What this Leftie saw through a settler’s eyes

A simulation exercise gave NITZAN BERNSTEIN a perspective on Israelis from the other side of the divide. She wishes she could give it to everyone.

When I was 17 and a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, I flew with a mixed group of Jewish and Arab Israelis to a summer camp in New York.

Our group was Leftist and settlers looked to me then like a group of anarchists and extremists who doomed soldiers to be killed protecting them.

But I still remember one special day when the Israeli team was given a mission: to step into someone else's shoes.

Each of us received a character of a different person from the Israeli social fabric. We had to write an imaginary monologue that came out of the heart of a person, light years different in beliefs and lifestyle, one we may have never even met. Then we had to present this monologue in front of the whole camp, in our new image.

I was assigned to be a settler. I remember throwing myself into character with great fervour. I called myself Moriah. I wore sandals with socks, a kerchief on my head and an orange ribbon on my bag. All the clichés were there. I was just like those settlers I saw screaming on TV.

But the most important moment came when I sat down to write. I imagined that I was a teacher who had moved to Israel from the only home she had ever known. I came not as a criminal nor an invader, but as a citizen whom the state had encouraged to settle.

As Moriah, I believed I was doing the most important thing to protect the people of Israel. I felt the world shaking under my feet.

I didn’t become right-wing after writing Moriah’s monologue. But I learned a powerful lesson about the compassion that can be found in the willingness to enter someone’s else’s worldview with an open heart, to walk in someone else's shoes, even for a moment.

In the past few months my heart has not been open. Like most of us, I am closed and angry and afraid and self-justifying. But when I remember my imaginary Moriah, I try, sometimes, to imagine what a person who is different from me feels.