Israelis & Palestinians Are Discussing Peace Over Dinner and a Movie

Tired of hearing yet another verbal volley of terrible things being said about Israelis or Palestinians? This Friday, March 14, offers the seeds for a different way of approaching the subject of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A documentary and a “post screening processing space” with a meal offer two spiritually conjoined evening events regarding nonviolent paths to peace over this contentious political friction.

The evening begins with a screening of There Is Another Way at the Roxie Theater. Stephen Apkon’s documentary is a follow up to his award-winning film Disturbing The Peace.  The film’s subject, the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated group Combatants For Peace, has members who were former combatants from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. Their credo rejects ongoing violence and injustice as the only possible responses to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Apkon’s new film catches Combatants For Peace at a critical historical moment. The horrific October 7 Hamas attack on Israel’s Nova Music Festival and the Israeli government’s retaliatory mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza challenges Combatants for Peace’s entire purpose. After such brutal actions by both sides, does continuing to push for a nonviolent resolution of the conflict remain feasible?  Or have both sides zipped past the political point of no return?

Apkon’s film might question the familiar value of certain and immediate retaliation. Violent responses may be the go-to answer of both sides. Yet the comforts of a familiar response can be undercut by their questionable effectiveness. If a violent response generated increased resistance from the response’s recipient, can it truly be called an effective technique? There Is Another Way argues it’s far harder, but also more necessary, to walk a path where you may not know the final answer and where you honestly acknowledge that you’re overwhelmed and afraid. Can not turning away from the grief engendered by October 7 eventually lead to the answers one seeks?

A Q&A session follows the screening, featuring Apkon and Combatants for Peace members Iris Gur and Mai Shahin. Former Israeli school principal Gur now serves as Israeli Community Director for Combatants for Peace. Palestinian therapist and activist Shahin brings to the table 12 years of experience in conflict resolution, and specializes in nonviolent communications and trauma therapy.

Those who want to socialize and even continue discussing the issues raised by There Is Another Way are definitely encouraged to go to the second event that evening. The “Post-Screening Processing Space,” will be held at the nearby Manny’s from 8-10 PM.

Spearheaded by local peace activist Melissa Saidak and supported by such local groups as SFBay4Peace and Friends Of Standing Together SF, this processing space will offer much more than further chats about the film attendees had just seen. As Saidak says, building trust begins by having members from opposing ideological sides peaceably sharing the same space. That joint sharing could take the form of breaking bread (or fast) with the film’s panelists, or having pro-Israelis talk to pro-Palestinians, for example.

The aftermath of a documentary screening inspired Saidak to create this sister event to the Roxie screening. Nova, the name of the documentary, captured the events of October 7 at the Nova Music Festival both before and after Hamas launched its notorious attack. For viewers such as Saidak, watching it felt as if she were being bombarded by a ton of horrific images. Yet once the lights finally came back up, the audience was merely sent on its way.  

That dismissal felt wrong to Saidak. Given the traumatic nature of the images seen by the audience, members should have had space to decompress and process what they had seen. Yet nobody else was providing such an opportunity. So once she heard about the There Is Another Way screening, Saidak decided to take on the challenge of creating such a space. Miraculously, she managed to pull the event together at Manny’s in two weeks.

To further the process of bringing these two sides together, the event is being catered by such local Palestinian businesses as Kansas Food Market, Old Jerusalem, and Pizzelle di North Beach.  

Aside from eating and casual conversation, attendees to the post-screening event are encouraged to play games together if they feel like socializing. Saidak will bring a bunch of board games for this purpose. There will also be a large poster to allow guests to write their impressions of the film. A map of the region between the river and the sea will allow guests to point out to others where they or their families are from, thereby visually showing who’s here from what area and who’s been impacted by the events depicted in the film. 

Saidak hopes her event will give an opportunity for pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians to engage with each other or just be in a temporary neutral community of the like-minded. This writer brought up the risk of attendees self-segregating, with pro-Israelis only associating with other pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians associating only with other pro-Palestinians. The peace activist admits that having such self-segregating occur is a risk. But the success baseline is having these two groups share the same space without conflict. As Saidak optimistically puts it, “Getting people through the door is a win in itself.”  

The event is free and questions about this event can be sent to sfbay4peace@gmail.com . Financing for the post-screening event was provided by Yoni Feldman.