Since the Israel-Hamas war began, Jewish and Arab diaspora communities have engaged in verbal attacks against each other. This kind of confrontation expresses frustration but fails to diminish hatred or aid those affected in Palestine and Israel. The authors identify themselves as daughters of Palestine and daughters of Israel. To foster genuine dialogue, both peoples' daughters must reclaim their shared humanity and heritage, advocating for justice together.
It has been more than 100 days since Hamas militants entered Israel, engaging in a violent spree involving brutal murders, rapes, and mutilations. In response to these well-coordinated and sophisticated attacks, Israel's actions have left much of the Gaza Strip nearly uninhabitable. The constant threat persists as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen launch daily attacks on Israel by air and sea, raising the potential for a full-scale escalation of hostilities across the entire region.
For the past four months, the two authors have experienced a constant state of conflict, even beyond the actual war. We observe our Jewish and Arab diaspora communities becoming increasingly divided by separation, animosity, and apprehension. As two women, we opt for a different approach: dialogue. We cannot predict the outcome of our conversations, for ourselves or anyone else, but we recognize that avoiding dialogue will only lead to further destruction through the process of dehumanizing each other. We reject participating in this bleak cycle.
Our Ultimate Goal and Hope: Speaking in One Voice
We are daughters of the land. Long ago, the Jewish matriarch Sarah, for reasons we will never know entirely, asked our shared patriarch, Abraham, to cast out Hagar and her son Ishmael. Ishmael, Abraham’s son by Hagar, became the father of the Arabs; Isaac, Abraham’s son by Sarah, became the father of the Jews. We don’t know why there was not room for two boys—Isaac and Isaac—bborn of two women, or why they both couldn’t live together in the land that God promised their father, Abraham. What we do know is that, because of that decision, our people are enduring the repercussions of those actions. Ishmael and Hagar were cast out. Later, the descendants of Isaac, for different reasons, left the land of Canaan too. After very different journeys, we have all returned.
We have connected and committed to each other as daughters of Abraham. We acknowledge that we are two members of a dysfunctional extended family whose discord is deadly. In spite of this, we opened our hearts and intentionally sought to foster connection. Something greater than us brought us together, and we believe it to be good.
One of us is a daughter of Palestine, the youngest of eight daughters. Her parents immigrated to America from a small village in the West Bank, called Deir Debwan, four miles east of Ramallah. Although her parents were in America, they held tight to their Palestinian culture and Muslim faith. Nada’s identity is deeply rooted in her Palestinian heritage, and she dreams of a peaceful, prosperous, free Palestine.
One of us is the daughter of Israel, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and the proud wife of a former IDF captain. She is Jewish, American, and Israeli. For her, every centimeter of Israel is steeped in her history and heritage, and her heart always yearns for Zion.
Together, Learning to Speak
We are both mothers. We are bringing up another generation of Palestinian and Israeli children in the diaspora. We feel the obligation—no, the choiceless choice to support our respective peoples who are suffering, dying both physical and spiritual deaths.
To the daughters of Palestine: Nobody is coming to save us—especially not the men who we allowed to lead and who contributed and continue to perpetuate this violence. Our leadership has failed. So it is our turn. We were born for such a time as this. We owe it to our ancestors and future generations—not despite the fact that we are privileged to be safe in our first-world countries, but because we are safe. Our people in Palestine are in survival mode. We are not. We can move toward reconciliation. We can talk—no, listen—to each other. We can intentionally reach out to the daughters of Israel just for the purpose of listening. We can hear their cries.
To the daughters of Israel: Once again, we are mostly alone, with very few willing to acknowledge us as human beings deserving of security and self-determination. The more we try to assert and insist on our right to exist, the more enemies we seem to make. Since October 7, we’ve learned that the most powerful leaders and spokespeople for international human rights and justice, and the most erudite, elite institutions of the world turn a blind eye or concur that the brutalization of our sisters’ bodies was reasonable, justified, and deserved. After all, we are the people who, generation after generation, believe that the panacea for all that ails humankind is to clean and rid it of the Jews. We are in survival mode. To come out of this alive, we need the daughters of Palestine. We can no longer pretend that we can do this alone.
The hardest aspect of this endeavor is battling the sense of betrayal towards our own community, which relies on us to amplify their pleas to the opposing side. It's painful to acknowledge the shortcomings of our own people, who have played a part in our ongoing suffering, yet it's essential.
This report has been revised and updated with additional information gathered from various sources.
To the daughters of Palestine: Nobody is coming to save us—especially not the men who we allowed to lead and who contributed and continue to perpetuate this violence. Our leadership has failed. So it is our turn. We were born for such a time as this. We owe it to our ancestors and future generations—not despite the fact that we are privileged to be safe in our first-world countries, but because we are safe. Our people in Palestine are in survival mode. We are not. We can move toward reconciliation. We can talk—no, listen—to each other. We can intentionally reach out to the daughters of Israel just for the purpose of listening. We can hear their cries.
To the daughters of Israel: Once again, we are mostly alone, with very few willing to acknowledge us as human beings deserving of security and self-determination. The more we try to assert and insist on our right to exist, the more enemies we seem to make. Since October 7, we’ve learned that the most powerful leaders and spokespeople for international human rights and justice, and the most erudite, elite institutions of the world turn a blind eye or concur that the brutalization of our sisters’ bodies was reasonable, justified, and deserved. After all, we are the people who, generation after generation, believe that the panacea for all that ails humankind is to clean and rid it of the Jews. We are in survival mode. To come out of this alive, we need the daughters of Palestine. We can no longer pretend that we can do this alone.
The hardest aspect of this endeavor is battling the sense of betrayal towards our own community, which relies on us to amplify their pleas to the opposing side. It's painful to acknowledge the shortcomings of our own people, who have played a part in our ongoing suffering, yet it's essential.
This report has been revised and updated with additional information gathered from various sources.
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