My mother was born in historic Palestine, and in 1948, when she was a baby, her family had to choose between their beautiful home on one side of Jerusalem and my grandfather’s jewelry business on the other side.
Featured image above by Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
When Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu stand behind podiums in a press conference before the world, proposing to remove Palestinians from Gaza, we need to remember that one of these men is a convicted felon and a perpetual liar, and the other has been served an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. These are not the leaders we need right now. Right now, we need Zohan.
‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’, starring Adam Sandler, is an overlooked movie among Hollywood comedies. Maybe I like it because the jokes poke fun at all the Middle Eastern ways I found so endearing in my own family. In the movie, Sandler plays Zohan, a highly trained Israeli military operative with aspirations to escape the fighting in the Middle East and move to America to become a hairstylist. Hummus figures prominently in the film, including a scene where its utility and ubiquity are on display as Zohan’s father dips his eyeglasses into hummus for a quick snack.
The movie offers a balanced depiction of relationships between Palestinians and Israelis circa 2008 – rending neither the ‘good guy’ nor the ‘bad guy’. In the end, Israeli Zohan marries an equally good-natured Palestinian woman, which is a beautiful way to bring the point home: we all love hummus, so we might as well love each other.
My mother was born in historic Palestine, and in 1948, when she was a baby, her family had to choose between their beautiful home on one side of Jerusalem and my grandfather’s jewelry business on the other side. This happened in the wake of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan that recommended the majority of Palestine be allocated to a new Jewish state, where newly emigrated populations, mostly from Europe, would reside. Since 1917, a coordinated effort between Britain and Jewish authorities had brought thousands of settlers from Europe to establish themselves in a place where they had ancestral roots. Palestinians did not agree to this plan, which presupposed losses of agricultural land as well as privately held property, and which promised the widespread expulsion of Palestinians.
President Trump at the Israel Museum. Jerusalem May 23, 2017
My grandfather had a jewelry store and a home with a garden in the city of Jerusalem, along with my grandmother and their five children. Armenian and Christian, my mother’s family comprised a religious minority in Palestine in 1948, as most of the population in the region were either Muslim or Jewish. As a result of the UN Partition Plan, a border was erected to divide Jerusalem, and my grandfather was prevented from travelling back and forth between his business, on the Palestinian side, and his home, on the Israeli side. Meanwhile, violence was on the rise. To keep them safe, my grandfather transported his family to Lebanon. Their home in the city of Jerusalem was appropriated by the State of Israel, and my grandfather was never allowed to reclaim it.
My mother does not bring up her past or the fighting between the forces of Israel and Palestine, which has been ongoing since 1948. Her family were relatively lucky. They were extended Jordanian citizenship, and my mother grew up in relative peace in Lebanon, moving to Canada with her family when she was sixteen.
When asked for her perspective on the current war between Israel and Hamas, my mom says she sends love to all the people suffering from the fighting – both Palestinian and Israeli. This may sound surprising, considering her past and her family’s experiences.
But I failed to mention an important fact about my mother: she was born in the city of Bethlehem, and just like Jesus, she lives each day in a state of compassion.
My mother’s birthplace made her something of a celebrity to me and my Canadian classmates in elementary school in the 1970s. We are talking about a time when the Lord’s Prayer was recited at the beginning of each school day and Jesus figured prominently in what we learned about Christmas. Regardless, I have come to know that my mother shares more than just a birthplace with the historical figure known as Jesus Christ. She’d grown up with a strong connection to his ideas, and to this day, she keeps a plaque bearing his likeness in her kitchen. She kisses it so many times a day, his face has been transformed into a heavenly blur of white light and pink lipstick.
According to my mom, love is the answer and the only way to end the fighting. Jesus offers similar advice that may be considered particularly beneficial to regions in the Middle East: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”.
In 1948, this was not the pervasive mentality. My mother and her family had to leave their home in exile amid divisiveness and violence, and I have always wondered why they had to leave in this way. The answer is, they did not.
When the UN adopted the Partition Plan as a resolution in 1947, they could have put oversight in place to ensure no people would be compelled to leave the new state of Israel in its creation. They could have put resources toward supervision to protect people in their homes, to protect their rights as equal citizens, and to prevent aggression toward new immigrant populations arriving from Europe. Consider all the money and resources that have been poured into this region by interested parties for the sake of keeping everyone separate. What if, instead, that money had been directed toward improving relationships between people of all different cultures and religions?
There was bound to be resistance to a partition plan, and resources might have been put in place to mitigate hostilities and encourage understanding. This would have taken time and patience and resources and oversight, but the easy way is almost never the right way. Jesus had another piece of advice in Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Perhaps someday, these enemies would no longer be considered enemies at all.
In the years since the 1947 Partition Plan, we have seen violence, violence, violence in both Palestine and Israel. Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, has emerged as an opposing force amid Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land by Israeli forces. For years, the State of Israel has been building settlements to illegally expand Israel onto Palestinian territory. Armed civilian Israeli settlers intimidate, humiliate, and use violence against Palestinian people daily, and the State of Israel supports this terrorist action. Let’s look at October 7, 2023, for what it is: terrorism in response to terrorism. When handheld devices were detonated across Lebanon in the hands of Israel’s enemies, thousands of civilians were maimed and several were killed, including at least two children. Netanyahu’s supporters cheered these terrorist attacks.
There is no good side in this war. Both sides, Netanyahu’s government and Hamas, are bad, and civilians are suffering. Families of Israeli hostage victims held by Hamas are suffering. The families of more than 16,000 Palestinian children killed by Netanyahu’s criminal bombings are suffering. When my mother sees the events of this war, all she sees is suffering. She does not dwell on the past. She does not talk about the injury to her family. Love they neighbour. It is time for the UN to step in and this time properly oversee a negotiated deal that neither Israel nor Palestine thinks is fair.
The solution is not to hand over power to an American leader who has been ranked by historians and academics as one of the most unqualified presidents ever to govern the United States. The solution is, instead, so simple it can be borrowed from the playground: both sides need to apologize.
Representatives of Israel need to apologize for Netanyahu’s expanding settlements in contravention of international law and holding Palestinian civilians, including women and children, hostage illegally in state prisons. They need to apologize for Netanyahu’s government supporting armed civilians who terrorize Palestinians daily, and for the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. They need to apologize for Netanyahu’s’ killing more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, as well as injuring more than 100,000 humans in total. Equally, representatives of Palestine need to apologize for Hamas. They need to apologize for every innocent life Hamas is responsible for having taken and every act that subjected innocent civilians to harm and terror. After these apologies, Netanyahu and agents of his government as well as agents of Hamas must be tried in the International Criminal Court.
Then, the UN, representatives of Israel, and representatives of Palestine must engage in reparations. Instead of spending billions on weaponry for the sake of destruction, Israel must provide aid to help rebuild Gaza. Importantly, Israel must abide by international law and remove its forces from all Palestinian territories entirely. Equally, Palestine must agree to a peaceful coexistence and clear state boundaries.
In the fall of 2023, after Hamas had killed almost 1,200 Israelis and had taken 251 hostage, Netanyahu began bombing Palestinian civilians by the thousands. CBC Radio broadcasted a demoralized Egyptian aid worker explaining the futility of trying to cross the border into Gaza with supplies and aid for Palestine’s bombarded people. His exasperation was palpable, and I will never forget his clear presentation of an understanding that must have been pervasive across the Middle East: he said with every bomb, Netanyahu is creating 100 new Hamases.
I remember this statement because I thought it was strange, the pluralization of ‘Hamas’ in this way. Then, I realized the truth: this war would never end by violence.
I imagined how I might feel if my mother or father or brother or sister had been bombed by Israel or killed by Hamas. Put yourself in the position of an innocent civilian in this war, and imagine you have witnessed your mother killed, or your brother killed, or your child killed before your eyes. Tell me you would not be compelled to take up arms and take your anger out on your enemy.
But what if you were given the chance to forgive? A ceasefire – an apology – reconciliation – restitution. It would be the harder way – but again, the easy way is almost never the right way.
In one moment of ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’, a Palestinian complains, ‘People don’t like us’, and his Israeli counterpart responds, ‘Come it’s not easy for us. People don’t like us too…because they think we’re you’. This moment struck me for a few reasons. First, its humour is honest: the Western world has been conditioned to associate people with non-white skin who speak languages that sound like Arabic with ‘otherness’. It is easy to hate the ‘other’. But this moment also brings to a light an even more impactful insight: Israeli and Palestinian civilians have a great deal in common – much more in common than what separates them. An understanding of this fact and an apology on both sides is the only way to end the fighting. An apology on both sides or war forever and ever and ever. 