“It’s nonviolence that is hard to deal with, whether coming from Israelis or Palestinians or both. It’s confusing to them.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be summed up as cycles of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians with both sides justifying their stance. The majority of individuals born into this conflict harbor hate for the other and wish to inflict violence for their cause. However, the more violence experienced the more some get fatigued and suffer grave losses. In the narrative, the two men Bassam and Rami are among those who have known loss and grief and seek to heal. They have both participated in the conflict and also lost their children in the violence and thus advocate for nonviolence. Therefore, the assertion highlights the nature of nonviolence between the two sides as yet an unfamiliar dynamic for many.
“Know your enemy, know yourself.”
Bassam a Palestinian Muslim and Rami an Israeli Jew would historically be considered stern adversaries who cannot accept the other point of view. They have both fought for their nations with strong beliefs about the other in the senseless war. However, the pain and grief of losing their daughters in the same violence offer them a different perspective. They are brought together by the shared grief and common past that allow them to understand each other and consequently themselves. They understand the suffering and pain that both have inflicted on the other and therefore a friendship and mutuality blossoms.
“It bothered him to think that the listeners might look at him as a broken down reel, trapped by sameness of his grief. Afterwards he would realize he had left out whole chunks of what he truly wanted to say.”
The protagonists in the narrative have chosen to advocate for nonviolence through being vocal about their grief and experiences. They hope to bring peace through changing the perspective of those who hold the same ideologies they once held too. In conveying their message they dread coming off as grieving parents who are just seeking sharing their anguish. They attempt to balance their grief and the larger message of nonviolence in order to get to the core of the issue. Even Rami’s wife Nurit as an activist is adamant in being indifferent to the loss of her child when working on her activism.
