The last part of our second day of the Women of Vision tour we sat around a wide wooden table in the Chamam, a beautiful old bathhouse-community space-turned meeting/restaurant in Haifa with Palestinian, Druze, and Jewish women – one of whom is a Rabbi – Dahlia Shaham. All of them are peacemakers, activists, artists and courageous. One Palestinian women, Muna, had a challenging relationship with our tour leader and founder of Women of Vision, Dorit Bat Shalom. But through it all, they all kept going.
Dahlia reminds us that instead of running to solutions, now is the time to sit and listen to each other’s pain. She says the question isn’t what do I do, but – “what aches?” In sitting in pain, we realize our humanity and obligation to each other. She told a story of 5 women sitting together, all of whom had sons in Gaza. Four were Jewish women, one a Muslim Bedouin. It was the Muslim Bedouin’s son that was severely injured. His own community was split between those who would think him a traitor, those who are with him, but many of them would think he was weak if he cried or showed pain.
If we can’t show pain, we can’t know healing.
The women at that table – Dr. Marie, Hadeel, Muna, Dahlia, Dorit – all of them had undergone so much pain and fear to be sitting, and standing, in their vision of a shared humanity. Not only were the Palestinian women afraid of speaking up (I had to turn the video off for the real conversations) for fear of Israeli government reprisal, but also of their Palestinian community as well. One shared that she was protected by her Arab brothers, and there was a price to pay emotionally for having that protection. One shared that she can only speak plainly in certain circles, or her Palestinian community would think her a traitor. One of the women who we brought to the US could not do her workshop in a room with an Israeli flag (at one of the Jewish spaces that sponsored them) because of fear of her community’s possible actions against her. Palestinians working for peace are courageous, as are Jews as well. The extremes of both groups carry large sticks. The walk these women do to listen, learn and find common ground is not easy, not normal (as in it is not “normalization”) – they are pioneers, leaders, walking a very fine line after so much pain, death, and destruction.
They meet, talk, listen, and sing. This is not kumbaya. This is hard, difficult, challenging, messy peace. Dahlia sings Psalm 122 here – “may there be peace within your walls…for the sake of my brothers and friends.”
