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Israel to Grinnell

Transcending differences to address Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Voices of Grinnell

Noga Ashkenazi ’09

For me, “home” is, and will always be, Israel. Having completed my two-year mandatory military service prior to coming to Grinnell, I have experienced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a daily basis. When I had finally put my uniform away and got on the plane to come to the U.S., I had never expected to hear the words “Israel” or “Palestine” in a small town in the middle of Iowa. Curious and excited, I attended the first meeting of the Palestinian Solidarity Group which I later discovered was named “Intifada” (an Arabic word for “uprising”). The name, which was later changed, bothered me. It had negative emotional connotations which evoked disturbing memories from my many encounters with terrorism throughout my life. Being the only Israeli student in the group, and in Grinnell, I felt very much alone. It is never easy to hear others criticizing your own country, resulting in an almost instinctive reaction of trying to defend even a policy one do

es not agree with. I came out of the first meeting with tears in my eyes.

The irony of the situation was that back home in Israel, I had absolutely no problem criticizing my own country and its policies. Since a very early age I have always volunteered for political organizations and peace movements that worked for resolution and equality, believing that the occupation must end and that a Palestinian state should be established. All my life, I have shared similar opinions and criticism with the other members of the Palestinian Solidarity Group, and yet in the context of being the only Israeli in Grinnell, I felt defensive and compelled to represent “the other side,” the “Israeli side.” But I was wrong.

It was not until I attended the ‘Sabeel Conference on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,’ that this realization truly sunk in. The conference was organized by “Sabeel,” a Christian-Palestinian organization, and was clearly very critical of Israel’s policies on the issue of the occupied territories. Sitting in the audience on the first day of the conference was not an easy experience. However, I soon discovered that this time I was not the only Israeli in the room.

Listening to Jewish-Israeli speakers (Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions in Jerusalem), as well as to Jewish-American speakers (Professor Marc Ellis of the American and Jewish Studies at Baylor) helped me feel more comfortable with expressing my views as an Israeli Jew who strongly disagrees with a lot of things my government (and military) does. Meeting other Israelis who came to speak about their own experiences of the injustices our country is responsible for helped me realize that when it comes to basic human rights violations, such as living in terrible conditions under occupation, there are NO SIDES. Meeting and talking to Muslim and Christian Palestinians for the first time in my life, I began to see the common ground and values we all shared, values of peace, equality and dialogue.

Coming back to Grinnell, I found that the college is extremely divided within itself, creating an atmosphere of conflict and intolerance among some of its students. I feel that this extremely charged and emotional subject is not being treated in the right way by all of us, and I would like to suggest an alternative. It makes me very sad and discouraged to see that even thousands of miles away from home, conflict still involves verbal violence and hateful statements. If intelligent young adults in Grinnell College are not able to reach a true understanding of each other’s views through the commitment to a real constructive dialogue, than I am left hopeless and fearful of my own country’s future. If we cannot bring ourselves to listen and respect one another, and transcend childish competitive “Grinnell plan wars,” than I doubt that I will ever live to see the signing of the most yearned for peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

I would like to suggest asking ourselves if we can do better than we are doing at the moment. This conflict cannot (and should not) be between a Jewish group and a pro-Palestinian group, if only because I belong to both of them. When I say that for me “there are no sides,” I do not naively claim that there are no disagreements. But instead, I choose to look at the many similarities I believe most, if not all Grinnellians share.

I believe we all would like to see peace in the Middle East. I believe none of us supports the idea of occupation of any sort, and I believe that we all condemn violence (on both sides of the conflict). If we focus on the things we all agree on for a change, I believe we’ll be surprised by the many constructive conclusions we may reach.

Finally, even surrounded be miles and miles of corn fields, we are not at all as “removed” from this issue as we’re sometimes led to believe. Our Grinnell experience of this issue is in a way a TEST, a vivid example of how effective/ineffective conflict resolution methods could be, resulting in either failure or success at Peace on a smaller yet very important scale. My very ambitious hope is that where my government and the PLO have failed to communicate, we, here in Grinnell, will succeed.

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