Orna Guralnik and Christine met on the docuseries Couples Therapy in 2022. During filming, they respectively realised that while they both live in New York, Orna, the programme’s couples therapist, is Israeli, and Christine, who participated in the series with her partner, is Palestinian. They kept in touch after the show ended, and since 7 October, they have spent more than 30 hours, on video calls and in person, discussing their views and applying some of the frameworks of couples therapy to engage with difficult subjects without the conversation breaking down. In the process, they have also developed a friendship. This conversation is drawn from two of these exchanges, recorded in January 2024.
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‘Are you a Zionist?’
Christine: When I discovered you were Israeli while we were shooting the first episode of Couples Therapy – even though I was caught off guard and pretended I already knew – I wasn’t sure if we should continue. I was worried that I was going to have an Israeli therapist pathologise the trauma I experienced at the hands of her state.
Orna: Meaning that I would assume that your trauma is your personal problem?
Christine: Not necessarily, but ultimately, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, is all a game of pathologisation. And I obviously had a great deal of trauma, which predominantly took place at the hands of Israel and under military occupation. I was seven years old when the second intifada began, and Israel cut off our electricity and water. We fled to the US soon after they started bombing us in 2001. That was my primary hesitation about working with an Israeli therapist: because the power dynamic was so stark.
Orna: Normally, being in the role of the therapist and assuming the kind of power and responsibility that come with it is not a problem for me. But it does get really complicated in this situation where you’re Palestinian, and I’m Israeli. I’m partially sitting there in the position of someone who has taken from you – not me personally, but that doesn’t matter. At the same time, working with you was incredibly meaningful – it was moving to be creating this bridge between us. And then there were certain moments between us that really gave me pause and made me re-examine some basic assumptions. Should we talk about why you reached out to me after we finished filming?
Christine: During that first session, you said something about the Israeli checkpoints being brutal. So already I was thinking: “OK, let’s see where she is on the spectrum of Zionism.” I wanted to ask outright “are you a Zionist?” in a space where I had the agency to ask you questions. Ultimately, I was not comfortable being included in the show if you were a staunch Zionist, and I wanted to hear what you had to say.
Orna: When you sent me that question, it was a very difficult moment. You’re asking about my ethical stance on what goes on between Israel and the Palestinians. My basic stance is that the occupation is wrong and destructive. However the question for Israel is inseparable from the relationship with the rest of the Arab world, and the global clash of cultures that is condensed into that conflict. The term “Zionist” has changed meaning to stand for imperialism or colonialism, which is not what it has meant to me over the years. Here is my stance: Israel has a right to exist, and the occupation must end, including dismantling all settlements. Whether a two-state solution, which is simpler, or eventually moving towards a dual-nationality democracy is a very complicated question that will take generations and a wider regional change. Does that still count as a Zionist?
Christine: How would you define Zionism?
Orna: My understanding of Zionism comes from a particular branch of my family history. Some of my family managed to get to Israel in the 1930s as early Zionists, while whoever stayed in Europe was, as we flippantly say, “wiped” – which means killed in the Holocaust. That Zionism is steeped in socialism, even communism, Marxism. It’s the idea of going back to a longed-for homeland, where the Jews will create a utopian society. It’s the society of the kibbutz: making something out of nothing and making it beautiful. That was my fantasy of pure Zionism.
Christine: I am aware that there’s a spectrum of Zionism, but we can talk about ideology or we could talk about the physical manifestation of Zionism in the forms of apartheid and military siege. When I think about how Israel was created, it took the type of Zionism that is happening in Gaza to bring Israel to fruition – one that justifies violent displacement and participated in ethnic cleansing in 1948 and every year thereafter. During that first therapy session, you said “we’re neighbours” when you heard my family was from Ramallah, and I thought: “She thinks we’re neighbours, but I’m subjected to a military occupation at the hands of her state. You’re my coloniser. We cannot be neighbours as long as there’s a massive separation wall that keeps me from even looking at the sunset, let alone meeting someone like you.”
Orna: But that wall, from the Israeli perspective, was erected to try to stop the suicide bombers from coming in.
Christine: To you, it’s a security wall. To us, it’s an apartheid wall. It’s all in how you label things.
Do we want to talk about the approaches that are used in couples therapy, and how they’re helping us through these discussions?
Orna: As a couples therapist, I typically sit as the person outside of a conflict, and I can almost always tune in to each person and understand why they’re feeling the way they’re feeling. Each side desperately needs the other to understand. It’s not about sitting there and convincing the other person that they’re wrong, and you’re right, but making room to really process the other person’s experience. That business of getting out of your own perspective, holding it lightly and understanding another perspective – I believe in that. When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, that’s what I have always tried to do.
One of the shocking things that happened to me on 7 October, and I think to many people, is that I temporarily lost that ability. When I first heard about what Hamas did, and heard from friends in Israel about what they were going through, I was just like: “Oh, I had it wrong. Maybe I was just a fool all along, and those extreme rightwingers actually had it right.” My whole internal system of making sense of the conflict in the Middle East collapsed. I lost my ethics. I lost my purpose. I lost my belief. I was just like: “What am I doing? Sitting with couples thinking they can resolve their differences? Maybe it’s just all bullshit.” It was a horrible place to be as a person.
As I started reading what Israel began doing in Gaza, Israeli narratives were being spun to justify its war machine as if this was the only response imaginable. Once Israel unleashed the IDF on Gaza, I could no longer hold on to this idea that Israel was just a victim, because it was not just a victim. And ever since, I’ve gradually lost my identification with much of the Israeli narrative about itself, which is a very complicated place to be. I feel endless grief about Israel, what Israel was and what I understand it to be now. It’s probably my deepest source of grief.
Christine: What changed? What were the narratives of Israel that you previously believed?
Orna: There are specific stories that each group builds about its history, but let’s just simplify it: historical narratives are ways of saying “we’re good and we’re right; and the other side is wrong and bad”. That is the thing that is very hard to let go of. It seems like so many conversations are breaking down and ending up in more polarisation, more hate and more misunderstanding. So I feel like what you and I are trying to model is how to continue talking, even when we disagree about fundamental questions, when we feel deeply hurt, afraid, angry, victimised, murderous.
Do you want to say more about why you reached out to me again after 7 October?
Christine: I went to my sister’s house on 7 October, and she was so sad. I asked her: “Why are you so upset?” And she said that the retribution for this was going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen. She was right – it’s been unlike anything Palestinians have experienced before. I was going to protests, and I was emailing representatives, but nothing was changing. I reached out to you because I felt I needed to talk to someone who disagrees with me. When things like this happen, everyone goes to their default, and the added effort and energy it takes to reach out to each other from across the divide disappears because you’re in survival mode.
But one of my biggest fears is that my humanity will not survive the trauma it has endured, and that I will think that my victimhood justifies the victimisation of other people to ensure my survival, by any means necessary, in the same way that I feel has been done to us.
Orna: You said that you saw your sister really upset, and asked her why. So here’s the thought that goes through my mind: “What do you mean, why was she upset? Weren’t you upset, terribly upset, about what happened on 7 October?!”
Christine: I was seeing people in Gaza on military trucks, the bulldozing of the wall, people going out and kissing the ground after 17 years of siege. It wasn’t until four hours later that I learned Israeli civilians had been killed. It took three days for the algorithms on my Instagram to show me the magnitude of the violence. And there’s also the fact – now I’m about to get into the more difficult part of this conversation – that Palestinians are steeped in death. Your 7 October happens to us every couple of years. You are the ones who have set the example.
Orna: You know, I have to swallow a frog right now.
Christine: OK. Thank you for saying that. My default is to look at 7 October within the context of Palestinian suffering. But after it happened, I started watching the videos of people being attacked in the kibbutzim to ground myself again and open myself up to that grief. You have to break your heart even more to make space. Especially after talking to you and watching your grief, my perception of 7 October has changed – but that hasn’t necessarily changed my understanding of history and context…
I feel like this is the part where I’m hurting you.
Orna: No, not any longer. I think early on, like many people, I found it very difficult to hear people talk about “context”. Not because it wasn’t on my mind too – part of me can imagine breaking through that wall, breaking out of Gaza, as a victorious moment. I can imagine that – both by putting myself in the shoes of a Palestinian, but also as an Israeli. I hate the situation there. I want those walls down too. But not all violence is the same. To hear about people slaughtering parents in front of their children or children in front of their parents – it stops feeling like a question of occupation. It just seems to me like now we’re just in the land of crazy perversion. There are still innocent hostages held in those dark tunnels. I would be part of the resistance if I was a Palestinian, but I would never be moved to do something like that.
I heard one Israeli person, one of the young people who was at the music festival, describing the incredible glee of the Hamas militants as they murdered people. I think that’s a different thing than the Israeli soldiers invading Gaza. I am not saying that’s OK either. And what it leaves people like me wondering is: who can I imagine making peace with?
Christine: But when we talk about glee, my social media feeds are inundated with Israeli soldiers dancing around kidnapped and blindfolded Palestinians and bragging about how they’re killing children.
Orna: I’ve seen that too, and I have the same reaction to that. Who would want to make peace with someone like that?
Christine: And now we have the conditions in Gaza – there is a phrase in medicine that they’ve started using. Wounded child, no surviving family: WCNSF. Nobody can find family members. People have been displaced over and over again, moving from tent to tent. Even the so-called “safe zones” are being bombarded by Israel. And because Israel has cut off access to medication, mothers are undergoing caesarean sections without anaesthesia. And after delivery, the risk of postpartum haemorrhage can be high, but again, there are no medications to stop the bleeding, so women are undergoing hysterectomies to remove their uterus without pain medications. We talk about the Israeli military as the most “moral” military in the world, and I know you have a relationship with that, but it’s never been moral to Palestinians from our perspective, and it certainly is not now.
Orna: I’ve listened to enough of these conversations to know this is the moment where dialogue breaks down. So here’s what I’m feeling: I am again shattered by what you’re saying. Imagining those conditions, wanting it to never have been. Terrible grief. And then guilt about being part of the people that are doing this, and as I’ve said before, rage at the government, at the Israeli people that are still falling under the spell of these narratives and refusing to see. And with all of this, I want you to make some room, even if it’s a tiny room, like a little attic, to talk about Hamas.
Christine: I feel like a lot of people hyperfixate on Hamas as a reason behind all of this. But in the airstrikes of 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021 and 2022, hospitals were being bombed prior to anything like 7 October. Saying, “oh Hamas did this, so now we’re going to flatten Gaza” blames Palestinians for their own suffering. I feel like you’re indirectly asking me to condemn Hamas. Why do you need me to talk about Hamas to make you feel safe, or make you feel heard?
Orna: Not to make me feel heard – to make this function as an honest discussion. Because as bad as Israelis are, they’re bombing the hospital, not because they feel like killing people in hospitals, but because they think Hamas is there. Look, I’m taking on whatever you want to call it – 99% of the horror of it. But there is still a piece that is Hamas’s actions. They decided to, as the Israelis love to use the phrase, use humans as their shield. I know you’re not identified one-to-one with Hamas. What I’m asking you is, as some of my Palestinian colleagues in Israel have done, do you turn some of your protest also against their methods? Against the method of ruthless, perverse violence as the method of resistance? And at the cost of their own people? How about Free Palestine and Free Israel from being governed by fanatic fundamentalists of all kinds?
Christine: OK, but first we need to Free Palestine From Israel. I guess when we talk about Hamas’s strategy in terms of attacking Israel, knowing that the cost of Israel’s overly violent response would be civilian lives … that bothers me. If I imagine myself in the shoes of Hamas trying to strategise how to weaken the Israeli war machine, this sacrifice feels over the top. Doing something bad enough to make Israel decimate Gaza to the point that it would force the international community to intervene – they succeeded in that. But at what cost? Witnessing all this death makes me feel sick. But Hamas isn’t killing people in Gaza, Israel is. And this is the furthest Palestinians have gotten in terms of getting the international community to look at the situation critically.
Orna: But do you understand that for Israelis to put down their arms, they would need to hear from the Palestinians, in the most general sense: “We don’t want to be doing this. We don’t want these suicide attacks, these perverse murders.” Palestinian terrorist groups have made the grave mistake of pressing the most traumatised buttons of the Jewish-Israeli psyche with terrorism, and then of course, with manifestos calling for annihilating Israel.
Christine: But when it comes to groups like Hamas that developed in the Gaza Strip, they recognise themselves as a resistance group that was specifically created in response to the cruel conditions imposed on Palestinians. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand how violence would reinforce your desire for a Jewish state to keep you safe. But it just so happens that you’ve built your state inside our homes. So you can tell us to deal with our own as much as you’d like, but ultimately, we are living under an apartheid system imposed by you. There’s no way Palestinians will put down their arms while the occupation continues. The occupation must end.
Orna: That is a reduction of history, but yes. Both need to happen.
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Histories of violence
Christine: This is one of the most draining things I’ve ever done. It’s so emotional. You see pictures of dismembered children all day, every day, but then we’re just sitting here having a conversation.
Orna: Do you want me to look at it with you, the picture you saw today? I feel a responsibility to. I want to know what my people are doing.
Christine: OK. Well, here are two brothers. There are Israeli snipers all over the streets in Gaza. They killed one brother while they were both walking unarmed. The other brother ran to help him and pick him up, and the Israeli snipers killed him too. Here is a picture of them dead in the street on top of each other.
Orna (after seeing images): What I really want to do is hug you, but what would you wish for in me seeing this?
Christine: A lot of it is related to being seen and validated in our suffering, but more so than that, I also recognise that you have a platform, and you have power. I want you to see what I see; to put yourself in the shoes of Palestinians as it relates to the type of daily violence that we are being subjected to and have been subjected to long before 7 October. You’ve changed my mind about there being different kinds of violence, but I have a hard time condemning Palestinian resistance. One, because I know that my liberation is contingent on resistance to our occupation, dehumanisation and, ultimately, our ethnic cleansing. And two, I’m not suffering as much as them.
Orna: First of all, I understand what you want from me and others like me. And a large part of me has that to offer – meaning I do see the violence. I go and search on social media: what’s happening in Gaza? I want to know. And when I see it, it kills me in a mixture of ways. In addition to that, I feel this profound, paralysing guilt about being part of the people that are doing this to these children and absolute rage at the government, at the helplessness of the many in Israel who disagree with the occupation, and at the history that has led us down this path. I also feel other things, which is rage at the Palestinians for not doing what they could to not take us down this path. I hold the Palestinians partially responsible, and we can talk about percentages of responsibility, but I do.
I think what I need from you is to also complicate your relationship to the Palestinian side of this. I can imagine a simple version according to which if Israel would stop being this monstrous occupier, everything would be fine. But that is not the entirety of my story. Everything has not been fine and will not be fine. When I witness the violence Israel is unleashing, and when I hear you talk about your experience, my grief and guilt shut me down. I have no words. And I can go along with the idea that we must be monsters. But it is not the full reality of my history. I have not lived among monsters. I have to find a way in our conversation, and within myself, to recover that and represent that too.
Christine: That makes sense. But I think what is difficult to ascertain is how the Palestinians would react if we were free, because ever since Israel was created, we’ve been subjugated by systems of oppression. I struggle with the question of trying to blame Palestinians. I do agree that if we had leadership that could unify the Palestinian people and come to some sort of negotiations that didn’t require unilateral concessions on the part of Palestinians who have already lost so much, of course, that would be wonderful. However, many of our best leaders have been imprisoned or assassinated by Israel. Israel has played a role in extinguishing any sort of unified political movement.
But I think it would help if you would tell me your experiences with violence. There are things that I just don’t know.
Orna: I can describe a few constituting experiences. Soon after I moved to Israel as a kid, the Yom Kippur war broke out. One afternoon, on a holy day, suddenly there are military trucks all over the place collecting the men. All the Arab countries at once started a war on Israel that went on for a long time. That was one of my first experiences of being Israeli, this war in which my father disappeared for a very long time, serving as a reserve soldier in the battles against Egypt, and plenty of people were killed.
All four members of my nuclear family, including myself, have served mandatory army service. My brother fought in Lebanon in the 80s. He was so severely traumatised that his hair turned from straight to curly in one summer. We both eventually left Israel. My entire time there was marked by a great deal of fear of the surrounding countries, and of the increasing acts of terrorism – constant, constant attacks. You don’t go to certain places because you’re afraid you’re going to be blown up. Trying to imagine how we emerge from this state of conflict was the background question of my childhood. This is probably the core motivation underlying my work as a couples therapist.
Then there is the crucial context of the surrounding countries, and the feeling that they’re all just sitting there waiting for the opportunity to finish this country off. And all Israel can do in that respect is get a better and better army and defend itself. But there are complications attached to that, because your children might die in the army. If you put that part of the experience into it, the picture gets a lot more complicated.
Christine: I do wonder if the occupation is the source of these bombings, though.
Orna: I understand why as a Palestinian you would say that, but Palestine and the occupation is one thing, and then there are the surrounding Arab countries, and their absolute disgust at having a western Israeli Jewish state there. Their war is not your war. Their war is a war against the invasion of a different kind of culture into the region.
Christine: I guess what I want to clarify is that the Arab world attacking Israel has less to do with the fact that Israel is Jewish and more to do with the fact that it was perceived as a colonising power. Many of the people who are the founders of modern political Zionism and contributed to the creation of the state of Israel called it a colonial project.
Orna: We can debate different versions of why the Arab world is at war with Israel. But the wars are the reason Israel needs an army – it wouldn’t have survived for a second without one. The issue for the Arab world is not this tiny piece of land. It is the presence of a very small group of people that represent the west and its differing economic, political and social systems.
Christine: But what you’re describing is a colony. A western civilisation violently imposing itself on the east. And isn’t there a desire from the most rightwing Zionists to build a Greater Israel?
Orna: I don’t consider the tiny group of extreme Zionists to be representative of Israelis! The amount of land we are talking about – whether Golan or Sinai, is absurdly small, and from Israel’s perspective was not about a Greater Israel but all about creating a thin buffer zone of security around villages.
Christine: But the extreme Zionists are currently the leaders of your country! They are representing Israel whether you want them to or not. OK, I need to take a deep breath. I’m getting riled up, but I am trying to move from a place of curiosity rather than judgment.
I am certainly not a representative of the whole Arab world, and these are parts of history over which I have no control, but I feel a kind of helplessness as you talk about it. Because I care about you, I am sad that those experiences were so traumatising for you and your family. What I regret the most is that those experiences happened in the first place. I can put myself in your shoes and try to understand your anger. I think it is meaningful to hear your side of the story. I was also interested to hear more because I am curious about your fear, which has been present throughout all of our conversations. Was there ever a time you felt safe?
Orna: Yes. When the peace process was happening in the 90s, it felt kind of amazing in Israel. There was this huge sense of: “Oh my God, we can breathe. There’s a future.” And those were good years in terms of the feeling of safety and possibility. The bar is low. People are used to feeling persecuted. It manifests in the way people drive, like maniacs, they also party like maniacs. Everything has the feeling of: “Well, we could die tomorrow.”
Christine: It almost sounds manic.
Orna: It’s totally manic. A manic society. It’s a way of defending against trauma and against future death by living very intensely now and with very dark humour.
Christine: After 7 October, I went to my very first Hanukkah. And I feel like many of the traditions are related to either displacement or death. I wonder if death and suffering informs Jewish culture, which thereby informs Israeli culture. I guess it could be considered a form of processing. I was watching Norman Finkelstein [the political scientist and longtime critic of Israel] talk about how the Holocaust is used to justify the subjugation of the Palestinian people. When Israel bombs Gaza, and someone points it out, you get the response, “remember the Holocaust?” There really is a deep fear of annihilation, and it’s difficult to determine whether or not that fear is real or perceived. It sounds like it’s both based on what you’re saying.
I can see you reacting…
Orna: Typically, if someone says something like what you just said, my impulse is to get really mad. So I have to do all sorts of mental work to not get mad. I’m going to try to describe that process. The “getting mad” part is, I just described to you my experience of living in Tel Aviv, which isn’t even right by the border – real events that I’ve been through. So why are you asking me if the threat is real? What would it take for you to hear? It’s not an imagined threat. It’s ongoing killing and war against a tiny nation. The connotation of the Holocaust is brought up when terrorism is unleashed on Israel, and as a reason, excuse, to respond with what Israel has deemed “self-defence” – which is, of course, very complicated.
So I am gripped with a sense of inner protest. What I have to do is then hold that, know that about myself, calm myself down and turn to you. And what I know about you is that what you’re trying to do is to take care of your people. You have a reason to say what you’re saying. We’ve had enough conversation that I know that I can stop and ask you to slow it down and try to incorporate what I’m saying without abandoning what you’re trying to say to me. That’s my hope.
Christine: No wonder most of these conversations fall apart. It sounds like the original protest is that I’m invalidating everything you just said to me by suggesting that it’s a perceived threat rather than a real one. When you explained that, this helped me calm down and understand you more.
I feel guilt that I made you feel like I was questioning the validity of your fear. I want you to know that I hear you. The reason why I mentioned the concept of perceived fear is because of Israel’s power in the context of the Middle East and power over Palestinians. Israel is a nuclear power. You have one of the strongest militaries, not only in the region but the world. You have the support of global superpowers. Part of me is making comparisons between your fear and mine, where Palestinians are a stateless people with no military and no centralised government. We are successfully divided and conquered in some ways, and we’re subjected to violence daily by our occupiers.
Orna: I can hear you trying to take in my perspective and respond to it, but getting overwhelmed by representing the suffering of the Palestinians. I know you probably had that experience too, that when you try to talk to people, for example, about 7 October, if you say: “Have you heard what happened in Gaza yesterday?”, people will say: “Well, but do you know what’s happening in Israel? Have you heard about the hostages?” It’s hard. The comparison is automatic: let me defend one thing so I don’t have to deal with the suffering of the other.
Christine: Yeah, I hear that. I think another thing that is playing a role here is the power dynamic between us. In some ways, as a Palestinian, I’m asked to empathise with my oppressor – not you specifically, but someone who’s part of a society that has subjected me to a great deal of trauma, control and subjugation. I’m empathising with your fear and your suffering, while understanding that that fear is justifying the occupation. I think that’s where my anger is.
Orna: Ultimately, it’s true. If we go back to what happens in couples therapy – a much simpler situation: let’s say one spouse is violent and the other spouse is not violent, but does other nasty things. Of course, the violence must be addressed, but those other nasty things contribute to their cycle. And without addressing that part, if the one that is being violated only focuses on the righteousness of “you cannot be violent towards me”, they are refusing to account for their role in the dynamic. This is not to excuse the violence, but to actually understand what’s going on between them so that they can be released from the endless cycle. That’s the only way to change. This is a much grander scale here, but the violence is, in certain ways, bidirectional.
Christine: I get that, but my question is how do we know we’re not victim blaming? Or how do you walk that fine line of: “Oh, well, I know you’re getting beat up by your partner, but you need to take accountability for all the ways that you are deserving of it”?
Orna: But the thing is, I’m not saying “deserving” of it. I’m saying we each need to hold our quarters responsible for what we can. And I understand why it’s an extremely tall order right now to ask a Palestinian to do that, while they’re being slaughtered. But in the grand scale of things, it’s the only way that something will happen. Israel would need to own its own shit in a huge way. But for that to happen, it needs to have a partner that can say, yes, we’ve messed up here too.
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Neighbours
Christine: Is your tattoo of an olive tree? Mine is too. Olive trees represent reconciliation and forgiveness, but there’s no forgiveness without accountability. I understand that you’re asking the Palestinians for accountability. I struggle with this when I think about history. For example, in 1948, my great-grandmother and her family, including my grandmother, were told that Zionist militias had come to Yafa [Jaffa]. She hid all of their things, all of their jewellery, all of their wealth, under tiles and stuff like that. And she left with the keys around her neck, thinking that she would be able to go back.
They were told it was just two weeks. Then two weeks became two months, became two years. She eventually came back and found that a European Jewish woman and her family were living in her house, using her furniture, using her kitchen utensils. My great-grandmother asked to go inside, and the woman said no. So she sat on the stairs wailing and crying until the Jewish woman allowed her into what used to be her home. She said goodbye and then went back to where she was displaced, in the West Bank. She eventually died with her keys still around her neck.
Orna: Here’s what I’m imagining, what I’m asking you as a Palestinian to do with this story. I can own up to the violence and illegitimacy of removing your grandparents from their home. I could explain it by saying: “My grandparents were gassed and removed from their home and needed to find a place to live,” blah, blah, blah. We can go back and explain and explain and explain, but let’s start from the position of injustice of removing your grandparents from their home. What I need you to do is to accept my accountability for the brutal way that I had to carve a space for my family. I will offer you reparations and ask you to plant a new olive tree, and let’s share the land and not hold on to our grievances.
Christine: I love that you said share the land, because that’s exactly what I want to do.
Orna: But your idea of “sharing the land” is not exactly my idea of it. You’re imagining a shared land, and I’m saying I’d like us each to have our own.
Christine: But why? You said we’re neighbours, but you don’t actually want to be neighbours.
Orna: I want to be neighbours.
Christine: You want to be neighbours with borders between us.
Orna: I want certain borders between us. I want to share certain things, and I don’t want to be a minority in your country.
Christine: But it’s not my country. It’s our country.
Orna: I want a Jewish country.
Christine: Why?
Orna: Because I’ve been a minority for ever. It didn’t go well ever, anywhere. We’re our own entity. We want to be a secular-governed, western-leaning kind of country, alongside you. That is not necessarily what the Palestinians want, and I don’t need them to want that. I would like to have my kind of country and for you to have your kind of country. And ideally, I’d like to have my Palestinian neighbours as good friends that will over time see Israel as an ally with whom they can create a lot of amazing things. But I need a space of my own where I’m not scared. Why is the one-state solution important to you rather than two states?
Christine: Because when we talk about the historical claim to the land, it was all of us always living together. It was never just Jews. There are 6 million Palestinians living in diaspora, and we have been dreaming of returning home. The right of return is so integral to what it means to be a Palestinian.
I don’t think that Israelis understand the relationship Palestinians have with our land. It transcends religion and gender and sexuality. An olive tree takes about 60 years to create stable yields, which means that multiple generations are working together to grow fruits that they will not see, for their descendants hundreds of years from now.
Orna: I understand. And I want to say something really provocative. You were talking about the Jews holding on to the Holocaust story to explain all sorts of things, but we can all hold on to particular histories. You were describing this heartbreaking story about a woman’s connection to a particular home and land that was taken away from her. Another woman can describe her relationship to a son that she raised for 17 years and who was blown up by a suicide bomber. We can all hold on to the most heartbreaking stories to justify exactly what we want to do. I keep thinking about something that Hillel Cohen, the [Israeli] historian who joined us for one of our conversations, said: that historians really have no better justifications than anyone else; people have their beliefs, and then bring in whatever justifications their discipline offers. Hillel talked about how historical narratives are not objective truths but are used as ammunition. To have a future, we have to be able to let some things go.
Christine: I understand the function of letting things go. We’re being held back by our histories. What I struggle with is that I don’t feel like Zionism has let go of its history. In fact, Zionism is informed by it.
***
The future
Christine: After 7 October, I thought maybe there was no chance of coexistence. When we started talking, I said my project was to radicalise you. I thought maybe if other Zionists and Israelis could watch you question your beliefs, maybe they would question theirs too. I wanted to collapse your paradigm and transition it into something else. I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. But I can see you changing, and I am witnessing your internal conflict. I’m not trying to undo your positive memories or experiences or emotions related to Zionism or Israel, but I want to reframe them so that your narrative makes space for me. And I know that my paradigm has transitioned in that way. My political beliefs haven’t changed, but I see a future with people like you in it, in a way that I didn’t before.
Orna: What I hope you can now grasp is that what to you feels like an ideal future is not an ideal for my people. Even though, honestly, in my fantasy, if we went through a period of however many years of good neighbouring, we would eventually realise that we are the same people.
Christine: We are, but also we aren’t. How can we be the “same people” under systems that specifically function to convince us that one group is human and the other is not? Systems imposed in the name of state security. A nation-state is an idea. A land is a home. I haven’t given up on the right of return. I still believe in going home. As activists, you have to believe that things will change. Anything is possible. The fact that Israel was created in the seat of the Arab world is miraculous in and of itself. If that can happen, anything can. And I have to believe that there is a future where both of us can actually coexist as true neighbours and enjoy a type of peace that only justice can afford. Because if I don’t believe that, I don’t want to be here. I make an active choice to believe that we can build a future worth living for. I just want us all to live together.
Orna: But you’re trying to convince me to give up the idea of my country…
Christine: Yes.
Orna: I’m assuming many people would either throw a tantrum or stop the conversation at this point.
Christine: Well, I think maybe I need to accept that I have to stop trying to convince you.
Orna: To my mind, our purpose here is to sit in turbulence and see how we continue talking when you’re not hiding that wish. What would I tell a couple in therapy to do right now? I would say: “Take turns. Try to explain to Christine calmly why you find what she’s saying so offensive. And Christine, try to put yourself in Orna’s shoes. And then reverse it.”
Christine: OK, I’m in your shoes.
Orna: I feel like what I’m offering you is despite recent horrific attacks on my people, I’m opening my heart and mind to your pain. And I’m asking you to do the same for me and to take seriously the long history that I’ve described to you of my people and of me personally. And to understand that my need for a country is not some kind of flimsy idea that could be invalidated away by postcolonial discourse. It’s steeped in real history. The fantasy that I, as an Israeli, will want to give up my country is not only not realistic, it’s not right. The idea of nations is, of course, a problematic one. But we are still in the world of nations.
Christine: I think I have to concede for now because this appears to be an impasse. We’ve gotten a lot further than I thought we would, though.
Orna: But what’s going on for you when I say this?
Christine: Well, I think: “What is the function of a country? Is it to keep you safe?” And I feel like my alternative would also keep you safe. You say that your perception of Palestinians isn’t abhorrent. But when I talk about you living among us, there is this deep-seated fear of unsafety.
Orna: But it’s not only from the Palestinians, it’s mostly from the wider Arab world. That’s my real fear.
Christine: But if we’re living amongst each other, if they attack you, they attack us. Your safety and my safety will become bound. I feel like Arab leaders are either too afraid or too corrupt to stand up to Israel, because when you stand up to Israel, you stand up to the US. When we talk about who bombs us, we say it’s the US. We know that Israel may be executing our genocide, but it is ultimately the US that is committing it.
Orna: Like when I say: “Who’s slaughtering us? It’s Iran.”
Christine: Sure. We are just actors, and there are other nations behind us pulling the strings to satisfy their economic and political interests.
Orna: I know this both from being in the heat of an argument myself, and from my therapy work, that something about me asking you to take responsibility feels like I’m asking you to give up something essential. But I don’t feel like that’s what I’m requesting. I am not asking you to give up the idea that Israel is occupying Palestine unjustly and slaughtering people in a way that is unjustifiable. Yes, hold Israel responsible, and I will too. But please also hold your people responsible for the part that is played, which is suicide bombing, which is this crazy Hamas violence. Perverse violence that has caused damage for generations to come and seated such fear. Can you make room for that too?
Christine: I’m uncomfortable with what you’re saying, but I understand. In some ways, I am very appalled about what happened on 7 October. I can make space for your feelings. And I can also understand that you have been to funerals of your friends’ children, and I can imagine how horrible that grief is. I experience shame and guilt about it. But I also find myself asking: Palestinians have tried everything, what else are we supposed to do? Is violence the only choice that has been given to us? It’s a mixture of incredibly uncomfortable feelings.
And if there was an end to occupation, of course, I would be the first to ensure that violence is no longer used as a way of communication. I’m tired of being enemies. I want to go visit my grandma without having to fly to Jordan, and then cross the borders into Palestine because Israel does not allow me to use its airports. I believe that anything is possible. If we can construct the systems we have now, we can construct something equally as powerful, but 20 times better.
Orna: I am uncomfortable too when I’m confronted with what my people are doing. You as a Palestinian are the only person with whom it’s worth having these conversations. I don’t need to have these conversations with people that think like me.
Christine: That’s the reason why I’m here, too. It’s worth it. I am grateful to be in this seat and in this room with you.
Orna: Same here.
***
What impact have these conversations had? Christine and Orna sent their reflections, eight months on
Christine
I must admit that my political beliefs have not changed since speaking with Orna. But the function of our conversations was not to indoctrinate each other into thinking the same, but to open ourselves up to the humanity of the “other”. It was daunting to confront narratives that justify my own dehumanisation. Orna’s desire for safety juxtaposed against my demands for freedom and return made for a volatile recipe. But when continually engaging with empathy and kindness, something started to shift. My so-called “enemy” became a person with her own fears, dreams and histories. There is so much to be learned, but how can I know if I don’t ask? I now see Orna as my friend, one that I disagree with but have grown to love. Connection under systems of separation is a form of resistance in and of itself, and I will continue to resist until Palestine is free.
Orna
In the months since we spoke, I have been deeply troubled by the erosion in people’s capacity to invest in dialogue and repair, and in contrast found my conversations with Christine an ongoing source of hope in humanity. Rather than villainise and reject each other, we have shown up with a steadfast commitment to offer compassion and do our best to imagine the world through each other’s eyes. Christine’s fierce commitment to her people was always matched with a gentle, soulful stance towards me, and by extension “my people”, even during the most difficult of conversations. Her relentless curiosity made it possible to never feel like we reached a dead end. Our conversations have required me to withstand a great deal of guilt, shame, tension and internal conflict. And to get clearer about my own ideological unconscious. And yet, I would much rather suffer that than lose hope in the human capacity to choose the right and ethical path.
Orna and Christine would like to acknowledge Edgeline Films, Hillel Cohen and Sasha Obama for their work on this project. Additional thanks to Hena Mustafa
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