Since Oct. 7, 2023, many progressive Canadian Jews have found themselves increasingly unwelcome by mainstream community members and organizations. But instead of keeping quiet, they have, over the past nearly two years, created their own spaces to have open and honest dialogues about Israel-Palestine, and their own relationship to Judaism.
Recently, hundreds of these progressive Jews gathered for a series of peace summits in Toronto and Montreal, with smaller gatherings in Ottawa, Winnipeg, London and Vancouver. These coincided with a larger peace conference in Jerusalem underway on May 8-9, called It’s Time, helmed by Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, including the granddaughter of Shimon Peres.
The Toronto summit was organized under the auspices of Toronto Friends of Standing Together, an Israeli charity working to bridge the divide between all peoples living in Israel, and more immediately to stop the cycle of grief and violence preventing a peaceful co-existence when the war ends for good.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, hear what happened when host Ellin Bessner visited the conference—what the speakers and attendees had to say. You’ll hear from Jeff Carolin, a criminal lawyer and dispute mediator who, after Oct. 7, started hosting regular meetings for progressive Jews in his living room; and siblings Noam and Ido Citrin, a pair of university students who are building new connections and having difficult conversations in unexpected places.
Transcript
Jon Medow: And I just want to acknowledge that doing this work is no easy task for all of us, bringing people together in this room in a time of ongoing killing of Palestinian children and families in Gaza, the use of starvation as a weapon, and the continued suffering of Israeli hostages, is not easy. But we know that what unites us is greater than what divides us, and we believe that there are many others out there who feel the same way.
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of Jon Medow, a Jewish Canadian policy analyst and a member of the local chapter of the Israeli group called “Standing Together”. Medow was speaking at the group’s recent Canada Peace Summit that welcomed several hundred progressive Jews together with Palestinian peace activists.
The summit was timed to show solidarity with a coalition of 60 Israeli, Palestinian and Christian peace activist groups in Israel who were holding a summit in Jerusalem this week, called It’s Time.
Like It’s Time, this group supports a different solution to the current Israel Palestinian crisis. Not a middle ground, but a third way–a new solution that doesn’t involve killing, ends what they view as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, calls for the release of all hostages, and release of all Palestinian prisoners held without being charged, and works through dialogue, shared grief and understanding, to find a way where both peoples can live in peace and security on the same land. They also support boycotting West bank products and a keeping up an arms embargo but for all sides until the fighting stops.
Although we’ve certainly interviewed progressive Jewish leaders for this show before Oct. 7 mainly during 2023 and those massive pro-democracy street protests against Israel’s proposed government judicial reforms, AFTER Oct. 7, at least in Canada, there’s been much less space for the views of these same progressive Jewish voices. They’re not so welcome at pro-Israel rallies, or at other spaces, and indeed some have been barred from attending official Jewish Federation events particularly in London, Ontario and in Hamilton.
But the motto of The CJN Daily is what Jewish Canada sounds like, which is why when I learned about this conference, and was personally invited,I felt it was important to attend, even though it was being held on Yom Ha-shoah, because after 18 months of the ongoing conflict, I wanted to see what lessons can be learned and i felt a repsonsibility to hear from Jews and Palestinians who were NOT shouting at each other from opposite street corners or wearing masks at encampments on university grounds, or fighting with each other in social media posts, but rather were trying to work together to end the war in the way that feels right for them.
I’m Ellin Bessner and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
(Registration noise)
The Canada Peace Summit was held at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon on the second floor of the Toronto Reference Library. Maybe some of you have even been there. It’s the same neutral event space where one year earlier, the Israeli and Palestinian co-founders of Standing Together first came on a cross-Canada tour to introduce the movement and to establish fledgling local chapters- which are now successfully up and running in cities from Victoria to Montreal.
Organizers of the Toronto summit purposely tried to keep the atmosphere neutral: people were told not to bring in any flags. And there werent an , although I saw one Palestinian speaker sporting a Palestinian flag lapel pin, and there was one young mother who wore a keffiyeh around her neck. To be honest, I think she may have been Jewish.
Yafa Sakkejha: From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all tremendously for showing up.
Honestly, showing up here has been the greatest gift that you’ve given me personally in my support for a better world where life flourishes and trust is a given in our shared home. So thank you.
Ellin Bessner: The lead for the conference was Yafa Sakkejha. A born in Canada entrepreneur of Palestinian descent whose grandparents fled their home in the city of Yafo in 1948 during the Israeli War of Independence. She’s been on our show before, She’s an ally of the local Jewish community and hates Hamas and is appalled by antisemitism. I knew her but I didn’t expect to recognze anyone else.
But right at the registration desk, I saw other Jews I knew: one of my former students; down the hall I ran into a retired ER doctor who I volunteer with at Ve’Ahavta; a part time CJN reporter; the leaders of JSpace and the New Israel Fund, a former CBC broadcaster Robert Harris, who I never knew was Jewish; and Jon Allen, Canada’s former ambassador to Israel under the Harper administration;
Many guests wore the trademark purple T-shirts of the Standing Together organization. In israel, their activists have tried to lower the temperature on both sides after Oct 7. They recently rallied to prevent extremist West Bank Jewish settlers from blocking shipments of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza.
In between speeches by the Israeli jewish and Palestinian founders of Standing Together and also from a leading Palestinian podcaster Amira mohammed from East Jerusalem, I sat down to interview a few of the progressive Jewish people, to hear their stories.
Jeff Carolin: We’ve been sitting for a little bit. If you want to stretch, you can stretch. Just really feel the ground underneath you.
Ellin Bessner: That’s Jeff Carolin, a Toronto criminal lawyer and certified alternative dispute mediator, leading the group in some exercises designed to lower their anxiety so they can hear uncomfortable things. Carolin says after October 7th, he started opening up his own home to hold informal group sessions for people like himself who couldn’t find anywhere else to go to express their grief because their views weren’t popular.
Ellin Bessner: In your non-activist life, you do a lot of mediating and negotiating and trying to bridge gaps. I’d like to ask you, can you describe what you do in your own home for Jewish people who are on the progressive side, would you say, of the spectrum during, after October 7th?
Jeff Carolin: We actually started in November 2023 and part of the impetus for beginning the circle, as we call it, is for Jewish people, relatively speaking, it’s a big tent in the sense that the common ground that we ask is if you’re opposed to or at least questioning the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank and you want to come to a place where we’re not concerned about using the right words, we’re not debating positions, solutions. It’s actually a place to just name what we’re feeling in the moment, how we’re experiencing the moment, whether that’s in terms of watching what’s unfolding between the river and the sea and the heartbreak about that division that’s coming up in people’s own Jewish families and communities. Tensions. For a lot of people, it’s a real range of how people are engaged. We do get a lot of people come who are very involved in the, what’s I guess called, the pro-Palestine protest movement, really enjoy being in that space and also have some difficulties being in that space. And we just wanted a place for people to be able to connect and build community just through basically a listening circle format.
Ellin Bessner: Why would they feel that they couldn’t be with the larger Jewish community or the other side? I guess, and I don’t even know what the right word is, but.
Jeff Carolin: Well, you know, two things. One, I mean, I started changing my views on this, on this issue from a political standpoint about 22 years ago, and it really felt that there was nothing, any capacity amongst anybody I talked to, not anybody, but in terms of leadership of groups and organizations I’d been a part of, including synagogues, to hear a different perspective about what was happening on the ground in Israel and Palestine. So I retreated. And I feel like just through this sort of organic word-of-mouth way, people keep showing up who have felt that they’ve had to give up or abandon the Jewish communities that they grew up in because they have a different political view. So, there’s that. And then, also given that from my perspective, October 7th was obviously horrific. I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza specifically have lived in October 7th almost every day since then, and that’s still ongoing right now and in sort of more left spaces where people are very critical of what the Israeli government is doing. Sometimes it feels like the space for the complexity of the Jewish experience and Jewish grief in this moment. Not everybody wants to hear about it, in my experience, once they hear about.
Ellin Bessner: The other side’s lived experience.
Jeff Carolin: But is it the other side? I don’t know. It’s like, I don’t. I can feel very impacted both by what happened on October 7, one step removed from people who were killed, from people who were hostages, at the same time as also trying to understand where did that violence come from and where’s the violence coming from now? And it’s just a space to just, like, be a human with feelings. It’s really, you know, a way to offering, and we open it to non-Jewish loved ones and friends and family as well, though it has been predominantly.
Ellin Bessner: I really appreciate it. I have so many other questions, like how you’re being. How you had to split from your family on your positions. Did you want to say?
Jeff Carolin: I’ve actually think that over the last year and a half, we’ve come closer together. I think the work of the podcast that’s being featured here, “Unapologetic, The third narrative”, just to plug it, it’s two Palestinian citizens of Israel, Amira Muhammad, and Ibrahim Abu Ahmad. It’s given us some common ground to find each other again. And I’m actually eternally grateful for it.
Ellin Bessner: And so everybody should listen to that and The CJN Daily podcast. Why do you think that a conference such as this, just before May 1st this year, which will be Israel Independence Day, and then two weeks later Naqba Day, can have a difference? Or why is it important?
Jeff Carolin: I mean, the narrative that Amira Mohammed was talking about from the “Unapologetic” podcast about co-resistance really resonates with me. What does it mean to have peace, equality, justice, dignity for all the people who live between the river and the sea? And I don’t see that the people holding the most power, either there or here right now, are holding that vision. So, you know, if people who are so closely connected to what’s happening on the ground there are saying, this is what we’re trying to do, to have a better vision for the future for everyone. I’m here for that.
Ellin Bessner: One interesting thing that I didn’t know, I learned something, why people are so panicked and triggered when words are said. You just said a couple. And I know if people are going to hear from the river to the sea, they’re going to have a trigger in Toronto, a lot of people. Can you teach me what that reaction is for people who hear those words?
Jeff Carolin: I mean, it’s also interesting, I feel like, to add that there’s another big, powerful group that talks about from the river to the sea, and that’s the Israeli government. I mean, it’s the first plank in their platform is we control everything from the river to the sea. I feel my own a little bit of panic coming up, just, like, reactivity in my body just around that. And I get. It’s a complicated term, but to answer your question and what. I’ll just speak what just happened.
Ellin Bessner: I appreciate you saying that.
Jeff Carolin: Yeah. And our bodies respond. You know, they’re trying to keep us safe. And I think just hearing you name that, people who I assume to be, like, in the Jewish community will hear those words from the river to the sea and be triggered by that. I’m triggered by that trigger because of my experience growing up and feeling that when I tried to share, you know, there’s a different perspective I’d never learned about the Nakba, the Palestinian experience of ’48 and so on, and that many people say is continuing today in Gaza and the West Bank, that, like, lack of being told that story and then having to confront it at the age of 20 and, like, radically shift my understanding was like, a form of, like, personal, like, identity crisis and breakage and then to, like, be sort of pulled back into that. Like, I can even feel my heart rate increasing as I’m trying to talk about it.
And so what I try to do when I do all kinds of mediation work, not just connected to this issue, is what is your panic reaction? What is it telling you about you? What’s important to you? So what’s it telling me? It’s telling me that what’s important to me is healing in the Jewish community, actually doing healing work from the history of the Holocaust and persecution in Eastern Europe and not just perpetuating our trauma forward, having hard conversations. And it breaks my heart that terms like the river and the sea and all sorts of things just cause further and further division within our community. So a whole range of things just came up, and in terms of what’s important to me and why I can feel my own reactivity in my body and in this moment.
Ellin Bessner: So what lessons would you recommend for people who would be listening to this when they go to a rally and this happens or they see a sticker, what’s the way forward?
Jeff Carolin: I think the first thing is to turn internally and try to understand what’s my panic, telling me about me, about my needs, my values, what’s important to me. And then if I can tend to myself and find some empathy for my own reaction, can I get curious when that person in the street has that sign that says, from the river to the sea, what does it mean for them?
You know, people have said, I’ve heard in the Jewish community, oh, that’s a call for genocide. Okay? Do you know that? I mean, so many Jewish people I know, they don’t have any friendship, relationship whatsoever with a Palestinian person. Can you form a friendship? Can you have tea together? Can you find out what do those words mean to them when they use it? Because the Palestinian people I know when they use that, because now we’re talking about it, they mean freedom, equality for everybody, equality for all, 14 million people. And can we lead with empathy and curiosity to try to have at least at the interpersonal level, some deeper understanding of ourselves and other people?
Ellin Bessner: At this moment, as we head into the 77th birthday of Israel and as some people would say, the catastrophe, what would you like to see happen in the celebrations? And I’m going to preface this by reminding people that when Canada Day several years ago, with truth and reconciliation, the Indigenous Canadians were like, hold on, you’re celebrating with fireworks. But it was our disaster. So for Canadians, how do we put those two concepts together with what happened here in our country versus Yom Ha’atzmaut and how it’s seen for you?
Jeff Carolin: I mean, even starting with the Canada example, it’s a frequent conversation at my family’s table on July 1. My family, I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Canada. So, on July 1, it is a frequent discussion of how do we reconcile Canada’s really grim and still ongoing reality and what that’s meant for, and what that continues to mean for Indigenous people, with the reality that without Canada existing, I wouldn’t be alive because my great-grandparents wouldn’t have been able to find safety. We lost so much family in the Holocaust. And when it comes to Yom Ha’atzmaut/Independence Day from the Israeli Jewish perspective and the Nakba from the Palestinian perspective, I think it’s, to me, not a day in this moment, given what we’re seeing on the ground, where I personally can celebrate. To me, it’s a day for reflection, for mourning, for grief that, to be honest, just totally breaks my heart.
Ellin Bessner: What do you want Canadian Jews who are listening to understand about what you would like to see in the next year here?
Jeff Carolin: I mean, I’ve come to a point where I think that Jewish safety, whether here or there, is intertwined with Palestinian safety. And I think we are not free, and they are not free, and the only way through is together as.
Ellin Bessner: Jewish people who, as you said, you lost people in the Holocaust. Is there a way to do that work, or is our trauma still not resolved enough in order to be able to do this?
Jeff Carolin: I mean, when I look at our community here in Toronto, I see a lot of trauma and a lot of healing work. All the ways in which I think I was educated about the Holocaust, too young and too graphically, I think I’m still working through that. Also, obviously, I’m not the first to say there’s no quick fixes here. The only way I know to move is by trying to pay attention to healing, to repair, and the possibility of transformation, as incremental as it might be. And that’s what I do.
Ellin Bessner: Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.
Amira Mohammed: We are not a monolith. Not as Palestinians, not as peace builders, not as activists. And I think that’s what the diaspora community needs to understand that diversity is a power and not a weakness. Just go back to the values of co-resistance, that it’s dialogue over debate, that nothing can justify the occupation, that it’s the people come first, the land is second, the priority is saving the people and just agree on a set of values and continue straight. Continue straight.
Ellin Bessner: While Jeff Carolin didn’t wear a purple T-shirt, Noam Citrin and her brother Ido both were wearing them. The two Israeli-born Canadian students from Maple, Ontario, just completed their semesters at university. Noam is taking Holocaust studies at the U of T, where that anti-Israel encampment lasted all of last spring. And Ido attends Toronto Metropolitan University, which was recently called one of the most antisemitic universities in Canada. He’s taking film studies. In the last year, how have things been for you here in Toronto, in terms of fitting in, finding a place for yourselves and your views?
Ido Citrin: In a word, difficult. It’s hard on many levels just to find the people who you feel sort of capture the nuance of how you feel. It’s difficult to navigate that, and it’s difficult on campus, and it’s also difficult at home.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so what does that look like? What does that mean?
Ido Citrin: So there are Jewish and Israeli groups on universities like Hillel, for instance, and it’s sometimes difficult to integrate into those as well. I mean, they do a lot of, I think, important work and they don’t take too harsh a stance. But even in those circles, I find that these past, I guess, a year and a half, you find yourself alienated from those groups as well sometimes. For me, it was a group called Bridging the Gap that Professor Randall Schnoor of York University started to discuss, among like-minded people, to have civil discussions about the topic and let’s be less divided.
Ellin Bessner: Can you quickly tell me your personal encounters with how it was for you going to school?
Ido Citrin: The direct aftermath of October 7th was very difficult. You know, that law school letter was really startling and very upsetting to see how people would try to, you know, justify parts of it. A lot of it does involve keeping your head down, not being so vocal about who you are. So that’s probably been the hardest part, until I’ve, over this past year and a half, felt more confident that I can share that. And I feel proud of who I am and what I believe in; I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. So, I try to share that with people, that there are groups of Israelis, Palestinians, all working together, believing in peace, like Standing Together. That’s why it’s so important to me.
Ellin Bessner: It’s not a popular position because there’s a big wall between the two sides. So how do you reach out? Teach us what you’ve been doing.
Ido Citrin: So to me, it’s not helpful to speak in slogans. It’s not helpful to be chanting slogans in marches. I think it’s when you form meaningful connections with people, learning to navigate the sit-down conversation and try to slowly ease into it. And I think, get them to the fundamental point. We’re human beings. You believe in what you believe, presumably at your core, because you care about justice and, if you didn’t have to be, you wouldn’t be against peace. And you sort of start working, I think, with what we can all relate to—what’s most human, what’s most relatable—and try to say this is not about, it’s not all about hatred. A lot of it is about fear. Unpack it. Work from the bottom up. But it has to be a sort of one-on-one thing. That’s why I think the Bridging the Gap.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, I’m going to ask your sister. You’re at a different university; they had an encampment. How was it for you going to school the last year and a half?
Noam Citrin: I also felt, in a social sense, profoundly isolated. I’m part of the queer community, and that community has been resoundingly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel in its rhetoric and in its orientations. It was very interesting going from a place where, you know, I’ve never felt closed about my identity. I’ve always talked about all of the identities that I hold and shared that with friends. But that going from something that felt like an easy conversation to navigate to something suddenly feeling like in a lot of ways, I was having to choose which events I was going to, which groups I was hanging out with, whether, you know, I wanted to be defending my identity as an Israeli, or my identity as a progressive or as a queer person. Right? So there were a lot of decisions which I felt like I was frustrated by the fact that why should that be a decision? Why should this be a binary? At the end of the day, I know myself and my politics and my beliefs, and I know that I am resoundingly pro-people and pro-peace and pro-humanity.
The different approach I took, is I just started a support group. I just started reaching out to friends, to friends who I knew who were Jewish or who weren’t Jewish but who I had had deep conversations about this topic with and who were very empathetic and well-informed. I was saying like, hey, you know, I need a space to be able to grieve and mourn and talk about the fact that I feel scared walking past certain parts of my campus right now. You know, I have friends coming up to hug me when they see me in the fields when they’re just coming from a protest, chanting “From the river to the sea” and not even clocking that “From the river to the sea” might have a different connotation to me than it does to them. It might be something that makes me feel afraid or unsure about where all the people chanting that might stand about my existence and my right to exist in my homeland.
And that group sort of grew. There was a point where we were meeting weekly or bi-weekly. It was just kind of a support group for us to unpack the experiences that we were having, the social isolation that we felt, but simultaneously the political frustration that we had. The feeling that as Jews and even as Israelis, but especially as Jews in the Diaspora, there was suddenly all of this reticence to critique the same government that we had all been out on the streets protesting before October 7. Watching people suddenly feel a hesitation to express views that, you know, I thought were very well established. But suddenly there’s this like, okay, hold on, we can’t be seen to be criticizing Israel because then that’s going to be used by people who want to deny us our right to exist as justification for their antisemitism against us. Right? So just that complexity and that feeling of being trapped in the middle and of hopelessness, like, it really was a kind of an affront on all sides.
Ellin Bessner: Like there felt you didn’t have a place anywhere.
Noam Citrin: There wasn’t a place anywhere. There was maybe a group of 10 to 15 people that I could meet with weekly and that I could kind of exhale and know that I could say anything I wanted to and that they would know me and know that I was coming with good intentions and that didn’t mean any harm and didn’t want anything of that sort. But genuinely, the, and you brought this up as well, like, there’s the one type of conversation that you’re having on campus, there’s another type of conversation that you’re having at home. Right. So it’s the feeling of like, constantly adapting and somehow constantly playing the contrarian, no matter which conversation you’re in.
Ellin Bessner: Tell me about at home. Are you allowed to be pro-Palestinian at home?
Ido Citrin: That’s a good question. I mean, I think we’re lucky to have a house where there is, generally speaking, a lot of openness for discussion and there is room for disagreement, but things are really heated, especially in the direct aftermath of October 7th. It was, I mean, understandably impossible to have virtually any discussion. But, you know, I think we’ve always felt that our parents, you know, I won’t speak for them, but they ultimately would aspire to the same goals of they just have, you know, waning levels of pessimism depending on the, on the situation.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s fast forward to today. So you’re part of this meeting. How did you decide to be here?
Noam Citrin: So I’ll start by saying the way I originally got involved or the way I first heard about Standing Together was I was in Israel. I was protesting in Israel and in Tel Aviv, and the presence that I was seeing over and over again was Standing Together on the streets. That made me look into them more and realize that there’s this Canadian, Canadian chapter, and this is like a less, you know, ideological whatever it exists. That’s a very important start. Having a space that exists and has some amount of traction, and people who are already engaged, is like, we can’t overlook, especially, you know, a year ago, how unreal that felt. Feeling like there’s maybe 10 people in the world you can talk to, and suddenly finding out that this organization exists, has roots in Toronto, is trying to grow and could use your help.
Ellin Bessner: What do you want to see when you think about Yom Ha’atzmaut for you?
Noam Citrin: How to mark it, I think, from a place of finding hope and celebration in times of darkness and despair is a necessity. If I didn’t have things that were fuelling me and felt hopeful, I wouldn’t be able to continue reading the news every day and waking up to pictures of horrific destruction that is happening and saying, Okay, I’m going to keep going and I’m going to keep doing something about it in the way that I can.
Especially as someone for whom the Holocaust plays a big part of my life, it’s what I study and what I’m very interested in, and Holocaust education is something that I’m very passionate about. To me, Yom Ha’atzmaut plays a big part of that. In terms of thinking about “Ha’atzmaut”, freedom, where we came from, where we are, the privilege that we have to have a home and a country and a place that we feel safe for the most part and able to express ourselves, what a privilege that is and what responsibility comes with that. So, to me, it’s not about choosing not to celebrate, because the celebration to me is just as necessary as the despair. In a way, they’re two sides of the same coin that are motivated by the same desire for change.
Ido Citrin: If I could say to your listeners, especially the older listeners who maybe are here are maybe nervous when they think about the younger Jewish generation and they think that we’re sort of not, we’re not considering all the factors in our views and everything else, I just want to emphasize that the way I see it, I believe in the same fundamentals as they do. We recognize the importance of Jews having self-determination in their own country and that this, what we’re, the reason we’re attending today is we feel that this is an imperative. It’s what we have to do to continue that, to exist in some form, because we don’t believe that there’s another way if we don’t work together and end the conflict and make peace. So this is not in spite of the Jewish yearning for self-determination, it’s entirely in favour of it, and keeping that goal in mind.
Ellin Bessner: Dialogue happens here with Palestinian supporters or Palestinian people. I don’t see a lot of that in the streets here. I see a lot of divide. I don’t know how to go forward. I’m here trying to. But…
Noam Citrin: So this is, this is something that I hear a lot.
Ellin Bessner: Teach me what to do.
Noam Citrin: This is an awful answer that nobody likes to hear. It’s a lot of stuff, small conversations, and it sucks because that is the most time-consuming and the most draining and you, you know, you want to die hearing the sound of your own voice when you’ve repeated the same three sentences for the 16th time that month. But I genuinely believe that we live in a world of so much polarization, and we are so fueled by the same snippets of bits and pieces of truth that we see online. All of it comes from somewhere, but rarely, if ever, is it the full story. We are so used to engaging with every bit of information that we consume on a mass scale, and I’ve genuinely come over the past year and a half to believe that the antidote to that is just the 180° opposite course of action. Start small. What I’ve been trying to do is more so in real life: sit down with friends who I know have been posting in a certain manner.
Ellin Bessner: So Palestinian friends or Canadian friends? Canadian, Palestinian?
Noam Citrin: Yeah. I don’t personally have any Palestinian friends. I would love to change that, and I hope that being in spaces like this can actually help Israelis and Palestinians get to a point where we can call each other friends. Just being the person to open the conversation, it is shocking to me how many people have never had someone approach them and say, “I’ve noticed you’ve posted a lot about this. This is a topic that’s really close to my heart. I’m Israeli, but I’m also very informed, and I do a lot to keep up with this topic, and I try to read a lot about it. I’m a very nuanced person, and it’s very important to me to be able to coherently present arguments from all across the political spectrum. I’d be really happy to have a conversation with you about why you hold some of the beliefs that you do and any questions that you might have.”
Ellin Bessner: And how did they usually respond? Did they tell you to get lost?
Noam Citrin: Most of the time, that has absolutely happened to me. I had, kind of recently, and this is the part I’m not proud of. I have a very, very close friend who I knew from what other people had told me was perhaps profoundly anti-Zionist. I put off the conversation for a long time, and that’s the part I’m not proud of because I was scared, scared of being hurt, and of putting it all out there and then being rejected. A few months ago, I got to a place where I had had enough of the conversations that I felt confident and grounded in myself and in what I believed to be able to move past this. It will not be the end of the world for someone to look me in the eye and say, “I think that the ideology you believe in makes you a terrible person.” I’ll be able to say, “And that’s on you,” right? And that’s a big step to take. I had that conversation, and in as many words, that is how it ended. They said, “I hear everything you’re trying to say, including, I recognize that in terms of actionable items; you have done more for the Palestinian cause than I have,” but they also said, “I can’t associate with someone who’s a Zionist.” That was the end of a many years-long friendship. Then you wake up and ask the next person in your life who seems like they don’t know how to talk about this subject, whether they’d have any interest in having a conversation with you about it, and you do it again.
Ellin Bessner: You have Palestinian friends?
Ido Citrin: I’ve been able to meet Palestinian and Arab friends, specifically through Bridging the Gap and through other connections and maintaining friendships and relationships that I’ve had. It’s difficult, and I don’t know that there’s always a clear answer, but one thing I tried to do was through the internet, where there are relevant forums and pages related to it. It’s mostly people screaming at each other, and it’s very unproductive. I put out a wide post, a wide call saying, “Would anyone be interested if you’re just against the dehumanization? We can’t fix all the topics in this conflict, but if you’re against dehumanization, which is a massive dimension of this conflict, and you’d be interested in being paired up with a different person who’s also interested, then shoot me a message.”
It’s a project I’d like to continue in the future, but even for the trial run that I did, I was able to connect American Jews with Palestinians living in the West Bank, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, connecting them with Jewish citizens of Israel that probably lived close to each other and would maybe never interact because they live in towns that are distant from each other, and they don’t have a lot of dialogue. These people were really eager. There were different levels of hostility at first and different levels of acceptance, but again, they believe at their core there’s something to be gained from dialogue. And if you believe there’s something to be gained from dialogue, it’s the first, most important step.
Finally, I’m here because I’ve heard time and time again that there’s no partner for peace on the other side, that nobody on the other side is interested in working with us. I refuse to accept that, and I commit to every day meeting with and speaking with the people who are living proof that that is not true. They may appear few in numbers, but it’s only because they believe on the other side, respective to them, there’s no partner for peace. We have to address that lie from every perspective and all come together to prove that we can work together for peace.
Noam Citrin: I would love to, if I can, give you one last thing. Can you have a conversation with two people in your life who you have an existing relationship with, who will not immediately shut you out or scream in your face or block you? Right. Two people, most people know two people who would at the very least be willing to hear them out. I try to start every conversation like this. No matter the side of the political aisle the person I’m talking to is sitting on, no matter what their beliefs are, no matter what labels they use to identify themselves, what is something you need to hear from me right now that will make you believe that we are on the same side?
Ellin Bessner: I want to thank you both for being in our CJN remote studio here in the library. Thank you for being on our show.
Noam Citrin: Thank you. Thank you for talking to us.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Next week, we’ll bring you my conversation with a Palestinian peace activist who moved to Canada after October 7th and recently was able to bring his family over. His environmental group, which he worked for in the West Bank and Israel, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize together with Women Wage Peace, the group the late Vivian Silver founded.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. The executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the theme music is by Dov Beck Levine. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Read how Standing Together launched several chapters in Canada beginning in 2024, in The CJN.
- Listen to The CJN Daily interview with Yafa Sakkejha, a Canadian entrepreneur of Palestinian descent and member of Toronto Friends of Standing Together, who organized the Canada Peace Summit on April 24.
- Watch the recorded Canada Peace Summit on YouTube.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
Support our show
- Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
- Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
- Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)
