The podium may as well have been a resurrected Berlin Wall, victims of one another’s hatred on each side. Two people representing the Israeli standpoint sat on one side. Two representing the Palestinian standpoint sat on the other.
So deep ran the antagonism on Sunday during a College of Marin forum that when Naaim Karkabi, a Palestinian from Israel who now lives in Fairfax, began posing a question to an Israeli representative, Jews who said they were forced to flee Arab nations screamed loudly enough to drown out Karkabi’s voice.
An Iraqi-Palestinian-American speaker said she hated to split the college cafeteria into sides. But there was no denying a deep divide between those identifying with Palestinians and those identifying with Israelis during a discussion titled “The Role of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the U.S. War on Terrorism.”
The public forum in Kentfield drew about 100 people, many middle-aged and older, and many Jews, most sympathetic to Israel but some openly critical.
A Jewish community representative on the panel blamed “radical Islamism” and a “hate-filled ideology” for the Sept. 11 attacks. At the same time, Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle East affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council, dismissed the relationship between the United States and Israel as a factor in the air strikes that killed several thousand Americans.
“Blaming the U.S. relationship with Israel as a ‘root cause’ of radical Islamist terrorism against America and the West ignores what the terrorists themselves have stated as their primary objective: the removal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and of the Islamic faith,” Santis said.
A Palestinian representative took the opposite view. As’ad AbuKhalil, professor of politics at Stanislaus State University and a fellow at the Middle East Center at U.C. Berkeley, blamed Israel and its U.S. supporters for a growing cauldron of anger among Arabs in the Middle East.
“I cannot think of anything more relevant to explain Sept. 11,” he said. “The Israelis and their American supporters have a hard time understanding the magnitude of Palestinian compromise. They do not want to be assimilated. They want to be Palestinian on their own land.”
Two other panelists spoke less from a political and more from a personal perspective about the conflict. And they struck more compromising notes.
Therese Mughannam Walrath, a peace activist who lives in Santa Rosa, said she and her family were forced to leave their home in Palestine in 1948. “Many of those fleeing held on to the keys to their homes, thinking they would return,” Walrath said. Her family fled first to Jordan, then in 1957 to the United States.
“America and Americans have been good to us. But needless to say, our longing and yearning is still for our homeland, where horrible things continue to happen every day under an occupation. What happened to us in 1948 was totally unjust. We feel that we have been robbed of our identity, our homeland.”
Donny Inbar, the cultural attaché for the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco, who was born in Israel in 1958 and lived there until four years ago, opened his talk by saying “shalom.” He explained that the word for “peace” was the first word he saw written on the blackboard in school, the first word he learned to read and write as an Israeli.
“I can tell you we were the victims,” Inbar said. “Therese can tell you they were the victims. There is a tragedy. But let’s look forward. Let’s reach out for a solution for a future for ourselves, for our kids. Maybe it will take three, four generations. But let’s build a future, not bloodshed.”
Walrath urged Jews and Arabs to examine their similarities. “The only way to survive is through mutual acceptance and understanding of each others’ pain,” she said. “Jews and Arabs are so much alike. We’ve got to stop passing on our prejudices. We’ve got to stop treating people badly, and they’ll stop wanting to harm us.
“Israelis have to stop repressing [Arabs]. They have to stop caging them in. Both sides have suffered enough. Even if we begin today, it will take two generations before the psychic damage can be repaired. Why not begin today?”
Walrath shared a framed painting of a cheerful parade. Marchers representing the rainbow of people living in the Middle East walked under a sun-filled sky and a flag bearing the religious symbols of Jews, Muslims and Christians.
“Carry that vision,” she urged, “in your heart, in your prayer, if you pray, in your meditation, if you meditate.”