Three years after October 7, 2023

For a downloadable, audio-only recording, click here.

Transcript:

Maytal Kowalski

Hi there, Jon.

Jon Allen

Hi, Maytal.

Maytal Kowalski

How are you doing?

Jon Allen

I’m I’m okay.

Maytal Kowalski

Good.

Jon Allen

Okay.

Maytal Kowalski

Good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, today’s october 6. We’ll we’ll release this on october 7. So obviously, I think that folks are anyone tuning in, anyone listening to this, I think acknowledges that today is is a heavy day. So you know, holding holding some space for that, and and just recognizing that that sometimes we sometimes we do this, and sometimes we have to have these difficult conversations at times where we are also feeling feeling a lot, and that’s what we’re gonna that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, and so I just wanted to you know I think let’s start if if we can I’d like to start with just kind of thinking back to what is now three years from now or three years ago October 7 2023 it’s insane that this much time has has passed, and thinking of everything that happened. But can you remember back to to that day or that early morning, or when when you like when was it that you heard the news? And just if you can remember kind of what went through your mind and what those initial hours and days were like.

Jon Allen

Sure. Well, I was in a very kind of odd situation in the sense that my sister happened to be visiting from Israel. She was in Toronto. She was staying with us

Jon Allen

and we got the news. She lives on a kibbutz in the north, close to the Lebanese and Syrian borders, not not close to the Gaza Strip at all. But needless to say, she was in shock. Interestingly, she was just in town again, and she recalled that she really didn’t have a true sense of what happened being here, not being you know bombarded by the TV and the radio of Israel. She, of course, was speaking to her three kids about what happened, and then although she wanted to fly right back, she was stuck here because there were no for a week or so there were no flights flying back into Israel, and she eventually did get on a plane via New York and get back. But so that was that was the initial feeling. I’m also part of a group called J Link, which brings together a variety of progressive Jews from Israel, Italy, Argentina, Canada, the UK, Australia, and we were on a call very shortly after October seven with Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch and Susie Becher, all living in Israel, and we’re experiencing the shock and the pain that they were feeling, indeed, in one of the calls we were in mid-conversation, and Alon had to run down to the shelter with her, his children and grandchildren because they lived in this compound. So it, it of course, you know, brought brought closely to home, what they were going through and and what we were observing, but it was it was obviously the beginning of of the largest trauma that Israelis and many in the diaspora had experienced. In some ways, I think larger than 73 and 67.

Maytal Kowalski

yeah. And Alon Liel, for those that don’t know, is the former former Israeli ambassador to South Africa. Is that right?

Jon Allen

Former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, deputy minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and his wife is the international president of New Israel Fund.

Maytal Kowalski

Ah,

Jon Allen

Rachel Liel

Maytal Kowalski

Okay, cool. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that what you’re touching on is exactly right. The disconnect of of kind of how it felt in the diaspora, because of course, 630 in the morning here in Vancouver is still, you know, I’m still up. Like I haven’t gone to sleep yet. It’s still nighttime for me. And I remember, you know, my mom texting me and saying like, “Hey, something really crazy is going on in Israel now. If we recall the, I believe it was the day before that where. Well, one of one of the kind of like extreme right Knesset members, Tsvi Sukkot, went into Hawara, the the village in the West Bank that has been at the center of many settler pogroms. There went into Hawara to to build a sukkah and specifically to you know incite some sort of of flare up there, and you know, which was just such a like I just just such a you know disgrace of of of our traditions and Jewish holidays and Jewish values. So when my mom texted me, I’m kind of thinking like, yeah, I mean, look at look look at what these crazies in the government are doing. You know, what did they expect was kind of my my response. And then and then exactly to your point, like because you’re not watching the TV, you’re not seeing it, you’re not realizing actually, you know, I’m thinking it’s like okay, a couple, you know, it’s it’s the and not to brush any of this off either, but it’s the same kind of like volleys of rockets go to the bomb shelter. You also. will, you know, there’ll be some fighting for six days, and then U.S. is going to broker a, you know, a ceasefire. What what we’ve seen in the past, right? And then, and then, you know, I remember her kind of like still texting me, just saying like, no, no, no, I think it’s something different. Like, you gotta like check out what’s happening. And then, you know, I I kind of started streaming Israeli news and just seeing that it was just no one, no one knew what to report on. Like no one knew what was happening, and the feeds were like going in and out. And the like side, if people are familiar with what happens during you know during wars or during threats in Israel, where the side of the news will show you like which bomb shelters, which which areas of the of the country are requiring you to go to a bomb shelter? Is like I was like, oh, it’s malfunctioning because it’s showing literally every city in Israel. So it’s obviously malfunctioning. But then realizing like, no, that is actually what we’re seeing. And it was it was thinking about thinking about everything that had been happening up until that point in Israel, and then seeing this happen just felt like such a it all compounded into that huge trauma that you’re talking about. That I think also to your point of like why it felt in in many ways different than 67 and 73, not just the invasion, the threat on on Israel’s sovereign territory, taking hostages, including children, women, elderly, but also I think that this this mirage of of safety that I think we all felt that Israel now now had become, and that it was this strong superpower, and that Israel was always going to keep Jews relatively safe. Yes, maybe you have to run to a bomb shelter, but you are going to be okay. You can live on the border of Gaza. You can live up in the north on the Lebanese Syrian border, and the state will keep you safe, and the protections of the state will keep you safe. It really, really shattered for people. I was at the Gaza border, you know, like three months prior with with Gisha actually hearing about kind of some of the issues happening in Gaza.

Maytal Kowalski

I was not looking at that border, thinking, oh, in a few in a mere in a few mere months they’re going to break through there. So, yeah, it really I think had just just such a massive, a massive impact on all of us. Like, I, I think it’s so hard for us to put into words. Thinking back to it, like, yeah, what did we feel? Because we kind of just felt a whole lot of confusion.

Jon Allen

The, and the other aspect I think that we didn’t quite realize was that there was a real fear that Hezbollah and possibly Iran and maybe the Houthis were going to join in because we know subsequently that Hamas did actually ask them to join in, and I think you know Israelis in the north and even in Tel Aviv were worried that this was just a prelude to something much greater. Bad enough as it was, but it could have been a war on on all fronts, and and certainly that was freaking Israelis out. And as you mentioned, you know about Gaza, of course, I knew, and I think you knew, Vivian Silver, who lived on Kibbutz Be’eri, was a huge peace activist and started Women Wage Peace with her Palestinian counterparts. They employed Gazans on the kibbutz to do agricultural work. This was such a horror show for for all those people, for everybody, of course. But for people who had reached out to Gazans to experience this was. Such a sense of tradership, etc. Yeah, yeah,

Maytal Kowalski

yeah, and you know, and I’ll say actually, what’s what what you’re touching on in terms of the connection to Vivian Silver, I think it then also kind of shows. On one hand, we felt so far away and disconnected, and then on the other hand, it became so clear how close. You know, it was really a testament to that. You know, the thing that that that we talk about a lot at J Space of Kolbnesrada Ravimza is that like we are ultimately still all connected because I remember in the days after you know both both of us being being proud Winnipeggers and Vivian Silver also being from Winnipeg. You know, in the days after, like people reaching out to me knowing that I’m involved in the Jewish community and the work that I do, and and saying like because remember at the beginning it was assumed that she had been taken hostage. We didn’t know for a while that actually she had she had been she had been murdered on that day, and people reaching out and saying you know I’m you know my my my husband is her nephew, or my this is her that. You know, we’re trying to find her. What are the contacts that you have in the Canadian government? How can you help? So it’s like, all of a sudden, this thing that separates us through you know 1000s of miles and oceans is really we realize just how close how how close and how interconnected we all are, which is also just so, just so so devastating, and and to your point about Vivian Silver, just such an incredible person, incredible person to lose, and and I think that that’s what that’s that’s kind of what we, well, what we remember of october 7, you know, like what were the lives of those those children going to be, and even those who came back, even the hostages that came back, and the the trauma that they’re dealing with, even the soldiers who are you know dealing with with with so much trauma, like what that does to a society, and who these people could be, and and who they ultimately will be as a result. You know, we’ll we’ll never we’ll never turn the clock back on that.

Jon Allen

I would just say, just to mention, on a more positive note, that Vivian’s son Jonathan continues to travel the world, advocating for peace with Palestinians, continuing the message of his mother

Maytal Kowalski

yeah, absolutely. And actually, you know what? I was just thinking about how the last time I was there, we actually visited her home on Barrie, and I I found I’ve gone to a few of the kibbutzim in the south and visited some of those homes and and visited the kibbutzim, and it’s it’s really difficult because you do feel like you’re doing like disaster tourism, it’s really hard to see the destruction in the after. And he wrote an incredible piece. That house has since been destroyed, and he wrote a really incredible piece about how he was glad that that that was that that was happening. And I think we’ll link to it in the email that we sent out about this because I think it’s a really interesting, and I think it’s a very uniquely Israeli way too of looking at things. Of kind of, okay, we need to, you know, we need to continue to survive, and we need to figure out how to thrive, and we need to move move on, and and let’s move on in this conversation because I know it’s it’s getting emotional, and and we are here to talk about policy, and and I’ve I’ve made you I’ve I’ve made us both dig into our into the places where we’re a bit less comfortable, which is the emotion. But I do want to talk about policy as well because that day doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And even as I’m hearing myself say, what could those lives have been? It’s impossible not to think of all the Gazan lives that have been destroyed, and Gaza itself, and what that could have been, and who those people could have been. And and the past three years, it’s not like that day happened and then we started, and then there was you know a war which you know absolutely justified, of course, you know a war that follows, but you know, all of our hopes were that it would be a war that would then lead to a diplomatic solution that would rid us of this idea of managing the conflict and would actually lead to diplomacy that would solve the conflict. And we’ve actually seen quite the opposite, we’ve seen a multi-front war that has opened up. We’ve seen a real shift in the entire Middle East, and I’m wondering if you can just talk about, to the extent that we can summarize it quickly, what has the past three years looked like in terms of shifting policy and Israeli government policy towards Gaza and the rest of the neighbors in the region.

Jon Allen

Well, it’s had a profound effect strategically for Israel. Israel always historically believed in short wars, wars that would stay away from. Their boundaries. They would go in. They would deal with it. They would get out and and and move on. And that’s what happened in Gaza in the past. And I think, in a sense, they learned their lessons in Lebanon in the 80s. And that’s in part why they decided that this was the best way to operate and to protect their people, their their military strategy has now changed, and it’s become a strategy of creating buffers. So in Gaza, they’ve gone from 56% of Gaza to 70% In Lebanon, they’ve occupied the southern part of Lebanon, and even in Syria, they have occupied territory that they didn’t control before, and they continue in all of those areas despite pressure from the Trump administration, in all three to act, and so in Gaza we have a war that, in many ways, it continues. 2.1 million Gazans located now in the south, in in an area about one quarter the size of of Detroit, amidst a humanitarian crisis, there are over 1000 Palestinians that have been killed. We’re in a kind of game where Hamas refuses to disarm unless Israel withdraws, and Israel refuses to withdraw unless Hamas disarms, and all of the actors that are part of the board of peace, the technical committee that’s supposed to come in and deal with reconstruction and water and urban issues and governance and rule of law is stuck in Cairo because Israel won’t let them in. The international stabilization force, 20,000 people, is is not allowed to come in, and the police and the the Palestinian Authority, which was supposed to come in and replace Hamas, is still not allowed to come in, and and sadly there are 1000s of injured Palestinians that can’t get out as well. So you know Israel remains in trauma. I would say that for most Israelis there is some concern about what’s going on in the West Bank, either because they think that what’s going on is is horrible, or because they see what’s happening to Israel’s reputation abroad, and whether they agree with sanctions or not. And most don’t, they see what’s happening, or they see what’s happening in polling in the United States and in Congress votes, etc. But I must say, Gaza’s largely off the radar because of the Iran War. It’s off the world’s radar in many ways, and in Israel, there’s not much thought about the situation there at all, and Israelis are, you know, they’re they’re focused on these upcoming elections. They’re either pro BB or anti BB. Much of it is, in some ways, October seven focused because those that demand an inquiry into what happened, an independent inquiry, and want Bibi to be held responsible, and then there are those that believe that he is the savior for Israel, etc. So, in some ways, Israel hasn’t moved on from October seven. The rest of the world has. People in Gaza certainly have not moved on by any stretch of the imagination. They continue to suffer. Somewhere between 70 and 80% of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, and there is no movement on the ground to begin to rehouse these people, do away with the rubble, and get involved in reconstruction.

Maytal Kowalski

Let me ask you a really specific question because I think that this is one that folks really struggle with, but myself included. And you know, you were talking about that kind of stalemate between Israel won’t leave until Hamas disarms, and Hamas says they won’t disarm until Israel leaves. There are so many conflicts in the world that have ended with some sort of treaty that that demands some sort of disarmament. I think that it sounds pretty reasonable to most people. Like, yeah, of course we’re not. Leave until they give up their weapons. Like, look what they did on october 7. Why would we leave with them having their weapons? So, I imagine that it’s a lot more complicated than them just like literally putting down their weapons and everyone going like, “Okay, I trust you now, and walking away. In past conflicts where disarmament has been a part of it, how does that work, and how should it be working now to actually get us past that stalemate of you know who who who does what first.

Jon Allen

Sure. Well, the most obvious example to look at is Northern Ireland, and part of what took place in Northern Ireland is unfortunately not present. You had two sides who had been fighting, killing, not in the numbers here, but brutal murders, and you had a situation where the two sides were amenable to sitting down at a table where the Americans were very much involved in a positive way, and the Brits, who had you know an oar in the in the game here, were nonetheless prepared to also play along. And Tony Blair, as prime minister, was very much committed to trying to make peace. So George Mitchell gets involved. General de Chastelaine from Canada, who’s been involved in decommissioning and disarming in the past, is the main guy on that front. It takes eight years. Okay, in other words, you don’t disarm overnight or decommission overnight. It’s a process that happens, and at least that’s that was the case there, and and I think the board of peace and Nicholas Milenov has proposed a process whereby heavy arms, to the extent that Hamas still has any, would be given up. They would be transferred to a neutral party, perhaps to Israel, perhaps to the U.S. To this group, military group that sits outside the Gaza border, then you would, you know, begin to move on smaller arms, etc. etc. And presumably, you know, the first stage would happen, and then Israel would withdraw a few kilometers, and then the second stage would begin to happen. There’d be a further withdrawal, but both sides appear to be sticking to their ultimate positions, which is no, no. You have to fully disarm before I make a step, or vice versa. Now, on July 30th, Hamas agreed to decommission their arms, which is, you know, another form. What if your if your arms can’t work, then then you’ve kind of disarmed. They didn’t want to use the term because that would have been giving in. That was rejected. I think you know perhaps the IDF didn’t trust them, didn’t believe them, but we’re sort of stuck right now. And I think until after the Israeli election, there won’t be any pressure from the Americans. They didn’t want to get involved in you know pushing Israel one way or the other. I don’t know who they’re hoping for, but them getting involved could have affected it. And we’ll see what happens after the election. We’ll see who’s elected, and we’ll see whether the Trump administration has the concentration and the political will to reengage, or whether they’re going to go attack Iran again, and once again, Israel Palestine will fall off the table as a as an issue.

Maytal Kowalski

So let me ask you about. I’m not going to ask you to predict the elections, and let’s not get too into the elections because I imagine that leading up, like closer to them or after them, we’ll probably have another conversation that will focus on the elections. But what I’m I’m curious actually to shift to you know we’ve also seen Canada take probably the most action on on the the Israeli Palestinian issue that we’ve seen maybe ever maybe in a long long long time. We recently saw them join the commitment that was spearheaded by the UK and 11 other countries, including Canada, on sanctions of trade with the with any illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which they noted as kind of a response to the. Fast tracking of the construction in an E1, which is kind of considered the you know we’ve talked about it before the Doomsday settlement, you know what will ultimately bisect major metropolitan areas in the West Bank and future Palestinian state. It’s clear from when you kind of look at the statement, you know nothing happened immediately, and it seems pretty clear that they are kind of saying, “Hey, this is something we’re going to do, unless there’s maybe a change of government and and and people pull back. Now we know that even those in opposition, and we see someone like Gutti Eisencott kind of maybe most primed to to form and lead and the next government should the opposition win. What do you think? Here’s what I’ll ask you to predict. Maybe this is harder, but what do you think is going to happen? I mean, these are not folks who are talking about a two-state solution, but I think that they are probably recognizing, if nothing else, what the reputation of Israel is on the international stage and how serious some of these moves are. Do you think that there would be at least a pullback from some of the most egregious expansion and and settlement? Like, where might there be a place where a where a future Israeli government that’s that is largely oppositional to what exists now might roll back some of this?

Jon Allen

Yeah, well, you and I would certainly hope that a new government would both, for the reasons you mentioned, reputational sanctions, the fact that more sanctions could come, etc. But also, you would hope for moral reasons and for reasons of do we have control of our own territory and do we have control of our own military and our own police because it’s clear that right now it’s the violent settlers that are controlling what’s happening and as we maybe mentioned before, the Supreme Court recently had the IDF and the police before them, basically saying, “You are not doing your job. You are out there protecting settlers. You are not protecting the Palestinians whose lives and property are under threat, so you would think that they would. I think we do have to step back, though, and recognize that one of the members of the anti-BB coalition is Avigdor Lieberman, who continues to advocate the Jordanian solution that you know, Jordan should absorb the Palestinians in the West Bank. I don’t know what he says about Gaza, but that you know, which is you know completely unrealistic, immoral, and and unhealthy. And and Bennett, who used to run a Settlement organization still, in some ways, advocates a form of annexation and giving Palestinians rights, etc. Who knows exactly where he’s at right now? So while we hope and believe, and I think I would predict that it’s not going to be easy, but they will take action to try and prevent this settler violence and try to bring the kinds of military and the kinds of IDF soldiers into the West Bank that will actually act, not the children of settlers or people who are pro-annexation. The other thing they they certainly could do is stop things like e1, any other settlement expansion, and and hopefully they will do that. I don’t think they will do much, at least immediately on Gaza. I would hope that somewhere between UN agencies and the Board of Peace and the Trump administration, the humanitarian crisis can be addressed, and there will be at least moves in that regard. I’m not sure about the political moves and the various forces that have to come in, so we’ll we you know we’ll we’ll have to wait and and see. It’s hard to predict, and I I agree with you. I think our all of our governments are waiting. They’ve announced, but we haven’t seen the regulations. They haven’t been specific about exactly what they’re going to do-is it financial institutions? Is it construction companies? Is it which settler organizations? And I think I don’t know, but I think they may be waiting, just as you said, to see whether a new government will pull back on the worst of the worst.

Maytal Kowalski

Yeah, and let’s talk about. We’re talking kind of about what may happen in the future in Israel, or what we may want to see, or what we may predict we’re going to see in the future in Israel. But I also talk about how this is affecting us here in Canada. You wrote, I think, what is probably one of the most important things to read and think about as we approach this third anniversary. You wrote a piece in Open Canada called “Turning Hate into Empathy, which is about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has impacted both Canadian Jews and Muslim communities here in Canada. We have definitely seen a rise of both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We have seen more polarization. We have seen more less willingness to kind of come together and to be able to speak to one another. And I think that both communities are rightfully and and and their allies and so many others are are rightfully really scared, and and it’s part of this larger trend of kind of just like a rise of divisiveness and hate and misinformation and you know kind of you know ideological political ideological arguments that are that turn from disagreements to real you know real hate and and violent action and violent language, and so for those of us who are kind of still holding anger and fear and resentment about what happened on october 7 and the rise of anti-Semitism that we’ve seen here in Canada since, what does it what does it actually look like when you talk about turning hate into empathy, what does that actually look like? How can we, in this, in much the same way that we’re talking about in Israel of reversing the worst of the worst? How do we get back to a place where we can talk to one another and not only talk to one another, but like hold empathy and hold care for for one another?

Jon Allen

It’s obviously not easy. I I I see it in myself sometimes when when I talk to people who, as I sort of say in the in the article, when I when I talk to people on the one hand who have these conspiracy theories that Bibi Netanyahu actually knew what was going on, and that he allowed it to happen, and that’s why it took six hours. And this was all really an effort to sacrifice some Israelis, but you know, then we’re going to wipe out Gazans and the Palestinians and commit genocide on that hand, and then I run into people who simply deny that 70,000 people were were murdered, even though the IDF has admitted it, and deny that there was any starvation, even though there was an 11 week siege at a time when there was already a huge humanitarian crisis. So it’s trying to to bridge the gap, and and these people. It’s not only that they’re all reading their their own feeds, which are are not only not telling them the facts, but making them angry, and then you add in the fear factor, you know, for Holocaust survivors, for kids, you know, grandmothers whose kids are going to universities and are telling them that their professors are saying like horrible anti-Semitic stuff, and then on the other side, you’ve got Palestinians who basically say they’ve forgotten about what’s going on in in Gaza. It’s like, oh, it’s over. Well, it’s not over. It’s not over, and it’s not over for for Muslims. And so, yeah, I mean, I just sort of set out the problem. But the I think we need leaders, and I’m talking about clergy. I’m talking about government leaders. This is where you know people have to step up and not just mouth it, but really try bring people together. I have a hard time. I’m. I can get very mad at people who are not prepared to acknowledge the pain, and I have to get over that. And and actually, I have to sit down with people and have conversations, and and regain empathy. Because as I said, there’s too many people sitting in their own lanes, and they’re driving down them, and they they don’t even want to hear about the other, and that’s not sort of what Canada is about. We’re we’re pretty good. We’re you know we’re good. We’re we’re trying on the indigenous. We’re trying on anti-black racism, but on this one, Jews and Muslims have have lost. Have lost it, and and they’re they’re they’re fearful and they’re turning inwards, and I I just think we have to we we have to open it up and and I hope that our especially our religious leaders can regain what they had before October seventh in helping their own congregations to move forward.

Maytal Kowalski

Yeah, really well put. I mean, I agree with you 100% I think this is really a place where leadership needs to come together. We have definitely been doing this at JSpace Canada. I know the organizations you’re involved with, with JLink, et cetera, are also you know these are organizations that are working on these things, but we do need backing, and we do need support, and we do need that support from our, like you said, our religious and faith leaders, but and also our politicians. I, you know, I understand how in the days followed, when things were so tense and it was so impossible to present a united front for our respective communities, why maybe there was a little bit more hesitation or folks were a little bit more quiet. But I think at this point, where we’re seeing it, as you said, kind of people in their silos, not being able to speak to one another, falling into these conspiracies, it is those leaders. It is those that have some sort of political or social capital. It is time for them, I think, to like cash in some of those political and social capital chips and say, “I am going to talk about this thing, and I am going to be a Jewish leader who engages with this Muslim leader, and we are going to show a different path forward. Because there’s only so much. I think there’s so much that civil society is trying to do on the ground, but but it but it, we do need to see it from the top too, and I think that everyone just kind of got used to retreating from the issue because of the fear of the backlash, and now it’s like, look, there’s always going to be backlash, but you’ve got to just boldly step into it and accept it in order to be able to kind of move us to to a better place. So, you know, I think that I think that that ultimately, after this this tough day and this tough conversation, I hope that we are still again ending on kind of a if not hopeful note, at least some sort of vision for the future and a way to move forward in in a better way. And I appreciate, I mean, this is something that you have quite literally dedicated your life and career to, and you are still committed to it with your with your gracious involvement in all in organizations such as ours and you know for for me building up J Space Canada being able to do that as well I I do hope that this is something that we can turn around that we can use this horrible day to kind of imagine a better future. So on this difficult day and through this tough conversation, I just want to thank you, John, for you know for being there for me, for being there for this organization, for doing the work that you do.

Jon Allen

Thank you, thank you so much, and thanks for the conversation. And we shall move forward.

Maytal Kowalski

We shall together. All right. Thanks so much, Jon. Take care.