Opinion | Meet the Champions of Nuance and Empathy We Need

Instead of turning to bombs, Aramin turned to reconciliation. He studied the Holocaust in a master’s program, learned excellent Hebrew and tried to see the humanity in Israeli soldiers at West Bank checkpoints.

A process of mutual dehumanization has led each side, he said, to regard the other as morally inferior. He noted that Israelis often suggest that the problem is that Palestinians don’t love their children and are ready to sacrifice them for the struggle, while Palestinians traffic in a similar stereotype about Israelis.

“We don’t see each other as human beings,” he said, and he told me of the Palestinian mother of a teenage boy killed by Israeli soldiers who reluctantly came to a Parents Circle meeting, still fuming at Jews.

“She believed that they were animals,” he recounted, quoting her as saying, “They don’t have hearts like us; they hate their kids because they send them to the army.” But she met an Israeli mom who told of losing her child to a Palestinian, and soon they were both sobbing and embracing.

Aramin is outraged at what he sees as Israel’s quotidian mistreatment of West Bank Palestinians, including women, at checkpoints, but he sees the humanity in the soldiers there.

“They look like killing machines, but they’re scared of us,” he said. Aramin told me that the day before I spoke to him, he and his wife had driven to visit their children, taking a mountain road to bypass delays and humiliation at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank. But he said they were stopped by four Israeli soldiers who angrily told them to return and threatened to seize their car. Aramin said he spoke calmly in Hebrew, recognizing the soldiers’ fear, and they soon got to talking. In the end, the soldiers still turned them back but apologized for doing so.

I noted to Aramin that these organizations promoting mutual understanding mostly date from the Oslo peace process, when two states were expected to emerge side by side. Now that process is in hibernation, if not dead. It’s nice that Parents Circle holds camps for Israeli and Palestinian children to get to know each other, but how is that saving lives on either side of the Gaza border?

The arc of history is long, he replied. Germany once tried to wipe out Jews and now exchanges ambassadors with Israel. Some day Israel and Palestine will coexist as states, he said, and the question is simply how many corpses will pile up before that happens.

“We must share this land as one state or two states or five states,” he said. “Otherwise, we will share this same piece of land as the graveyards of our kids.”