my spirit. Some … would celebrate the fact that I do see them as my people.
“I’ve always said, you are my people, we are one tribe, to every single human. But then, they celebrate my humanization of them, but do not reciprocate to my people. They appreciate the fact that I mourn the loss of lives on the Israeli side, on the Jewish side, and they would hug me and cry with me, but then when the following day, bombs dropped by the [Israeli Defense Forces] on a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza, and immediately 19 people were killed and 120 injured, I didn’t hear them say anything to me. So, there are the others who do say, and who do speak, and those are increasing in number, and that gives me hope.
“We have a lot of foundational narratives to correct in order to reach a just peace between both peoples. But people are inherently good, and I’m hoping that once we can bring the fear down, that goodness will surface. And they will find a way, just like me and Guy, and so many other people like me and Guy. I hate to think that we are special. We are not special. There are so many people like us who see each other as people. Like, I don’t see Guy as Jewish or Israeli. I see him as my friend. And he’s Jewish and Israeli. So that’s what gives me hope.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
