Arab Aramin, Robi Damelin, Liora Eilon, Mohamed Abu Jafar — Turning Unbearable Loss Into Ground of Shared Life

0:00A few months ago, I was invited to sit with four people sharing a very different Israeli-Palestinian story than that which comes to us in headlines. They are members of the Parent Circle Bereaved Families Forum, a very special community. It's composed of hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli families who, despite having paid the highest price of the conflict between their peoples, choose to metabolize their loss as ground of shared suffering and possible reconciliation. I'm so delighted to share that conversation with you now. You will hear their various stories of a transformation of perspective and path.

0:41You'll hear me invoke a notion of deep truth from physics that is vividly with me in this time. Terrible ruptures and escalating violence are part of the truth of what we see ourselves capable. But they are not the whole truth and not the inevitable future. Courageous experiments in healing and transformation are also a truth of our time. In a packed room in New York City, I think we all felt like we were witnessing something unimaginable if you only judge the potentials of humanity from the extreme actions that shape what we call the news. The Bereaved Families Forum is extremism in a life-giving, heart-opening key.

1:24We left that room, and may you leave this listening feeling a little bit healed ourselves, with a hopefulness become more magnetic and more reasonable. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

1:47This event was hosted by the American Friends of the Parent Circle, bereaved Israelis and Palestinians for peace. My conversation partners were Robi Damlin, Arab Arameen, Mohamed Abu Jaffer, and Leora Elan. Leora, who lost her son in their kibbutz on October 7, 2023, is one of the newest members of this group. We were hosted at an extraordinary private art studio and living space in Manhattan.

2:20So I first steeped in the Parent Circle, Breathe Families Forum, in the early 2000s. So we were wondering when that was. In 2006, you and I and Ali Abu Awad, another member, met in a hotel room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And it was freezing. Were we? I don't remember that. You warmed me up. It was a conversation that has stayed in my heart and that just, it seems, has continued to quietly ripple through the world. And I have to say that on October 7th and ever since, I have wondered about all of you and how you are doing and how you are experiencing and what wisdom you have for us. So I was very delighted to receive this invitation, and I'm honored to be here.

3:18And Ravi, I remember, you know, I still remember you telling me, sitting with Ali, yeah, with Ali, both of you received a visit from Yitzhak Frankenthal, the founder. From Yitzhak Frankenthal, yes. Yes. And I remember Ali saying that it was, when he went to a meeting of the parent circle, it was the first time he had seen an Israeli crying. And I remember you and his, he had lost his brother Yusuf to an Israeli soldier. You lost your son David to a Palestinian sniper. And I I remember you saying you went to a meeting and looked into the eyes of a Palestinian mother and understood that you shared the same pain.

4:09And you have said that that was the beginning of a pilgrimage. Yes. How would you describe what that pilgrimage is about? Well, literally, the parents circle overtook my life. You know, it gave me a reason for being. I was thinking the other day how grateful I am that they found me, and how grateful I am to have been a catalyst in change, in people who were filled with hatred. I just played a small part in them giving up hating, and how extraordinary my life has been, and the opportunities and the extraordinary people that I've met along the way. so for me this is like it's not a pilgrimage it's something that is so rewarding it is for me on october the 7th for instance this was another catalyst for me to start working more than ever it was almost the same as when david was killed it was this drive for me surviving is to work as hard as I can to make change.

5:25And this is the eighth time that I've been to America since October the 7th. And I'm quite an old bag by now. So, you know, it's not so easy to travel all the time, but I've been to India and to England and to Germany and to Italy several times since October the 7th because the world is so polarized and it is more important than ever for this message to be heard. because it's not a local message. This is an international message. And when I see the hatred and anger and I see the importation of our conflict, which creates that anger and creates that fear also, then I have to do something to make a difference.

6:10And if we have the opportunity, we'll talk about programs that we actually created for American people. That's never been our real aim, but it was so important because of the importation of our conflict. So if we have a chance, I don't know, we have a short time to talk, and I usually talk too much because I'm very passionate about what I do. Yeah, you have a lot to say. Well, what I want to do is touch into the life and the voice of everybody up here and then circle back around for some reflection on how we can take what you have to teach, how we can take that into this world that we share, this world of crisis.

6:56Rob, I'd like to go to you next. On January 16, 2007, you lost your beloved sister, Abir. She was 10 years old, and she had just gone to school that day. All of you can hear me? You know, because our way it's nonviolent, so I can't shout that much. and I would love to stand on my feet and to look at your ISIS, but forgive me for that. I was born in East Jerusalem, and on the 16th of January 2007, an Israeli soldier shot and killed my sister Abir in front of her school. She was only 10 years old, and she's the third sister in the house. I'm the oldest one. I'm going to try my best not to talk a lot, because also I love to talk too much.

7:52So, what happened to me back then, I just lost my sister, and that's what I know. And, you know, we are as human beings, if someone got a slab, so he want to take even. It's nature that's a human, and that's what I wanted to do. And especially in the age, in the age of 13, I wasn't known. You were 13, I was going to ask, 13. I was 13 years old. Filled understandably with rage and a desire for revenge. Yeah. And actually, you know, instead of thinking what I'm going to do, how I'm going to play, I start thinking from where can I bring a gun and how can I use it in that age to kill all the Israelis who killed my sister.

8:39And especially in that age, I wasn't know there is a human being on the other side because I have never met as humans on the other side. except the Israeli who standing on the checkpoint searching me, searching my family or my people. So after a while, or after two years of what happened to my sister, I went with my father to Buchenwald, one of the death camps in German. And my father did his master on Holocaust. And also my father, he spent seven years in jail. He got arrested when he was 16 years old.

9:20so I had a long journey with pain and I have a lot of challenges and conflict inside of me because my father in 2005 he was one one of the creators for combatants for peace right and in 2007 my sister she got killed so I was looking at my father as an example and I thought and I wanted in that time that my father will go back again to the violence that he started in his life. But he didn't. So, you know, I want to read something you said about your father at in 2016, the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony. You told a bit of this story of how you, in fact, went behind his back. you knew that you wanted a different path.

10:17And you said, I found the light to guide me on a dark path. It was the light that God had given me in his grace through a man whose humanity is hard to put into words, my father Bassam. A headstrong warrior who spent seven years in the Israelis' prisons, he taught me to see the past and always aspire to life. And indeed, he triumphed over his guards with his steady smile, his thundering tranquility I love that his unshakable pride and unwavering modesty he taught me that I am not a man who kills and that vengeance is the way of the weak and cowardly we shall not take revenge we will fight for a noble cause we will fight for life and not for death

11:05so yeah these words back then it's it didn't touch me that much but the pain more than words but you know every day that I was growing up I was feeling and learning more from these words until I met my enemies and then my enemies became not enemies anymore and that's after I learned about their history their pain their suffering and that leads me to learn more about my history so it's very important to know when we know each other when we talk to each other it takes us to very far places that we will never think about and I was full of hate full of revenge full of anger to the other side because also back then I thought we're the only people who is losing people.

12:13The other side, no human, so they don't die. And when I start to hear stories like Ruby and Leora and a lot of families from the Israeli side, so I confuse myself more and more. and also by the time I start finding out a lot of important things, which is I start to lose hate for the other side and I start to lose fear from the other side. And it's only by talking to each other. And it's very hard, very difficult. but we have to believe that already because we live over there so I think we know that very much over there unfortunately we have just two options and the first option it's very easy to kill people or to die and the second option to talk to your enemies to let them know that you are just a human being.

13:21So it took me seven years to make peace with myself and to get out of the door as my father told me back then. Right. To make peace with yourself. You know, you began that memorial remark by quoting Rumi, who said, yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

13:52Also back then I wanted to change all the world, but I couldn't. And I still have a lot of energy and I'm trying my best to change the world. And also I knew I have to change a lot of things inside of me. So after that I can open the door and get out. And it was something that I can touch too on the ground. And that's happened with my best friends. I called my father a cheetah for my family, for my people, for my sister blood, because back then he was talking to those Israelis and bringing the Israelis who was coming to my house to support the family. And for me, it was something else. So after the piece that I made with myself, I didn't want people to call me a cheetah, how I did to my father.

14:49And I started that with my best friends. He used to call me a cheetah. So I wanted also to save my best friend from losing his life by throwing stones or just hating the other side without understanding that there is a human on the other side. so I wanted to take my friend with me to some meeting and I could and I did that so also he was a hater for the other side because of some drama happened to him and he wasn't understand what I'm doing so after he heard what we're talking Israelis and Palestinians the next day he started to speak with the two israelis girls and i thought the reason the beauty of the girls but it wasn't the reason they said something and he wanted to know more about why they thinking like that and it leads him to became one of the people is very active in combatants for peace and especially in the demonstrations in the streets against occupation with those Israelis.

16:02So I could open one eye, and one eye could open a lot of ices, but TTT, things take time. Okay, thank you.

16:20Leora, on October 7th, 2023, you lost your beloved son Tal.

16:30Hamas attacked your community Kibbutz Kavar Azah and many people were killed and several people were taken hostage

16:43and I've listened to you speaking about this place, this Kibbutz where you raised your children and it's very striking because you also taught civics and history and managed the Kibbutz and you were really, it was very close to the Gaza Strip, and as you said, you were neighbors. This changed in the last few years, but for much of your life when you were raising your children, it was a very special place that's hard to imagine now, but would you just describe that to us? Well, Akhfaza is about one mile away from the city of Gaza, maybe a mile and a half away from the city of Gaza, and back then at the 80s there were a lot of people working in the kibbutz in Kfar Aza we were going there buying bicycles, eating hummus you know all the cliches that used to say about the neighborhood between Gaza and Kfar Aza it all stopped in the year of 2000 2001 right after the second intifada began and there were no more connection, no more people working in Kfaraza, but they always remained my neighbors.

18:03I never forgot that. And my children always knew that the neighbors behind the fence, and even though the fence is closed and we cannot reach one another, they're still there and we're still here. and soon enough I joined an NGO called the Road to Recovery, and I drove sick Palestinians to hospital in the country or from the hospitals back to the border, to Machsom Eres, near the border with Gaza. And I always considered myself a peace activist. I mean, that was very clear to me that there are people behind that fence that deserve to live a normal life, to raise their kids, the same that I can do.

18:55And on the 7th of October, the Hamas invaded Kfaraza. About 300, between 280 to 300 people invaded the kibbutz, killing a lot of my friends, a whole family. children, adults, elderly people. My son was the commander of the first response team, and he was out there fighting them, but he had no chance of surviving against so many terrorists.

19:40And you were locked in your safe room for 35 hours. I was in my safe room with two of my granddaughters, with my eldest daughter who came to visit, and my youngest son who came to visit because it was a holiday. And all five of us were in the safe room from 6.30 in the morning on Saturday until 3.30 at noon on Sunday the day after. 35 hours by which both my son and my daughter were holding the handle of the door of the safe room because it cannot be locked from the inside through all that time there was a lot of shooting and it sounds like grenades hand grenades were thrown at the house my house at a certain point became field hospitals for the unit of Tufdivan soldiers who were wounded while fighting the terrorists, and they were all brought into my house.

20:46Two of them were already dead, unfortunately, and one of them died after 13 months of being in the hospital. Four others survived their injuries, but my house became a field hospital for them while the terrorists are still trying to throw hand grenades into the house and soldiers are treating the wounded ones and while their friends are smashing all the windows in my house and shooting out to prevent the terrorists from coming in or throwing hand grenades into the house. it was a horrifying time it was we were terrorized we didn't have any food no water I'm not going to tell you the details about what we did instead of going to the restroom because we couldn't leave the safe room

21:50there's no words to describe what we went through really no words to describe what we went through. But we did stay alive. Unfortunately, my son didn't survive. But I do need to tell you that the last thing he did, just before he passed away, with another bullet that he got, that killed him, right before that, he managed to call the commander of the civilian defense team of the next kibbutz, which is a religious kibbutz, And it is sort of a miracle that they answered the phone because it was a holiday in Shabbat. But he did answer the phone, fortunate for that kibbutz. And my son Tal told him that there are a lot of terrorists in Kfar Aza and that he should get out his defense team and spread them all over the fences and lock all the gates.

22:49And in that kibbutz, which is less than one mile from Kfar Aza, Nobody was injured and nobody died. So my son, in his last action, managed to save a lot of lives. And there is some comfort in there. I mean, his grief is very fresh and that trauma was very large. Did you already know about the bereaved families for him? Of course, yes. You did? And when did you know that this was the path you would take with your grief? Right away. On the bus, I remember on the bus that took us away from the kibbutz to another kibbutz to the hotel where we stayed, I remember saying to myself that the entire world around me has changed forever, but I'm not going to let the world change me.

23:50I know who I am. I know my values. I remember talking to myself about that, telling myself that I'm not going to change. I've known the parent circle ever since 2012. Yes, that's when I joined the narrative group, which is a dialogue group between 15 Palestinian educators and 15 Israeli educators, and we met for five or six times by which we had dialogue meetings, and we went together to Lifta to learn about the Nakba, and we went together to Yad Vashem to learn about the Holocaust. And I knew by then that, I knew about the organization, but I remember that on the Shiva of my, on the first days of my, right after the funeral of my son, people from the parents' circle came to visit me and I told them right then and there, I'm with you.

25:04I'm with you. One thing that has struck me about you is you've said that throughout your lifetime, in all these decades, you had this clarity that one day your grandchildren would ask, what did she do in this land of conflict? And it sounds like when you were in the safe room, as you said, two of your granddaughters were having a sleepover with your inner home, and one of them was actually, somehow had wi-fi and was helping people both in in gaza and in israel and now you're going on tour with your granddaughters and it feels to me just like this story of the father you know that your granddaughters also were this light for you and that you are this light for them well my granddaughter is she's very special i mean through all those 35 hours what she was doing is was uh she was texting a soldier that came into the safe room to ask us where they are because they just got into the kibbutz a place that they've never been before they never knew the kibbutz they haven't been there and they didn't know their way around so what she did uh it was saturday 12 o 'clock when he entered the safe room just after they brought all the injured people into my house uh he asked us where where are we where do we go from here and she just stood up this 15 year old girl opened a google map told him give me your phone put her number in his phone and starting sending locations to him of people that were hurt that needed ambulance that needed care that needed evacuation that were wounded or people that we didn't hear from for the last couple of hours and we didn't know what went on with them.

27:03And from that moment on, Gali, who was 15 years old, was the commander of the Duvdevan elite unit of the IDF because she was sending them places where to fight and where to go because she was sending them locations to his phone telling him where to fight, where to go. And it's incredible what she did. and she's very brave. And she understands the decision you've made to join the Brave Families Forum. Is she also part of this? No, she is very angry. Okay. Yep, she's not there at all. But we're talking about it and I know that she needs time to recover, to heal. Is it her father who died? Sorry?

27:56Was it her father who died? Yeah, her father has died. And she was 15 when her father died, and they were very, very close. She always, she says, every day she says that he's the only one that understood her, because they were very much alike, Tal and her. They were both very gingy, with a lot of energies. We recently moved Tal's body back to Kfaraza because we buried him somewhere else because we couldn't bury him in Faraza. And now two years after, we reburied him, another funeral, another trauma, even harder than the first one, must tell you. But on this second funeral, Gali, his daughter, said that she still feels that nobody can understand her better than her father, and she misses him a lot, a lot.

28:54Right.

28:58Mohammed on October 24th 2002 you were 14 years old and you lost your 16 year old brother Ahmed he was killed by Israeli soldiers you did not join the bereaved families forum so this was 2002 until many years later 2016 16, is that correct? But you did decide to study nursing. Coming out of that experience, that was your initial response of that terrible grief. And why was that? First of all, it's so emotional for me to speak after Leora. This is the third time I heard her story. and it gets harder every time I hear a story. So, yeah.

30:02About my brother.

30:09When I lost my brother, I didn't know that he's gone. I was 14, so I saw people crying. I didn't. I thought he will come back as always it was very hard maybe after one week people started to talk to us about the incident and I started to understand that a lot of people saw him and when I saw his body I saw him sleeping so I was 14 I've been in this denial you know state for weeks the more that I heard about the story from you know every time I met a new person he told me I was in my window looking at the incidents when they shot your brother and stuff like this I understand more that how could people, you know, saw someone injured and didn't want to help him or, you know, didn't try.

31:27I know that 12 people tried to help my brother and they got injured from bullets and fragments because the tanks were shooting around his body. So he couldn't get the aid he needed, the medical, he couldn't get the medical aid he needed. Yes. and during the years from 2002 2006 when I graduated high school I was thinking you know and looking about this like about getting aid for injured people and when I decided to study nursing this was one of the reasons I studied nursing and the nursing school there is a code that everyone wanted you should help regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or nationality.

32:23And one of the things that they emphasize on, that even if you saw an Israeli soldier injured, you should help, yes, regardless to what the situation is. and I was thinking that for me it's okay to do this because this guy, even if I saw him as a bad person, he deserved to be treated. Then after that, you know, there will be court, judge, not me. I will not decide that these people will die or live. So this was my thought about this. But back then I didn't know Israelis, So it was like plain medical ethics, nothing related to religion or political. Right. And then it sounds like you attended your first bereaved families forum meeting after a sarcastic kind of exchange with your mother.

33:25It wasn't something that you chose or expected to take seriously. Yes. I think it was, for me, living under occupation my whole life, seeing the Israeli soldiers everywhere. As I always say, like the white troopers in Star Wars. So I don't know the people. I just know this figure that I hate. It represents injustice. It represents killing. It represents everything bad, I would imagine. So I wouldn't imagine meeting with the Israelis because there is no reason to do this, why I should meet with them. They are killing us. And this is the thought that I held because I thought it's meaningless to go in this bath.