Sometimes I wonder when I’m giving a workshop or a training, whether there is an elephant in the room about me being originally from Israel, or the method being originally Israeli. With European audiences, it is often the case that they wondered about it, or even had some aversion to joining the training because of the Israeli label.
On the last day of the training that took place 24-29th October, 2025, I asked the participants if they wanted me to talk about that part, and there were a lot of nods. I shared a little bit about my own journey with how I think about the conflict, the occupation, the atrocities happening over there, how I was personally affected, etc. As we opened up the conversation, I realized this topic was indeed relevant for some people in the circle, and we started to have an honest sharing about it.
Someone said he was worried this would be Israeli propaganda. Another said she considered making the moral decision of not joining. Another said she had to do a bit of background research on me before coming.
I could have gotten defensive. I could have taken it personally, and I could have made myself into a victim of discrimination. I could probably even register it with the anti-semitism police.
But I didn’t. Because we were sitting in a circle, sharing our truths, and that was already doing the work. The work is not to convince each other what’s the right thing to do, because everyone has their own version. But to accept that everyone has their own version. That’s what people miss, and that’s what makes us even more divided.
I understand that people have boundaries in terms of what they can accept, but in my experience, not accepting someone’s version of truth does not make it go away. It actually means going to war. And war is what we are trying to stop (right?).
This is hard, and it’s controversial, because everyone wants the outside world to reflect their ideology. And many people want to show that their truth is THE truth. It just doesn’t work that way. We need to pay more attention to how we put our truths out there, because that ‘how’ is creating a lot of war. The whole political arena is one big battlefield.
Because we just spent the week looking at this ‘how’ over and over again, we actually were able to have a loving and connecting conversation about a very divisive topic. And this is the type of political education that I’m so happy to be a part of. It’s not always easy, at times in fact very challenging to one’s own sense of self, but it’s worth the effort to build the world we want to live in.