In the Village II: Podcast
Haled: “We are afraid to speak out, to feel a bit of empathy for those on the other side of the border”
Adam Ben Shabbat created a weekly podcast by and for village members in which people are given a stage to speak their minds in depth, in a one-on-one situation, and to let others hear what they think. In his first podcast, he interviewed Haled, a man his age who left Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom to live in Haifa.
ABS: Haled, the first time I remember myself in the village, I was five or six, and I was walking along. You called me; I had no idea who you were. We played soccer.
Haled: That sounds like me… I came to the village a year after I was born. My father is Ibrahim, my mother Raida, I have one annoying brother, Jamal.
ABS: Here is the hardest question: How are you doing these days?
Haled: So far, physically, ok. Mentally, ok, but intellectually, a bit mixed up. Even as a kid, I would move out of the “safe zone” of Neve Shalom. I experienced some things that were not reasonable; but I also learned about the hardships people experience – hardships I had no opportunity to learn about in Neve Shalom. I saw which way the wind was blowing; I learned about racism.
And now that I’m older and wiser, I ask myself whether I see things changing for the better in 20 or 30 years. Will my child go to the same places I did and feel differently?
ABS: And what is your experience in Haifa?
Haled: To speak about the conflict with someone, you take it in a series of rungs. The first rung is a personal conversation…If I meet a Jewish person my age who has no idea what is an Arab, then I know I have to climb that ladder slowly. I think I have managed to change a lot of peoples’ opinions – maybe not even their political ones, but their personal ones. Because until now, we have been depicted in the eyes of certain populations as something we are not.
ABS: What about your friends in the army reserves?
Haled: I have friends serving in this war, and I am in a WhatsApp group. On the one hand, I want you to let me know you are alive. On the other, I know they are involved in killing – a lot of killing. So it is hard.
We are afraid to speak out, to feel a bit of empathy for those on the other side of the border. If I put a black square on my Instagram page, I could get arrested….
In my generation, there is a lot less feeling of belonging to Palestine. We’re just trying to survive. When a person has the same options in Tel Aviv and in Jisr az-Zarqa, then I can say ‘okay, this is a place I want to live.’
ABS: And where do you see us, the children who grew up together since we were babies?
The most important thing I got here was an ability to understand the other side….I can put myself into another’s shoes, and that is useful. If I had been born Jewish in this country, I would have served in the army; in Gaza I would belong to Hamas. When I speak with someone from Kiryat Malachi, I know how to overturn that mantra in his head that says – they are like this, they are like that.”
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Ido: “I was no longer willing to be a participant in an army that rules over another people”
Ido, interviewed in another podcast said: The idea is to live together and continue to disagree. To want to live together is the point.
I grew up in a very Zionist place, and they raised me to aspire to be an active soldier. My first actual experience with occupation was in the West Bank. In the Second Lebanon War, I was a reserved duty soldier, in the Cast Lead operation I was in Sapir, and I decided I was no longer willing to be a participant in an army that rules over another people. I was a conscientious objector, and I sat in military prison, and I decided to oppose the occupation. I joined Breaking the Silence. It was a process of change over years. I believe I need to oppose this oppression of the very soul of another people.