John Munayer, a Palestinian Christian who grew up attending school in Israel, was 11 years old when he and his friend got into a debate in their history class. Munayer, whose parents were displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, had challenged the narrative his teacher had presented.
His friend turned to face him and said, “Are you with us, or are you with them?”
When Munayer returned home, he asked his father how he should have responded. He didn’t get the answer he was looking for. “He looked at me with his glasses, and he said, ‘What are you going to do about it?'” he said.
For Munayer, his dad’s response sparked a lifetime of compassionate, positive interfaith dialogue.
On Oct. 23 at the Impact and Prosperity Epicenter, Munayer was joined by Hana Bendcowsky, the program director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCJCR) and an Israeli Jew and Muhammed Mehtar, the religious director and imam of the Islamic Center of Conejo Valley (ICCV) for a post-Oct. 7 interfaith conversation.
The speakers took turns sharing details of the way Oct. 7 impacted their lives, the work they’ve done to heal others since and their hopes for the future of peaceful dialogue.
“[There’s] one thing we all want,” Mehtar said. “We want peace, we want love, we want prosperity. We want food … why can’t we extend that upon all the other individuals as well?”
Navigating trauma
In the days following the attack and subsequent invasion, Bendcowsky felt paralyzed. “I couldn’t think, I couldn’t watch the news, I couldn’t talk, I definitely couldn’t work,” she said.
To navigate life after Oct. 7, Bendcowsky’s team at JCJCR took the trauma-healing practices they usually recommend others and applied it to themselves. In one exercise, the team sat together to take turns identifying their greatest concerns, allowing them to reflect on their experiences in the month following the attack.
“We had some questions about other things that are not necessarily related to the war, about God or Divine Presence, about dreams, about family, about figures in your life,” Bendcowsky said. “It’s an opportunity for them to listen to me, and it’s an opportunity for me to hear myself … [the practice] really brings people together.”
Now, her goal is to heal. “What can I do to repair? To heal?” Bendcowsky said. “By discussing these traumas together, by opening it and reflecting on it by myself and with my colleagues, it allowed me to find the hope I needed to continue the work that we’re doing.”
Prioritizing compassion
The panel’s conversation centered around kindness, respect and working through tensions. “I think it’s very important to know that compassion is not limited and you can be compassionate to different people,” Bendcowsky said. “You don’t have to be compassionate to all the Palestinians or all the Israelis, but you have to have the possibility to be compassionate to different people.”
The trio also urged people to look past their differences. “When I look at you, I look at you as different. You look at me as a weirdo. That’s not going to work,” Mehtar said. “If you can minimize othering, and look for commonalities between yourself and others … we are far more in common as humans than different.”
Munayer cautioned the audience against selective compassion. “We need to have compassion for all groups, but we also really have to uphold the values of justice, freedom, human rights and safety, which is so important for many Jews but also safety for the Palestinian people as well,” he said. “And that’s why, when we’re engaging with this topic, we really need to be morally consistent because there’s no way one can feel compassionate for a group of people and somehow excuse both Oct. 7 or the genocide.”
Bendcowsky quoted the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a hostage who was close to many of her friends. “His parents kept saying, even after he was killed in Gaza, we are not limiting our compassion. Parents who lost their child, we are not limiting compassion. It’s not limited; there’s not a certain amount of compassion,” she said.
Moving forward, together
As the panelists opened up the room to questions, many simply asked, “What should we do next?”
“I think that this is the work that you need to do,” Munayer said, echoing his father’s words. “We have a lot of work to do back home. You need to figure out what you need to do here.”
The panelists urged people, especially the young, to be compassionate, have open conversations and support each other, furthering the goals of peace and prosperity.
“Young ones are on the right side of history,” Mehtar said. “It’s just that old goons like us have to give them the support and get them on track. And the problem is not them. Sometimes, the problem is leadership. And if leadership comes right and allows them to express themselves, I think they can do a phenomenal job.”
Mehtar wrapped up the conversation by explaining why Alexander the Great always acted in others’ best interests. “He didn’t say, ‘What’s in it for me?'” Mehtar said. “What did he say? He said the following: ‘God has given me greatness, God has given me goodness.’ I’m just sharing that with you folks.”
