Why I am so optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace, despite the growing hate

Once close, Arabs & Jews have been pushed further & further apart, fueling violence that plagues Israel & Palestine & fuels divisive, emotion-driven hatred right here in America. We can change it.

By Ray Hanania

I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s why I continue to cling to the belief that Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs, will one day overcome their differences, reject the extremism that exists in their own communities, and come together to stand up for what is right, moral, and just.

It’s not an easy belief to cling to today. But I know it will happen one day because I was there. My best friends, growing up, were Jewish.

We knew each other as friends before we knew the ugly politics that separates our communities and tears us all apart today.

They included Jeff Brody, Jack Stone, Michael Rothman, Robert Rubichek, Bruce Elegant, Art Wittert, David Gzesh, Garry Green, Steve Khan, Howard Lasky, Stuart Zimmerman, Stuart Rock, Ricky Kramer, Hollis Levin, Terry Schy, Leslie Berman, Nancy Kanter, Ross Wolfson, Michael Khan, Louis Rosen, Pamela Cohen, Sherry Weingarten, Laura Badner and so many more the list could go on for several columns.

We really understood each other and saw each other as friends, not as enemies who were hesitant to get to know each other, like Arabs and Jews are today.

I also had many non-Jewish friends, and several Palestinian friends, too, like Waleed Ali, an independent movie producer and distributor, and Adlai Issa, whose brother became a decorated state trooper.

Arabs and Jews lived in the same neighborhoods back then because our cultures were so close. We lived in and near Pill Hill on the southeast side of Chicago. Because we lived together, we knew each other, were familiar with each other, and we were also understanding of each other. That promoted friendship and discouraged conflict, animosity, and problems.

The Jewish kids watched out for me. My family was poor, and we struggled. I remember lunch being white bread with butter and sugar, and a glass of water, many days. I enjoyed watching Bozo’s Circus at lunchtime.

My clothes were not fancy. I wore hand-me-downs and clothes bought at Goldblatt’s Bargain Basement. (When I outgrew my shoes, as a young kid, my mom cut the fronts open so they would fit for another year.)

I also didn’t do well in school. Teachers pushed me into a corner as a hopeless case. It was easier for them to focus on the smart kids rather than waste their time on the slow ones, like me. Besides “Dick and Jane,” I really didn’t “read” any books in elementary school.

But although I didn’t look like I fit in, they were still my friends, taking me to the JCC on Thursday nights, and to their synagogue on Fridays for “Show and Tell.”

I went to a few Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, although I didn’t have a suit or a tie. I stood out like a sore thumb. (Elegant gave me a tie for Badner’s Bat Mitzvah and showed me how to tie a full Windsor knot. Laura’s father, with other guests, asked me if I needed a suit jacket.)

White Flight in 1968/69 broke up the community and pushed us in different directions.

I struggled through high school and college, and dropped out after my sophomore year to enter the military. Military service during the Vietnam War woke me up. Instead of wandering through life, I pursued a journalism career, in part because I could see how biased the media was becoming towards Arabs and how bias fueled animosity and conflict.

My career choice was unique. While Jews pursued many careers, including journalism and communications, to present their stories to the world themselves, Arabs avoided journalism and communications, allowing others to define them, preferring medicine and engineering (my brother’s profession).

I spent a lot of time after military service augmenting the Arab voice. I believed journalism was a good place to start.

It didn’t always work and was a constant struggle. While most of my Jewish colleagues supported me, several editors did not. I was one of the first Palestinian Arabs to enter professional American journalism. You could count us on one hand, overshadowed by our Jewish cousins. I was an easy target.

Despite opposition in the profession, I continued to endeavor. Turns out I had a talent for writing that a teacher nurtured in me after my military service, and I couldn’t be stopped.

In the years since, a more dramatic change has taken place in the relationship between Arabs and Jews in America. It’s fueled by the rising conflict that starts here in America and makes its way into violence in the Middle East.

It’s led by politicians, Republicans and Democrats, who want to get re-elected. They exploit the divide between Jews and Arabs to pander for votes and popularity. That’s a common political strategy. Ignore addressing the facts and instead focus on the stereotypes, racism, and hatred as a means of fueling your followers. It also distracts their followers from seeing their own faults, because the followers are focused on strangers who become easy to hate, like Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians.

If a politician can’t build a following through effective leadership and public service, today’s world shows us that hatred is a more effective alternative.

This new hate-driven politics is not a fight for justice, but a different route to find empowerment, dominated by racism, stereotypes, lack of understanding, and discrimination. Sadly, it works.

Just look at the extremist hate rhetoric of politicians like Congressman Randy Fine, Governor Ron DeSantis, and Senator Tom Cotton of Florida. Look at the silence in the face of hate promoted by powerful cabinet members in Israel’s government, like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the power behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is all a reflection of the increase in hate-driven political rhetoric we see in American politics that results in violence.

Don’t get me wrong. Extremism and hate exist on both sides. Hamas is a terrorist organization that has risen from the despondency of Palestinians in Gaza, with a lot of help from Israel’s misguided earlier efforts to support the rise of an Islamic movement to counter the 1970s rise of the PLO and its leader, Yasir Arafat. It didn’t work and backfired, and Hamas has been a plague ever since.

(Here’s a detailed study I originally wrote back in 1990 for CounterPunch, republished here. Click this link.)

How Israel's government midwifed the birth of Hamas

But Hamas is no different than Netanyahu’s government. One is just more powerful and kills more innocent civilians, women, and children, and gets less media coverage and less criticism than the other.

Years ago, in the 1990s, I stood up with Jonathan Levine of the American Jewish Committee to denounce all violence, by Hamas suicide bombings and by Israeli settlers. We were one voice seeking to preserve peace while so many others were working hard and spending millions to prevent peace.

It’s gotten way worse today. But some efforts are underway to restore relations between the two groups, set aside emotions, and look towards the hope of the future rather than the hatred of the past.

I recently attended two events hosted by leaders of the Jewish Community, one by Standing Together, a group that tries to bring Arabs and Jews together. And another during a book signing by Dennis Ross, the adviser to former President Bill Clinton, who brought Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin together to sign a peace accord in 1993 (that I attended at the White House in 1993). Rabin was assassinated for it by a Netanyahu disciple. And when Clinton’s image got into trouble with Monica Lewinsky, he pushed too hard to force a peace agreement that was close but needed more work.

I was also invited to emcee the American Arab Chamber of Commerce annual “Best of the Best” dinner banquet December 9 which honored local community leaders like Patricia “Trish” Murphy, Mohammed Jaber, Mahnoor Ahmad, Mayors Mary Alexander Basta and Jim Dodge, Patrick Hynes, Abir Othman, Samir Khalil, Elizabeth “Liz” Gorman, Kat Abughazaleh, Mohammed Faheem, Cyril Nichols and Southwest News Newspaper Group journalist Nuha Abdessalam. (The entire list is on the chamber website at AACCUSA.org.)

There, I saw how Arab Americans and Muslims have worked harder to develop relationships with their local elected officials, engage in government and voting, and concentrate on improving their image and status as American citizens.

But the Arab community remains distraught. We’ve been ostracized for most of our lives by mainstream society, discriminated against because of negative stereotypes and perceptions the public has of who we are.

The mainstream news media doesn’t cover our everyday lives the way they do others, only focusing on the controversies that divide everyone.

Community anger, fueled by a sense of helplessness and inability to change things, is evident but only holds us back. It is extremely painful when you are almost always the victim, and your people are massacred en masse. It’s unfair when public leaders and officials ignore our concerns, or attack us because of violence we have nothing to do with, and exclude us from government engagement.

People today will embrace the darkness rather than the unpopular truth.

Compassion and empathy for those whom you see as your foes are so important to your own health and well-being. Hate and emotion are destructive.

Compassion and empathy, in the worst possible moments, are the only way to undermine hatred, racism, conflict, and prevent more violence.

I am going to continue to work to bring about a change. I hope you join me.