‘Palestinian-Israeli’ attempts to bridge divisive gap

SARATOGA SPRINGS -They came carrying spiral notebooks and wearing trendy, black-framed eyewear.
They were dressed in jeans and miniskirts and Day-Glo leg warmers.

Mixed among them was a generation born before the formation of Israel in 1948.

Young and old gathered at Skidmore College’s Emerson Auditorium to listen to a
young Arab man who calls Israel his home.

‘My name is Forsan Hussein,’ the 26-year-old speaker introduced himself. ‘I am a Palestinian-Israeli.’ The thrust of Hussein’s talk was to build what he called ‘a peace’ in a ravaged region.

Hussein was born and raised in a small Arab village of about 5,000 in northern Israel.
His village is surrounded by three mountains; on top of each is a Jewish settlement.
‘I was born to a Palestinian family inside of Israel,’ Hussein explained. ‘I am a Palestinian:
I eat Palestinian food; I share the Palestinian history but, maybe, not their future. I am also
an Israeli. This is the place that I call home. My family has been there for 13 generations. This is where I was born and where, I think, I will die.’

Hussein grew up in an era of conflict and violence, ignorance and bloodshed. Of these, he said, perhaps the worst is ignorance.

‘That ignorance leads to a stereotype of people. If you don’t meet the ‘other,’ you believe what you hear,’ he said.

On a personal level, he is an advocate for rights as an Israeli citizen, opposed to what he calls that government’s discrimination against Arabs. He stresses coexistence, and says his work is about helping to discover similarities as well as appreciating and respecting differences.
The ignorance, Hussein says, stands in the way of the learning.

‘I grew up thinking the Jews had horns. That they were there to kill the Palestinians.
That they would destroy our homes,’ he said.

At the age of 10, two of his schoolteachers organized a trip to visit and meet ‘the others.’ Alongside 35 of his fellow students, the 10-year-old boy started walking.

‘I remember marching through fields of olive trees in my village of Sh’ab. The further we walked to the Jewish town of Shorashim, the faster my heart was beating. There was a man with a beard who approached us. He was holding something in his hand. I thought ‘It’s a gun. This is it. We are done.’ I could see what he was holding was a tray, and the tray was filled
with chocolate chip cookies. He offered a cookie to every child. I had my share of cookies, too. But I was feeling very confused.
‘I was wondering: ‘Where were the horns?’ ‘

The young Hussein met and befriended some of the Jewish children of the neighboring village. To the children who spoke Hebrew, and Hussein’s classmates who spoke Arabic, language was not a barrier.

‘A few weeks later, two of my Jewish friends were coming to visit me in my hometown.
I didn’t know how to explain this to my parents. I taught my new friends how to say ‘good morning’ in Arabic. They came to my home, and my mother opened the door. There were the two kids saying ‘good morning’ in Arabic. My mother’s face broke into a big smile, welcoming them,’ Hussein recalled.

‘It was the most important moment of peace building I had ever witnessed. That is why I say today, a chocolate chip cookie changed my life.’

As he got older and studied Hebrew, Hussein began to realize how deep the stereotyping
was on both sides.

‘After being able to communicate with my Jewish friends, I told them I grew up thinking that they had horns,’ Hussein said.

‘They said to me, ‘We were told that your people had long tails. That’s why you wear
long robes. To hide your tail.’ ‘

As an Arab living in Israel, Hussein witnessed what he called inequalities and discrimination toward Arabs living in Israel, citing a higher-than-average unemployment and lower
per-capita income for Arabs. Twenty percent of the population of Israel is Arab.

Hussein’s talk drew a reaction from some in the audience, who asserted that discrimination could be said of Arab treatment of the Jewish population in places like Yemen and in Egypt.

‘If it seems I am being harsh on Israel, please understand that it is not that I hate Israel, but that I love it,’ Hussein replied.

He also realizes he is more the exception than the rule for Arabs growing up in Israel,
referring to himself as ‘the luckiest person in the world.’ Placing blame will not produce
a peace, he says.

‘I think for lasting peace to come to the Middle East, there needs to be a grassroots
movement from the bottom up and from the top down. I am an optimist.
I believe in the peace. And I believe new leadership needs to emerge.’ Hussein said.

The dissenting voices heard earlier praised his mission.

‘I pray that you are successful,’ one said.

Before the crowd filed out, Hussein quoted a passage from Martin Luther King Jr:
‘People don’t get along because they fear each other.
People fear each other because they don’t know each other.
And they don’t know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other.’

‘We don’t know each other,’ Hussein said. ‘In Israel, we don’t even make the effort to get to know each other. We Arabs and Jews have created such complicated mechanisms to hate
each other and we have been living in that existence for more than 50 years now.

Bringing Arabs and Jews together is not going to happen by itself,’ he said.
‘We either coexist. Or we co-destruct.’

by Thomas Dimopoulos
Originally published in The Saratogian Nov, 2003.