An Israeli and a Palestinian Choose to Talk

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Tonight at the 92nd Street Y, a Palestinian and Israeli father are coming together to observe the third anniversary of the Hamas massacre in Israel and the horrors of the response that has followed in Gaza. One saw his son held hostage by Hamas for nearly 500 days, the other unspeakably and multiple times devastated by the loss of his wife, his mother, and two children in Gaza, as well as other family members in Israeli airstrikes. They both say there can be a better way. They are calling their event, Across the Divide, a Palestinian and an Israeli father, Jews dialogue. Jaser AbuMousa has spent decades leading what he describes as governance, reconstruction, and conflict-sensitive development in Gaza. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and Senior Policy Advisor at the International Peace Institute. Last year, he was also chosen to supervise graduate students and lecture on post-conflict recovery, social cohesion, and resilience at Yale. Also, maybe some of you read the interview of him in The New Yorker last month.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, currently a Visiting Professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, is Chair of Soviet and East European Jewry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has also chaired the Russian Studies and Jewish History Departments there, and for the past 45 years, he has been a member of Kibbutz near Oz, which was devastated on October 7th.

Jasser and Jonathan, thank you for coming on the radio on the morning before your Manhattan event, and generally for your courage in trying to reach across the divide as you call it. Welcome to WNYC.

Jaser AbuMousa (1:59)

Thank you, Brian, for having us.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen (2:00)

Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer (2:01)

Would you each start by saying how you came together for this kind of thing? Do you know each other a long time? Jasser, would you like to begin?

Jaser AbuMousa (2:10)

This is the first time we meet in person, actually. This morning. We have been meeting online, but the credit goes to Sam Sutton from Columbia University. She connected us.

I participated in some event last June with SIPA, and she proposed actually to connect me with Jonathan, and the idea developed afterwards.

Brian Lehrer (2:35)

Jonathan, want to pick it up?

Jonathan Dekel-Chen (2:37)

Sure, yeah. We, in a way, we have been in contact for a number of weeks now, virtually, but for the first time met a few minutes ago, actually, just before coming on. I suppose the underlying reason that we are together is that both of us, from very different perspectives, understand that this is a moment in time where we have to be looking forward and not just re-adjudicating what has already happened. And the reason, one of the reasons that I'm here at Columbia, the School of International and Public Affairs, is to be able to initiate and foster these kinds of conversations in order to move us all forward.

Brian Lehrer (3:25)

Well, before we get more into how you're trying to cross the divide and challenge existing narratives and move everyone forward, I understand you're both prepared and maybe want to discuss just a little bit of what you and your families have actually been through. Jaser, just reading about your losses in your immediate family and beyond, my God, I'm sure it's almost unfathomable to people in the outside world who are not living through war and destruction of really a whole society.

So the floor is yours for however you would like to begin on that and however briefly you would like to do it.

Jaser AbuMousa (4:03)

Thank you, Brian.

It's very difficult to talk about. But before that, I want to talk about this day in particular, which three years from now, near Oz was attacked by Hamas and the people of-

Brian Lehrer (4:19)

The kibbutz on which Jonathan has lived.

Jaser AbuMousa (4:22)

Yeah, and the people of Jonathan were some were murdered and some were taken into Gaza. After a week from that date, my house was bombed and I still don't know why.

My wife and my eldest son and my youngest son were killed with my nephew and my cousin, my sister-in-law that was in the first strike. My wife was an extraordinary person. She was an architect, she was teaching at the university, she was a novelist, she was a poet, and I want to give a shout out to Naama Goldstein, that she helps me with bringing my wife's words to English. She's a writer from Boston.

Then later on in July 2025, when my mother and my sister and her children were seeking refuge at my uncle's house in Derebala, which is the middle city in the Gaza Strip, another airstrike killed them all. Yeah, it is devastating, and it is, as you said, unfathomable. But the point is, we need to go forward, not for me, but for the next generation. That is actually left for the war to be raised by, and I think we are losing an enormous chance, actually, to plant hope. We are not romantic. I don't like Jonathan. Jonathan doesn't like me, not necessarily. I mean, I mean, maybe in the future we do.