The painful process of truly listening to Palestinian pain

Eva Dalak is a Palestinian citizen of Israel born in Jaffa to a family that lived there for generations, but many of whom now live in Gaza. I am a Jewish Israeli, raised in Orthodox Brooklyn, New York.

Together we host a podcast called Women Ending War, a determined effort to change our reality and end this violence.

A core aspect of what we are trying to accomplish is to always incorporate diverse voices. We try to have Palestinian and Jewish women in every episode, though it does not always work out that way.

We also try to create an atmosphere of holding space, even when it’s hard. This means allowing people to tell their life stories without arguing or correcting them. Palestinians on the podcast may use words like “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and “colonialism”, and I never challenge or try to “correct” the usage of these terms, despite all the Zionist upbringing that trained me to do exactly that.

I practice what I learned from my friends in nonviolent communication: connect before you correct. It’s a radical-but-shouldn’t-be-so-radical concept about letting another person tell their story and just listening. By holding that space, I am actively rejecting that Bibi-esque behaviour that expects us to debate and badger until we “win”. I am letting go of that entire persona, the one that is supposed to have the last word and school everyone around me in the sound bites about Jewish moral superiority, Zionist righteousness, and the need to squash all criticism.

Just sitting there and listening is a kind of corrective measure — for me and possibly for others around the table. This is not always easy.