Molly Malekar
Posted on | November 7, 2008 | No Comments
Director of Bat Shalom of The Jerusalem Link
As a peace activist, you have chances every day to feel angry. You deal with peace, but you deal with violations of peace and human rights. I’ve tried to build an internal discipline not to be angry. One thing that relieves me is—maybe it’s age—knowing that peace will not be achieved within my lifetime. We have a long way to go and will not necessarily see the fruits of our work. It’s a marathon—and anger destroys energy.
How did you become a peace activist?
Marginalization, being an immigrant, not part of the ethos of the Mayflower of the Israelis, gave me freedom to discover things, to ask questions, to see who is dominant and who is subject to dominance. The margins give you freedom not to be captured in the “taken for granted” or subjected to the tyranny of the majority. It is also loneliness. I don’t know anything else.
I was born in India, in Mumbai. My parents were Zionists; we came to Israel when I was nine. I was raised in a small development town south of Tel Aviv with immigrants from North Africa, Argentina, ex-Russia, and our very tiny community of Jews from India. The Jews arrived in India far back, after the destruction of the first temple.
Tell us about your work with Bat Shalom.
Bat Shalom is a feminist movement of Israeli women working for more than 14 years with Palestinian women in the occupied territories. In Hebrew, Bat Shalom means Daughters of Peace. We are made of women who are politicians, women coming from political parties, grassroots women, and women from urban centers like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The common ingredient that brings all these different women together is their commitment to bring peace to the Middle East.
What questions did you ask?
History books taught that in ‘48 the Palestinians fled of their own will. My instinct was, if most of the people were villagers and, as we know, farmers do not leave their land easily, then it can’t be a big number who fled of their own will. But we were not exposed to the other narrative. For a long time there was no such thing called the Palestinian people for Israelis.
I met Arab students at Hebrew University and was inspired to learn more about Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. I was fascinated. Not that I found it strange; I came from India, which traditionally has been a pluralistic society supporting diverse languages, cultures, and religions. It wasn’t strange for me to find ways to reach out to people from a different culture.
Much of your protest and advocacy work is against the Wall.
Crossing the Wall is not only a political activity for me; it is really a personal decision. Even if I can find some mutual zones in which I can meet with my Palestinian friends, I still want to cross into the Palestinian territories. I want to witness. I want to tell my Palestinian friends that I don’t give up. I want the Palestinian kids and the regular Palestinian people to see that there are different Israelis, not only soldiers or settlers.
Also, crossing the wall using the checkpoints and various ways invented by the Israeli army to stop people from crossing from one place to another signifies, in a way, climbing over the fear.
Now, as part of my subversive action on a personal level, I cross the Wall, but each time I am back on the Israeli side, the free side, I am relieved—we women have a long history of belonging to a collective kept behind walls.
The Wall is not only physical. For most Israelis, it is symbolic, as if there is something monstrous on the other side. We don’t want to hear, we don’t want to look, we don’t care what’s happening. I want to say that I do my work not only because I care what happens to Palestinians but for my own community. I want to be regarded as part of my Jewish and Israeli community, and your own community regards you as an enemy. That’s my struggle.
I do believe in the right for the Jews for a secure, independent State of Israel. We have the right, but it’s not enough. We have to make sure that our safety is not achieved at the expense of weapons or walls. I don’t believe in that kind of security. So, I keep on crossing the checkpoints, I keep on crossing the walls, and I keep on crossing the borders.
The graffiti on the Wall is amazing. It’s beautiful, humorous, patient.
People must see something aesthetic, it is human. If there is a monstrous thing imposed on you, what are you to do? You try to make it a little bit beautiful, color it, paint it, make it something nice your eyes can look at. But isn’t it amazingly sad?
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
Getting up every morning and saying, “Yes, I still believe it is possible.” The most courageous thing humankind can do is not to give in to pessimism.
What makes you angry?
If you are a peacemaker, you have to make the effort to put your anger aside. It’s destroying energy. As a peace activist, you have a lot of chances everyday to feel angry. You deal with peace, but you witness every day the violation of peace and human rights. Along the years, I try to build some kind of discipline within myself not to be angry. One of the things that relieve me is knowing that peace will not be achieved within my lifetime. It’s like a marathon that we’re all in. You have a long way to run, so keep patient.
When people ask me, “Can you give us a guarantee that if we support the end of the occupation, we are definitely going to have peace?” And I try to be very honest and say, “No, I have no guarantees. But I do know that the other way certainly failed.” To be true to yourself and to be true to what you believe in also means sharing the doubts.
If there were one thing that you could tell the people of the world about the situation here, what would it be?
Amazingly enough, the two societies are so alike. Amazingly enough, these two people can live together more than the people outside this region can imagine. If you look at Israeli society with the popular culture, the music, the food, we actually resemble the Palestinians. We share so many things together that it is possible.
Founded in 1994, The Jerusalem Link is the coordinating body of two independent women’s centers—Bat Shalom in West Jerusalem and Jerusalem Center for Women in East Jerusalem. Malekar immigrated at age nine with her Zionist parents from Mumbai, India. She has been active in peace dialogue and demonstrations since her teens. The Jerusalem Link supports self-determination of both peoples along the 1967 boundaries.
