Empathy and Exploration: A Journey to the Holy Land Offers Immersive Lessons in Understanding Conflict (Part Two)

Looking down on the Gaza Strip. Photo: Alisa Giardinelli

PART TWO

This is the second part of a two-part article about the immersive 10-day Swarthmore College study trip that concludes a course on Israeli-Palestinian conflict taught by Assistant Professor Sa’ed Atshan. An alumnus of the college, Atshan lives in Swarthmore. Part one is here.

The Village of Lifta

“That was my house.”

Standing in what was once the central plaza of the Palestinian village of Lifta, 79-year-old Yacoub Odeh points past a tree. The ruin of a modest stone structure still clings to the side of the hill, one of about 50 ruined buildings that are all that remain of what was, until 1948, a vibrant place.

On this Sunday, Odeh leads us on a tour through the village’s overgrown paths, past teenagers gathered in what is now a nature reserve. He speaks of a future in which everyone — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — could live together, “as our grandfathers did.”

The City of Sderot

“I’ve been closer to death as a student here than as a soldier on the Gaza border,” says Dar Cohen, 27, from the Sderot Media Center.

Cohen is describing life in Sderot, an Israeli city of about 26,000 predominantly Mizrahi Jews known for its arts scene. Our group stands with him outside the city’s police station. Here, stacked against a wall, are remnants of rockets launched from Gaza, the blockaded, self-governing Palestinian territory less than a mile away. Although the attacks are far less frequent than they were 10 years ago, Cohen says the most recent rockets fell less than two weeks before this visit.

The bus drives us past a shrapnel-damaged house and missile launchers from Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. It stops at a school playground, where a brightly painted structure in the shape of a giant caterpillar serves as a bomb shelter. All of Sderot’s houses and bus stops are equipped with shelters, Cohen says. Under the palm trees, chirping birds, and cloudless sky, we learn that helium balloons — so attractive to children — have been used to carry explosives into the city. 

Long Days Stretch Into Nights

A 7 a.m. wake-up call ushers in each day of the trip. After breakfast, we pile into a bus, traveling to the first of five or six stops. These meetings and visits are often miles apart, and the busy days often stretch late into the night.

Some days conclude with mandatory reflection sessions, rich with questions, observations, and emotion. This is where students process together the often painful things they witnessed, connecting the experiences of the day with their own thoughts, feelings, and assumptions.

“I hear new insights each and every time,” Atshan says. “Those reflection sessions are nourishment for my soul.” 

Lighter moments are built into the itinerary, too. In one 24-hour period, we met with the clerk of Ramallah Friends Meeting; attended Shabbat services and a reception at Tel Aviv International Synagogue; and floated in the Dead Sea. The day we visited Hebron, we also availed ourselves of a “shopportunity” at a glassblowing and ceramics factory.

The City of Hebron

Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, but on the afternoon we visit, the streets in the old town center are eerily silent. Since the 1990s, the mostly Palestinian residents of Hebron have been prohibited from that section of the city, a policy that young Israeli soldiers enforce at frequent checkpoints. For most of us, the frequent presence of armed Israeli soldiers — not just on the streets of Hebron, but in a lounge in Ashkelon’s Sapir College, even briefly on the bus crossing a checkpoint — is new and unsettling.

“Hebron’s level of segregation and separation was quite a stark contrast to everything else we’d seen during the trip,” says junior Jaydeep Sangha of Potomac, Maryland. “In high school, we learned about Jim Crow. Those injustices became crystal clear when one of our own students was told that she couldn’t use the women’s room, which was just a few meters away from the checkpoint, because she was Muslim.”

When the Israeli soldier turned first-year student Selma Shaban away from the public bathroom, she felt her body go numb. 

“I had really believed that my privilege as an American citizen would let me use the bathroom,” says Shaban, a Palestinian Jordanian. “All my privilege was stripped from me at that moment. There was nothing I could do except stand still and try not to break down.”

Radical Humanization

A key focus of Atshan’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict course is his conception of “radical humanization.” Its goal is deceptively simple: to use empathy and see the humanity in everyone, especially in those whose views differ from your own. Atshan acknowledges that the idea of “humanizing” everyone can sound easy or, worse, lacking in substance. But he is passionate about substantiating its importance, not just in a personal context, but also in a rigorous academic setting.

“We have to demonstrate to students that empathy, compassion, and humanization of the ‘other,’ even those with whom we disagree most profoundly, are part and parcel of our pursuit of knowledge and our highest standards of intellectual and political engagement,” Atshan says. “We have to stop divorcing these matters.”

First-year student Youssef Kharrat put the concept to work the first day at Hebrew University, while listening to Guy Shalev describe his compulsory military service. “I couldn’t help but feel bad when he was talking about his experience as a soldier, so casually invading people’s houses,” he says. “It’s really hard to contextualize it at that moment and feel empathy, but I did. That helped me appreciate and respect him more.”

Selma Shaban, who grew up in Amman, Jordan, says she was expecting to hear more anger and frustration from Palestinians. She was surprised by Hani Amer, a farmer whose home in Masha, West Bank, is surrounded by the separation wall, military-built chain-link fences, and settler houses. Yet he says he holds no animosity toward the settlers. 

“If he was angry, that would be completely warranted,” she says. “But for him to say he’s not angry towards them is an unbelievable showing of strength and resilience. I just found it remarkable.”

Rolling Conversation

“Friends, we need a count,” chaperone Krista Thomason announces from the front of the bus. “Take pride in your count!”  “… 21, 22, 23 …” Pause. “Nancy?” “24! 25….”

At numerous stops — in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, outside the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — but especially on the bus, students count off. With a boisterous and occasionally unwieldy bunch, it is necessary to make sure everyone is accounted for.  

At times, especially after hard-hitting visits, the bus becomes a place for quiet reckoning. 

Atshan often takes a figurative, if not literal, backseat on these journeys, intentionally not interjecting too often. 

“I’m very thankful that he’s allowing us to formulate our own point of view and grapple with it ourselves, rather than just telling us a narrative,” Sangha says. “The bus has been quieter in that sense, allowing me to think through things.”

More than halfway through the trip, the bus “has no laws,” Selma Shaban says. “People are moving around. Conversations are starting. There will be a cluster in one area for a bit, and then in another area. So it’s a lot of fun. It’ll reflect the mood.”

“We’re not always talking about politics back there,” Sangha adds.

The many subjects that get a shout on the bus include social media, Stalin, communism, DJ Khaled, marriage, religion, gender pronouns, colonialism, Ottoman land practices, RuPaul, science, math, variations on rock-paper-scissors, restorative justice, and favorite punctuation marks.

Gaza

At the end of the last day, the bus turns off the highway onto a dirt road and rumbles past a three-man Israeli tank unit. This is as close as civilians can get to the Israel-Gaza border. From the vantage point of a low ridge, the high-rises of Gaza City are visible on the other side of the buffer zone. We stand next to a military range tower. Shell casings lie underfoot. It is almost sunset.

Then the call to prayer sounds. We stand in silence, mesmerized by the sky, the deep, lyrical tones, and the awareness of the two million residents blockaded on the other side of an electric fence less than 100 yards away.

A short burst of distant but distinct automatic gunfire breaks the reverie. Everyone quickly returns to the bus.

Looking Ahead

As the trip draws to a close, students discuss how they might carry forward some of what they learned. During the final reflection session, they express a range of emotions, concerns, hope, confusion, and gratitude.

Citing Guy Shalev’s admonition to “ask the right questions,” Hannah Gutow, a senior from Maine, says she feels the importance of “just doing that, forever, about everything.”

“There’s such a huge difference” between taking part in the trip and learning “in an abstract way,” says junior Francis Eddy Harvey of Pittsburgh. “Being here makes everything a lot more clear.”

Like many students, sophomore Toàn Cao of Vietnam was leaving with a lot of questions. “Talking to people and seeing why it’s really important to not dehumanize anyone — I think that’s what I’m going to start with after this trip,” he says. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Nancy Yuan, a senior from Auckland, says the experience changed her to the core. “I don’t think anyone’s left unchanged,” she says. “For me personally, I feel very close to the Palestinian people, and to the Israeli and the Jewish people. They have all suffered so much. So what are we going to do to reduce suffering going forward?”

Alisa Giardinelli is assistant vice president for communications at Swarthmore College. A version of this story appeared in the Swarthmore College Bulletin.