“There is Another Way” – Moving Toward Israeli-Palestinian Collective Liberation
“Viewer discretion is advised,” introduces the documentary “There is Another Way,” to prepare viewers for video footage from bodycams used by Hamas on October 7 and from the Israeli military during excursions. The images, as noted, are “difficult.” However, so is the overwhelming psychic pain expressed by those Palestinians and Israelis who have lost loved ones and whose lives have been forever changed by violence in the land.
Director Stephen Apkon has delivered a follow-up documentary to the 2016 “Disturbing the Peace,” which examined the beginnings of Combatants for Peace (CFP). This Israeli and Palestinian binational organization seeks to bring together “former enemy combatants.”
The group now includes those who have not been in battle but who have committed to the mission of non-violence and examining the narratives that formed an integral part of their upbringing and consciousness. Despite constant challenges, they stretch themselves to connect with “the other,” previously the perpetrator of their nightmares, in order to move toward “collective liberation.” Nothing would challenge them more than the events of October 7 and its aftermath.
Where to start? The film uses archival material of disparate content with the quote, “Stories rarely have clear beginnings.”
Images of the sun over Jerusalem and the separation wall morph into on-the-ground shots of October 7. Some footage is familiar, some isn’t. We witness Hamas fighters as they break through protective fencing and barriers, and their elation over what they have achieved. The incursion into Kibbutz Be’eri is shown in graphic detail. The final communication between Yonatan Zeigen and his mother, peace activist Vivian Silver, is shared. Her message, “They are inside the house,” is chilling.
A voiceover comments on Israelis and Palestinians. “We find that we actually have something in common. That willingness to kill people we don’t know.”
Apkon takes the viewer back to when Israeli soldiers who no longer wanted to serve in the Occupied Territories heard that there were Palestinians moving away from armed action as a model for resolution. Featured in the film, along with their personal stories of evolution, are several founding members of Combatants for Peace.
The current Director of CFP is co-founder Sulaiman Khatib. After attacking two IDF soldiers when he was 14 years old, Khatib served a decade in Israeli prisons. While incarcerated, he went on hunger strikes and learned English, Hebrew, and the history of the Jews.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Chen Alon, became a co-founder after the defining move of signing onto the Courage to Refuse letter of 2002. Fifty combat officers and soldiers endorsed the missive, stating they would no longer serve in the Occupied Territories.
Jamel Qassas’s family was displaced in 1948. He was born in a refugee camp outside of Bethlehem and watched the IDF kill his brother during the First Intifada. He was in and out of Israeli jails over a dozen times.
Kibbutz-raised Avner Wishnitzer served for four years in an elite IDF unit. In 2003, he also publicly refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. He is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace and sees his work as a model for other areas of conflict around the world.
Ahmed Al-Helou’s family was displaced from Gaza and then resettled in Jericho. He joined Hamas as a teenager and was sent to prison when he was 15-years-old. While there, he was exposed to new ideologies and relates how he “divorced Hamas” and began a new phase of his life.
The Israeli allies in CFP have a primary resolution: To “stand in solidarity with all Palestinians who live under occupation.”
When October 7 occurred, both Palestinians and Israelis realized something huge was happening on an unprecedented scale. How would the group move forward? Would they be triggered and revert to “gut reactions?” Experience euphoria that there had been a break from the Gaza prison that limited their lives? Backslide to a desire for revenge in response to the murders at the Kibbutz and the music festival?
The core alliance found its way back to each other. Suliman Khatib felt an internal shift on “a moral basis to “shame, and [a] disconnection to the violence.” He reflected, “This is not a struggle for freedom.”
Chen Alon grappled with his anger. Yet once he received a message from Jamel Qassas, “It changed everything.” Qassas wanted the group to issue a joint statement. “It is now when you have to show your commitment,” he said. Key members mutually agreed that an urgent meeting was essential, to “sit and talk truthfully about our feelings.”
Alon spoke about his shock at seeing the carnage in the Kibbutz. “It was the first time we saw piles of bodies of Israelis…although it looks the same.”
Meanwhile, retribution in Gaza was about to commence. Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant closed Gaza off to everything from food to electricity. He incited the Israeli public with the nefarious comment, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Netanyahu’s rallying cry was, “Total victory over Hamas.”
Now it was the turn of the Israelis to call their Palestinian companions to find out how they were and if they were safe. There are images of dead Palestinian children and babies, as well as limb extremities partially exposed from under the rubble of destroyed construction. A widely disseminated clip that had circulated on American news media shows a Palestinian man with his hands lifted to the sky. He asks repeatedly in despair, “Where is the humanity?”
Nothing was more visceral than seeing Palestinian bodies wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, lined up in a ditch, then covered with dirt pushed forward by a bulldozer. It was impossible not to visualize the parallel of dead European Jews in shallow graves.
Six days after October 7, CFP decided to do a group Zoom. It wasn’t easy.
Iris Gur, an educator and former school principal, had an opening request: “Recognize my pain now.”
There was fragmentation within the group. They lost people. Some went to the army, a “red line” in CFP. Suliman Khatib, who spoke of his allegiance to the core values of CFP, said, “You can’t step away from peace when it gets more difficult.” He referenced his ongoing suffering from checkpoints, arrests, and stolen land.
Two weeks later, thirty CFP members met for an entire weekend. They openly shared their rawest emotions from the “very first hours and moments of October 7.” The question, “How can we continue together?” was the top concern. There was anger, grief, fighting, and “being human together.” But it was “words, not bullets.”
“You acknowledge the pain,” Iris Gur stated. “Then you move forward.”
Gur’s insights reflected the disconnect between internalized “truths” and the ignored larger realities. Gur said, “I used to learn about pogroms in Europe. It’s the same. It’s the same.” In her actions with individual soldiers who were protecting settlers, she told them, “You don’t have to do everything without thinking.” Gur opined, “They are brainwashed.” When commenting on the behavior of many IDF soldiers, Gur’s perception was, “The evil is inside us. It’s getting inside. The whole society is collapsing.”
The group decided to do a media blitz, giving interviews to outlets who were willing to hear how “Israeli democracy cannot coexist with occupation.” From the New York Times to Democracy Now, they shared their views.
The section of the film highlighting the violence of messianic settlers in the West Bank is quite disturbing. One Israeli pronounces, “No Palestine. It’s finished, Palestine. It’s Bibi in the government.” The settlers are enabled to intimidate, harass, and physically assault Palestinians, Israelis, and international advocates with the backing of the government and the IDF running interference for them.
Seeing young men with payos, kippahs, and tallitot acting with gleeful malevolence presents the disconnect between “religion” and reality. Young male Israeli soldiers, filled with bravado and indifference to the havoc they are involved in wreaking, are seen casually smoking as homes and buildings in Gaza are exploding behind them.
Mai Shahin, a Palestinian activist and therapist trained in conflict resolution, talked about the essential concern of water resources in the West Bank, specifically in Jericho. Shahin said,”Water is a source of life. One hundred Palestinian families depend on it. They won’t let the sheep drink. They block the way.” The settlers not only obstruct the water [al-Auja spring], they destroy pipes. It is clear, as a Palestinian man attests, “The goal is to displace us, to take over the land.”
MP Offer Cassif was present at a water protection action, along with Shahin, Iris Gur, and Chen Alon. A member of the Hadash political party, Cassif offers an explanation of the ongoing struggle and how it isn’t about Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, he said, “It is between those who do evil and those who struggle for justice. We are on the side of justice.”
The scene shifts to the 2024 Joint Memorial Ceremony staged by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle Family Forum. After fifty minutes of watching what results from hate and destruction, it is a balm.
Individuals spoke about “taking responsibility to stop the killing” and the goal of “turning opponents into people you can work with and live with.” Michal Halev, mother of Laor Abramov (killed at the Nova Music Festival), directed her comments to all mothers, referencing the “pain that cannot be healed” and “paving the road to peace.” When Halev learned that her son’s name had been written on a missile going to Gaza, she objected. “In my name, I want no vengeance.” Halev did not want her only son’s name on a piece of lethal ammunition.
Unable to attend the ceremony due to the closure of the West Bank, Ahmed Al-Helou sent a recording. When speaking of his hopes, he also told of the sixty dead members of his family in Gaza. “How does this bring security for Israel?” he asked.
Yonatan Zeigen emphasized “mutual bereavement.” His mother’s work was on the audience’s mind when he acknowledged that the torch had been passed to him. He said, “May it be extinguished on my watch so I don’t have to pass it on to my children.”
At the film’s close, statistics relating the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians, displacements of Gazans, and numbers of Israeli hostages (alive and assumed dead) are listed. The $18 billion in “weapons and military aid” given to the state of Israel since October 2023 is compared to the slightly more than $1 billion provided to the Palestinian people for humanitarian aid.
Chen declares definitively, “The most difficult thing in life, really, is to put yourself in the shoes of the other.”
On April 29, Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle – Families Forum are holding their 20th Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony: Choosing Humanity, Choosing Hope
Live Broadcast 20:30 Jerusalem | 19:30 Berlin | 13:30 New York | 10:30 Los Angeles
Learn more here.
Photos: Courtesy of Reconsider