Growing up in Israel, I’ve been following the news since I was six years old, and I keep seeing the same thing over and over again:
The core principle behind how countries attempt to create safety – especially during war – is:
To threaten the other side and make them afraid enough that they won’t want to hurt you.
This isn’t what I see working between human beings. For a long time now, we’ve seen that this strategy doesn’t work – not in couples, not in the workplace, not in families, and not with children.
So how is it that in the political realm – which has the biggest impact on so many – we still use the most old-fashioned tools?
Interdependence and strategies to find safety; Some reflections after the War between Israel & Iran:
Humans are humans are humans. Countries are made up of humans.
❀ How humans like to be treated:
For the last 25 years, my focus has been to understand the details of what is going on between people: what creates conflict and pain, both between and within people, and how human beings deeply like to be treated. This goes beyond differences in culture.
People like to be welcome and appreciated, and to be met with a sense of curiosity about who they are, their experiences, and what is dear and important to them. If you want to come close to a human, you need to do it tenderly, with utmost delicacy and gentleness.
Bombs are the extreme opposite of gentleness.
I have a slight sense of what it means to be present when a bomb falls. I experienced a very small version of it when I was living in Israel and a suicide bomber exploded 150 meters behind me. They used 10 kg of explosives, and I felt the metallic taste in my teeth and the explosion in my heart. Or when I felt the ground shaking as a missile from Iraq fell a few kilometers away from my house.
But this is nothing compared to the size of the bombs Israel drops on Gaza, or the size of the bombs Iran sent to Israel – which can carry up to 500 kg of explosives.
Bombs are not gentle. This is far from how a human wants to be treated both emotionally and physically.
War is a tragic strategy for getting my needs heard and taken seriously into consideration. If I use violence to try to meet my need for safety, I run a high risk of getting the opposite. When I treat a human being in a way they don’t like to be treated, they tend to treat me back in the very same way, and it’s going to hurt. Violence brings more violence. This is what I’ve seen happening in Israel and Palestine over the last 100 years.
❀ Core principle- alternative option:
‘The moment I hear your needs and take them seriously into consideration, you can no longer continue fighting‘
I hold this principle close to my heart in every dialogue I engage in. Here are three examples from this week (in the first one, I am on the receiving end of this principle; in the other two, I am on the giving end):
My partner
I was very angry with my partner the other day, and I shouted, “I hate you right now because you’re not listening.” (Of course, I don’t hate her, but in moments like that, it’s amazing what intense feelings arise and what comes out of my mouth.)
In that moment, she decided, “I will listen to Yoram.”
She listened to all my complaints about how I feel alone in managing things in the house, and about the different areas where I sense she isn’t aware she’s leaving things for me to do.
She listened until the end and even suggested some strategies to make sure I’m not left alone with those tasks, like taking out the garbage, cleaning the shower, and tidying the workroom.
I was heard. I couldn’t be angry anymore. I couldn’t “hate.” When I was heard and sensed that my needs were taken seriously, my body relaxed. She was holding my needs with me; I was no longer alone. When my needs are seen, I cannot fight.
My neighbor:
My neighbor has been working on his garden, and for the past few days, he left the fence between our gardens open. Since I have guests coming and I like the beauty of the garden, and as there was no longer any need for it to be open I asked him if he could close it now.
He replied with a long speech about how much work he has – with the garden, the children, his job, his emails…
While my first inner reaction was, “I don’t care about your emails, just close the fence – it only takes five goddamn minutes” (which I’m happy I didn’t say out loud), I remembered the principle above, so I reflected back to him, “Yes, of course, you have a lot on your plate.”
Then he added, “Yes, and it’s important that you take me seriously.”
That was an important sign for me – oh, he feels alone with all of this. He’s not sure I’m aware.
So I said, “Yes, you want to make sure that I’m aware of how much you’re holding and that you don’t have time right now, is that it?”
He said yes.
Half an hour later, he fixed the fence.
Mediation:
I was mediating a couple this last week. There was a lot of love between them, and also a lot of pain and doubt about whether they could continue. We identified that one of them was stretching herself to the very limit of her capacity. Her partner had gotten a dog, and she had a very strong, uncontrollable reaction to it (OCD). She tried to stretch herself because this relationship is so dear to her, and she judged herself for not being able to tolerate the presence of the dog.
At one point, I said to her partner, “Can I be you for a moment?”. Taking the role of her partner, I expressed:
”I don’t want you to stretch yourself. I really don’t. As scary as it is for our relationship, I really don’t want you to ‘try hard to tolerate the dog.’ I don’t want you to go beyond your boundaries. I really don’t.”
The woman started crying, and her whole body relaxed. There was a tangible shift in the atmosphere of the room. Finally, her needs were being taken seriously. It wasn’t just that her partner hadn’t been taking her needs seriously – she herself hadn’t been taking them seriously either.
From that moment on, a very new sense of creativity began to flow in the room.
Interdependence:
We are living in an interdependent world – just look at what happened to the entire world when one person ate a bat somewhere in China… Your well-being is part of my well-being. The well-being of Palestinians and Iranians is part of my well-being. Taking your needs seriously and caring for them is caring for my own well-being.
As Marshall put it, “The survival of our species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are, in fact, one and the same.”
I feel so sad when I look at the culture of dialogue in the political realm.
And lastly:
Dialogue with an Iranian woman:
I was lucky enough to have a participant in my course the other week who was originally from Iran. She wanted to speak with me. She said, “I would like to be heard by someone from Israel.”
I listened to her for 10 minutes as she shared her pain – how all her family and friends were living in Tehran while the bombs were falling, how scared they were, especially the children. She was crying. I was deeply touched.
She expressed deep gratitude for being heard and said how much lighter she felt. Then she suddenly added:
“Destroying buildings is very heavy for me. Buildings are a manifestation of human work – spending hours planning, working together, investing life energy – and then it’s destroyed. It takes my hope away. And imagining that there might be someone inside is the next level. Putting so much heart into building, and then we come and destroy. Destroy life creation.”
Afterwards, I sat with this image and thought to myself: I would like to create a nonviolent movement of people who are willing to engage only in building, creating, and nurturing life – whether it’s gardening, construction, or anything else. People who simply declare: I am not willing to engage in activities that destroy.
With much hope for taking each other’s needs seriously, for the well-being of us all,
Yoram