NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Aziza Hasan, executive director of NewGround, and Alyson Freedman, a member of Sisterhood Salaam Shalom, about the impact of the war between Israel and Hamas.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This week of intense violence and the prospect of more violence to come is having a deep emotional impact on those who care about both Israelis and Palestinians. Aziza Hasan is the executive director of the interfaith group NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership For Change.
AZIZA HASAN: There’s tremendous grief and pain and nausea and anger all at once, and the feeling of isolation makes all of that worse.
DETROW: Like Hasan, Alyson Freedman is also dedicated to engaging and facilitating connections and dialogue between Jews and Muslims. She is a member of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom organization.
ALYSON FREEDMAN: The organization has been very important to me because we build relationships between Muslim and Jewish women and work to combat hate through those relationships.
DETROW: On Friday, I sat down with Freedman and Hasan to talk about their mission and the challenges they’re facing right now.
HASAN: To be honest, the moment we’re in is definitely very different. It is grotesque in many ways and horrifying. And sometimes the most important way for us to show up for each other is literally to just check in on each other and say, I’m here for you. How are your loved ones? – and not focusing on the right words, but rather literally being there as an act of radical listening so that we can actually understand it all together, because it’s too much for any of us.
DETROW: What about you, Alyson? What seemed different to you last week?
FREEDMAN: I think it’s very personal, what happens, for everyone in different ways, depending on your background, your history, your family. And so, like Aziza said, just checking in on people – and, you know, those personal relationships is what’s most important.
DETROW: And, Alyson, I’m going to start with you here. Can I ask you what themes, if any, emerged, specific details or parts of the circumstances that you found yourself returning to as you tried to sort this out in conversations?
FREEDMAN: I’ve heard this feeling of isolation from Jews and Muslims. You know, it feels like no one is paying attention on a personal level and other people are being supported, but they’re not being supported. And I heard that from everyone.
DETROW: Can I ask – I mean, to the extent that you want to say it on the radio, just this basic question that you’re both talking about – Aziza, how’s your family? How are your close friends handling this?
HASAN: You know, it’s difficult. It’s like… there are no words for the stage fright, for the anxiety, for the worry. My family is scattered all over the world, like many Palestinian families. And when I contact people, they are just suffering. They suffer so deeply and wonder how it is that we can just call numbers and watch buildings collapse without realizing that there are human beings inside and that these are not stories of people who have names, faces and mothers. and the fathers and children who die. And I think of the at least one million who have been asked to evacuate their homes in Gaza and go to southern Gaza. And how will a million people be able to move in 24 hours, and especially in these conditions? I don’t know.
But I also contact friends who live in Israel and Palestine and who are Israeli, and they go from funeral to funeral of their family, of their friends’ children. And there are no words to describe the horror we feel right now. And yet, I know that even though sometimes I don’t have the right words, it’s actually very important to step up and do what our traditions tell us, which is when people are in mourning, you leave and you see them. You see them, you hold them, you bring them the things you see they need, and you are just there.
DETROW: Alyson, same question for you. Can you – to the extent that you feel comfortable sharing – how your family is doing, how your friends are doing, and what are the specific difficult conversations you’re having yourself about this?
FREEDMAN: It was really difficult. I would say there is so much polarization right now. It’s so hard to talk about these issues. I support people who are suffering. I stand with people who are suffering. And I think it’s very easy right now to say, I stand with Israel or I stand with Palestine and not necessarily think about the complexity of these issues and how you can be alongside all the people who are in danger, who are being killed, who aren’t – don’t have the right, you know, to self-determination, don’t have, you know, education and, you know , law, you know, schools. I mean, there are so many things that are wrong right now. And so I had a lot of conversations where I was just telling people to take a breath and try to rehumanize both Israelis and Palestinians.
DETROW: There are many people in Israel, Gaza and around the world right now who don’t want to think about conversation, much less reconciliation. There’s a lot of anger and a lot of deep-seated feelings and rage. And I wonder if you both work with groups whose goal is to try to have difficult conversations, interfaith dialogues, relationships. What is the case now? For example, have you found yourself having to defend this fundamental thing and why it is important, why it is valuable, why it is worth trying to forge and create in times of pain, violence and tension ? Aziza, do you want to start?
HASAN: I think right now it’s not necessarily about dialogue. It’s about being there for the people you know and being there in grief. And so what we’ve found is that even among people who need space and just need to be supported right now, there are other spaces as well that we continue to bring together. And we’re finding that people are more willing to come to the table because they understand the importance of seeing themselves radically, and they’re hungry for spaces that create the possibility of being able to move forward in this really difficult time.
DETROW: Alyson, do you have anything to add?
FREEDMAN: You know, like I said, I’ve already participated in an interfaith dialogue about what happened this week, and it was incredibly powerful and really beautiful to share, you know, moments of grief , anger and connection together. . But there were definitely people in that group who weren’t ready to do that, and that’s okay. You also need to have space for that, to know how different people are going to process what’s happening.
DETROW: This is Alyson Freedman, a member of the Brotherhood of Salaam Shalom. And we also spoke with Aziza Hasan, executive director of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership For Change. Thank you both so much for taking the time to talk to us and speaking with us.
HASAN: Thank you for creating this space.
FREEDMAN: Thank you very much for having us.
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