By David Rubin Sauvage and Kawtar El Alaoui
We contend it’s possible to achieve peace in the Middle East. By peace, we don’t mean a ceasefire, a settlement or even a peace treaty. Peace isn’t laying down arms–only to pick them up again at the next provocation. True peace is something softer, more delicate. It’s about mutual respect and care. It’s about lasting harmony between peoples.
Let’s acknowledge that nothing so far has worked. We’re not only stuck in cycles of violence, we’re stuck in our approach to peacemaking. The approach consists of getting politicians and diplomats together at the negotiating table and “finding a solution.” The reason this hasn’t worked is because the issues animating this war are far deeper than anything negotiations can touch.
In the months after October 7, the two of us tested out an approach to peacemaking. We called it “How We Make Peace: A Muslim and a Jew Demonstrate Radical Empathy.” The experiment consisted of three public conversations over Zoom. These weren’t policy conversations. These were expressions of our deepest and truest emotions related to the war. The approach was similar to what parties in conflict might do in a mediation, but with more depth. The material we were surfacing wasn’t about us.
It was about our respective identities. We are Kawtar, a Moroccan-Canadian Muslim woman, and David, an American Jewish man of Ashkenazi descent. What made this kind of conversation possible is that, for the last decade, we’ve been on our own, separate healing journeys. A healing journey is another way of saying we’ve been working through trauma.
David found his way out of depression and suicidality through a combination of somatic work, journaling, time in nature and psychedelic medicine. He discovered his pain was passed down through generations of Eastern European Jewry. Kawtar suffered from complex PTSD from childhood abuse, a violent marriage and shocking experiences with Islamophobia and systematic racism. She confronted the tensions between her culture of origin and Western colonial structures. Her journey consisted of parts work, energy healing, transformational coaching and intergenerational trauma healing work.
We emerged from our journeys as guides and teachers of emotional intelligence. When we came together for our conversations, our intention was to surface and process the psychological material at the root of the conflict. This psychological material lives in both of us, as it does in all Muslims, Jews and Middle Easterners. Experience has taught us that by airing all the dark stuff in public we resolve a little bit of it for the collective.
We gave voice to our shadows. Shadows are aspects of ourselves we don’t see or don’t want to see. Like many descendants of Holocaust survivors, David derives safety from Israel. The shadow that emerged is that when David’s safety is threatened, he can lose all compassion. It was hard to admit, but David actually said a part of him wanted Palestinians to die. Then the whole world would get the message: Don’t fuck with Israel. This part was, frankly, genocidal.
Kawtar gave voice to rage. Rage at Israel’s violence, rage at Gaza’s destruction, and rage at the double standard that valued David’s life over hers. Below this rage was desperation. This desperation could make a person do anything to reclaim a sense of power over their world, even kill. Kawtar is a very loving person. But this part was like a terrorist part.
When David voiced his genocidal part, Kawtar expressed sympathy and understanding. When Kawtar voiced her terrorist part, David expressed sympathy and understanding. As a result of being voiced and witnessed, these two violent parts softened.
Parts Work, a popular healing methodology, teaches that the psyche is made up of parts. Parts often emerge through trauma, as a way of protecting the self. The work of healing is identifying and integrating these fragmented parts. Peacemaking therefore can be seen as the integration of the shadow parts of the parties in conflict. This integration facilitates relationships based on an appreciation of our differences.
The witnesses, which included many Jews and Muslims, found hope. As one attendee said, “I left with heightened compassion and understanding. Just seeing this format could help any of us use it for healing in our communities.” Another shared that “I’m continuing to process the incredibly compassionate communication skills that I witnessed during that event. It was like nothing I had seen before.” There were dozens of reactions like this.
We can all do this work at some level, wherever we are in our healing process. There are organizations that offer spaces for real conversations about the war, like the Compassionate Listening Project. Kawtar trains leaders and groups in the skills we modeled and supports them in their healing journeys. But you can start now. Just seek someone out, even someone who triggers you, and see if they’re open to it. Set some ground rules and give it a try. You’ll make mistakes. It’s okay. We’re all learning.
As we get better at it, we develop compassion not only for people who disagree with us, but for people who hate us, even who want to kill us. Compassion is not the same as minimizing or enabling. Compassion is recognizing that the person who would kill you would do so only because they’re traumatized themselves. Wisdom is recognizing that unless we address that pain, all the way down to its root, it will show up again and again as terrorism, war and even genocide. Healing is the only solution.
Right now, our political culture is blind to the role trauma and shadow plays in our conflicts. If we continue to ignore trauma, then no matter what deal leaders strike, they invite war in through the back door. And if you are a leader, the hard truth you need to face is that if you have not reckoned with your own trauma, you’re inevitably amplifying it, no matter your intentions. It’s your responsibility to focus on healing.
We have to make healing a central part of the discourse. The only real peace process is a healing process.
About the authors
Kawtar El Alaoui is a non-traditional peace-builder who wears multiple hats. In all her roles, Kawtar facilitates cultural transformation with the purpose of co-creating a world where everyone lives in dignity and peace. She is the author of the book Unfolding Peace, 9 Leadership Principles for Creating Cultures of Well-being and Peace. You can find out more about Kawtar’s work and her organization, Conscious Togetherness.
David Sauvage is a teacher of emotional intelligence, a facilitator of healing experiences, a performance artist and a writer. He loves modeling empathy, deep listening and healthy communication with the hope that it finds its way into mainstream culture. He founded a non-profit, Culture of Healing. You can learn more about him on his website.
Comments