by Simon Schoon

In the protocol of a dialogue meeting in Nes Ammim you can read the following statement by a Jew:
“I came as a cynic. I didn’t really believe that I could make friends with the others. But I have changed. This was quite a basic experience for me. I have discovered how nice it is to come closer to somebody or something which was absolutely foreign to me before“.

A Muslim girl said: “I came to realize that I became really furious if I heared opinions other than my own. I have learnt to listen. Now I know that I must read more about the whole situation in which all of us live in here.“

They had come for a five-day seminar involving Israeli and Arab pupils at Nes Ammim.

A group of school children from the neighborhood of Nes Ammim.

At the discussions during the seminar, critical moments arose and these showed how much the participants wanted to speak about the difficult subjects as well. As a result they learned to speak openly and honestly about their own view of the historical events during the Israeli War of Independence and the Nakba – the "disaster", as the Arabs called the establishment of Israel in 1948. They also spoke about the role of their religions. These are very sensitive subjects in Israel.

And they were that sensitive points already when I came to Nes Ammim for the first time during the Yom Kippur war. From 1974 to 1981 I lived and worked in Nes Ammim together with my wife. She gave birth to two of our children here. 35 years later we returned to Nes Ammim. I was the village's pastor and lead the study program. Now I coordinated the dialogue project.

2009: Service in the House of Prayer and Study.

1979: Erev Shabbat celebrations in the Village centre.

Nes Ammim hat sich in den vergangenen 35 Jahren krass verändert. Heute wartet hier keiner auf unsere nostalgischen Geschichten, darüber wie schön es früher einmal war.
Over the past 35 years Nes Ammim has changed completely. Today no one shows much interest in our nostalgic stories about how beautiful it once was. But none of them has stopped dreaming. We dream of a new purpose for Nes Ammim! We want to build bridges; to create appreciation and understanding between the cultures and we have not given up our vision that one day Jews and Arabs will come to a reconciliation. We listen to both sides and we live here among them – in the promised, but highly traumatised land. And today this is more important than ever, in a time when violence between Jews and Arabs is flaring up again.

How are these seminars? I have witnessed people shouting at each other in rage, seen them run out of the room, but I have also seen how people embrace and cry in the arms of each other. I have experienced situations in which the participants talk at completely cross-purposes to each other. I have experienced this often both in Israel and in the Palestinian Territories: Everybody has his own history and refuses to listen to the other’s history. There is no space for feeling sadness or grief for the others if their own pain overwhelms them. It´s often impossible to realise or understand the neighbor´s suffering.

Their own experiences become a holy and untouchable, incontestable obsession or myth. Their own history allows no space for the history of the other which is threatening and so is pushed away. Even the authorities and scientists do intervene in this fight. Thus, a violent discussion about what really happened in 1948 has been raging for many years already among the people living in Israel. The history of the other people cannot be true. Did the small David beat the giant Goliath or is this a myth? Did the Arab population leave Palestine by their own choice? Or was the main part of them driven out by force, like alternative Israeli historians state, basing themselves on documents? The truth probably lies somewhere in between the two. But both parties see only their own truth which they have turned into a myth. A dialogue is impossible in such conditions.

Fear and Hatred
The context in the Galilee in which the Nes Ammim seminars take place is dominated by fear which is typical for the relationship between Jews and Arabs: the Jews fear that the Arabs in the Galilee will join in solidarity with the suicidal assassins from the West Bank. The Arabs fear that their land will be confiscated on which they have lived with their families for centuries. The Jews fear that the Arabs stab them in the back in the next war. The Arabs fear that they are treated as 'second class citizens'. The mistrust is deep. The mutual hatred seems incontrovertible and invincible.

Again and again at the meeting one elementary question comes up: How can we live with these fears?
In May 2008, I was in Israel during the memorial days: At Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day, the sirens howled in remembrance of six millions murdered Jews. One week later, the sirens howled again: at Yom HaZikaron, in remembrance of thousands of Israelis who lost their lives in the wars over the years.
And, in order to complicate this picture: one week later the Arabs commemorated the Nakba – the "disaster", the establishment of the State of Israel. They held their own moments of silence and remembered the facts which in Europe almost nobody knows, of those hundreds of thousands who fled or were expelled from the country, the hundreds of villages which were destroyed, and the countless numbers who died during both Intifadas.

Tensions
And exactly this fear, along with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the tensions between the Jewish and Arab Israelis, causes tight debates in European churches: „After the Shoah we have learnt to show solidarity with the Jews and the State of Israel, but can we still support Israel, as it has developed in the last decades?“, and: „If we state our solidarity with Israel, does this mean that we let the Palestinians down?“, and: „If we look after the Palestinians, does this then mean we turn away from the Jews?“. These are fundamental questions.

In 2002, we wrote a Memorandum for the newly founded Centre for Meeting and Dialogue in Nes Ammim. It contains the following sentences: „We think that we can state our solidarity with Israel by doing what Nes Ammim is good at and that is to be a place for meetings and dialogue.“ Visitors think that Nes Ammim is a small European Christian village in Israel where meetings between the religions can take place in a quiet and well-balanced atmosphere. Because of the confidence gained by the former inhabitants and by today's community, we can be a more or less neutral place for both sides, for Israeli Jews and Arabs. Our aim is to provide exactly such a framework for the meetings

„But is it possible to show solidarity to both sides? How can one defend this position? Can one listen to both stories at the same time?
In my opinion, there is only one honest way for the Christians in Nes Ammim if they want to follow the Jew Jesus: Living with all their neighbors in the Galilee, building bridges, listening to both stories and aiming at creating dialogue. That´s our way to hope for justice for both the peoples in this one country, for Jews and for Arabs.
My faith gives me no other choice than the one I have always taken and to suffer myself if I meet incomprehension on both sides.