The following is a word of advice, delivered in good faith. Whether or not it is acceptable or effective is entirely up to the reader.
We're at war. It's probably not hard to notice. We're at war in the Middle East, in North America, and in any other place where Zionist Jews live. In the Middle East, the question of who are the combatants is pretty straightforward. In other parts of the world, things are not so clear. The people we fight on Social Media, and sometimes in the market square, are our countrymen, sometimes our neighbors, our classmates. So for the most part we try to keep it to talking. Each of us tries to shout their favorite narrative, ignore the other and call it a day. But sometimes, reality rears its ugly head, and the fighting boils over into the real world: People and communities are targeted, sometimes with harassment, sometimes with vandalism, sometimes with violence.
At that point we suddenly understand that this can get very real, very quickly, and we call on every possible authority to censor the other.
Some of us - personally, I think those who are smarter, and maybe even a bit more empathic - understand that this is a time to reach out to the other. Call on the pro-Palestinian people in our community to connect, to try to get things under control. It's a good idea, probably the only one that can actually work, but it meets a sad reality: We're not good at talking with our adversaries. We don't know how to connect with them. Why should we? For the most part we fling one-sided statements at each other. We usually don't try to make them listen.
So let's say we have an incident, like the one there was in Toronto last week, when a Jewish-owned shop was set on fire and a "Free Palestine" graffiti was spray-painted on one of it windows.
It may have had nothing to do with Palestine; the perpetrators may have been a couple of idiots who have nothing to do with the conflict. But let's assume the worse: A Jewish space was targeted because of the Middle East conflict.
At this point, we might want to write something to the "Other" at large. Something like "Let's meet, let's take responsibility and make this less violent, less dangerous". That's a very good idea, but it has a much better chance of working if we phrase it in an effective manner, and what's effective and what's not, may not be what we instinctively think. Because the "other" in this case may be a Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and most of us have never been any of these three. Each one of these hats, represent a world of experiences and biases to which we are usually not exposed. And that means we might want to stop and think before we address the Other. Call it cultural sensitivity, cultural awareness; I call it dealing with people.
Yes, I know, Palestinian Muslim Arabs are human, not aliens; there are also many pro-Palestinians who are not Palestinian, Arab or Muslim; all that is well known. But in the end, the people at the heart of the conflict, and the most important ones to reach, are that: Palestinian Arabs, and more often than not, Muslim. In about 9 times out of 10, they will act and think exactly like the average American Jew, who will 9 times out of 10, act like a Christian Asian who will act like a Black Buddhist. But when the going gets tough, many of us reboot, and fall back on our deepest-set conditioning. That conditioning consists of a lot of personal, unique baggage, but to some extent it also consists of the basic rules of the society in which we grew. Our culture. When we Jews are stressed we start screaming "Holocaust" and swear that everybody hates us. When Palestinians are stressed... Well... they become... I mean... That's exactly the problem. We don't know what happens when they get stressed. And most of us never bothered to learn.
It's for the most part a natural instinct for us to trust people who look like us, behave like us and think like us. These people will mostly be those who live in the same environment as us: our family, our peers, our colleagues, the people in that over-priced cafe' we like sitting in. We feel comfortable and accepted around these people (if we don't, we leave and look for a group of people that will make us more comfortable), and they are usually defined as our INGROUP, "Our People". The rest of the world is the OUTGROUP. It is a basic and very strong bias to prefer our ingroup over our outgroup. This is what makes us apprehensive toward different races, religions, social strata and nationalities. In democratic, liberal societies, we fight this bias - which is great - but it's still there.
In Arab Muslim culture, and in many other conservative societies (If this is the part where everybody start screaming "You racist pig! You can't say all Arabs are conservative!", then go on, get it out of your system. Haredi Jews are mostly conservative, Catholic Koreans are mostly conservative, Palestinian Muslims are mostly conservative. You don't have to accept that, but that's what I'm writing here.) the ingroup has a crucial role. Having an ingroup that accepts you and nurtures you is important. Many a time, more important than rules and opinions suggested by the outgroup. Again, 9 times out of 10, it doesn't matter. But when things get stressful, it becomes a bit more prominent.
So let's go back to "calling on Palestinian Organizations to lower the flames". What we are asking by this is for Palestinian activists to judge and maybe reprimand - directly or indirectly - people of their ingroup. Why? because we, people of the outgroup have said so. Not just any outgroup. The enemy outgroup. In such a case, our demands may be perfectly acceptable but they will not be very hearable. Once again, there are mighty, brave Palestinian and Muslim leaders out there, who are able to transcend the boundaries of this instinctive thinking but they are rare, same as they are rare on the Jewish/Zionist side.
Another matter is that of language. Arabs (even those who barely speak Arabic) adore the Arabic language, and for good reasons: It is grand, mysterious, pliable, fun, and so much more personal and warm than English or Hebrew (Sorry... I'm addicted). As a result (or maybe that is the reason. I wouldn't assume to know), speech, the utterance of language, holds a lot of weight in Arab culture. The ability to "perform", demonstrate the mastery of the spoken word and its delivery to an audience is respected and admired. Not unlike many Western cultures, in which a charismatic speaker can sell us any stupidity as long as they hit the podium at the right moment. But in Arab culture, it's a bit more distinct.
So back to Toronto. We want to approach local leaders. Maybe they are Arab maybe they are not. But they certainly act in an environment that is shaped by and responds to Arab cultural values. And now we send them a crucial message, a message that concerns the well-being of our communities, and we do it casually, over a social media platform or maybe some impersonal email. In writing, rather than in speech; remotely rather than personally. It's perfectly legitimate, just not optimal.
So, we want to connect, we want to create an impact on the other side. As a side-note, it would have been great if we wouldn't wait until it was crucial to do so, but let's leave that for another time.
Make the message as indirect as possible.
Our basic tendency, when approaching persuasion, is to say what we want, the way we want it. Something along the lines of "Please, we would like you (i.e. the "Other") to this or that". In our case, we would like Palestinian activists, to get their people under control. This kind of direct message creates a direct line from speaker to recipient. The recipient can easily see that the message originates fro man outgroup, and reject it as alien. We can alter the message on several levels to make it less direct and therefore, easier to hear.
On the sentence level, we can use some familiar methods, like using "us" instead of "you", or "It would be a good idea" instead of "we want you to...". These are small nuances but they are easily implemented and even if they don't change the content, they lower the chance of being rejected just because the other person didn't like our tone.
On the content level, we may try to focus on elements that make us and the recipient one group. When I talk, for example about personal safety in Toronto, or about the shared urban spaces and shared resources (budgets, police, education...) it makes us the ingroup of Toronto residents. It's not going to make us bosom buddies, but it's better than saying "you don't want to be considered an Antisemite, do you?" Which is something we often do one way or another. Arabs, like most other people would not like to think of themselves as racists, but when such an accusation comes from the "enemy" outgroup, it's easier to ignore. And by the way, Arabs are excellent listeners. When you say "shared spaces", they know you mean "The vandalized Jewish-owned shop". They, like a lot of other people, just don't like it rubbed in their faces.
On the delivery level, we can go artistic. We can find mediators respected by both sides and facilitate the message through them; we can launch an event on our side that sends the right message ("If this recent event of vandalism had taught us anything, it is how important our sense of community is. We, the residents of Toronto share this urban space blah blah blah... and so the Jewish community is launching a campaign of cleaning and refreshing public spaces all over Toronto..." Nobody will be fooled, but the message will be delivered and its subtlety appreciated). Options are endless. You may not want to go out of or your way for this, but then again, it is quite important to get this message across.
Respect the Medium and the Recipient
This is simple, but far from easy.
Find the person or organization you want to address and if possible, meet them in person, even if they never heard your name before. Rehears. Dress up. Give a performance. Don't over do it.
It probably seems weird to put so much effort into a simple message, but first, this is not any message: this is trying to facilitate communication with people who are pretty sure they don't want to hear us. Second, trust me: when you respect your listener and respect your delivery, its only the other who gets to feel better.
And BTW, there is nothing subservient or soft about respecting the other when delivering a message. Deliver any content you want, harsh as you want. Just play the game for better delivery. Personally I think it is better to be rejected after a bona fide attempt than wondering what would have happened if we had planned a couple of minutes more.
These are two aspects of communicating with the "Other". They can be easily identified as cultural phenomena, but in part, these are also universal principles of negotiation and message delivery. They are, of course, not applicable in every situation, and should be tweaked and modified according to circumstances, but they are a good place to start from. If anything, the main idea is that the "Others" are called "Others" for a reason. If they weren't "Others" we probably wouldn't have had a conflict to begin with. We need to respect and consider that; if not specifically like I suggest it here, then in any other way you find effective.
And that's even before we get to the really crazy part of non-violent resistance...
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