Hana Bendowsky, John Munayer, and George Mason at last week’s Faith Commons event. (Credit: Craig Nash)

Western observers should hesitate before celebrating the early stages of the 20-point Middle East peace plan designed by the Trump administration and Arab states, according to panelists at a Faith Commons event in Dallas on Oct. 16. The event, “Jewish-Christian Relations in the Wake of Oct. 7 and the War in Gaza,” featured speakers from Jerusalem’s Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue.

Prerequisites for Solutions

“This is not the time to talk about solutions,” said John Munayer, director of engagement for the Rossing Center. “That is jumping ahead. First we have to work on desire, and to work on the desire, to truly want peace for Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, we have to address the imbalance of power.”

“The imbalance of power,” Munayer added, “is so ripe right now that there will be no kind of solution that will be accepted by Israelis and Palestinians.”

For Hana Bendcowsky, the trauma associated with Oct. 7, as well as generational Jewish trauma, is a primary barrier to Israelis embracing realistic solutions to the conflict. Bendcowsky, who is Jewish, is the program director for the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations.

“I agree it’s not the time to look for a solution,” Bendcowsky said. “First, we have to stabilize the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and for all Palestinians within the state of Israel. Unfortunately, Israeli society still lives on the seventh of October, without any exposure to what has been happening in Gaza.”

Complicated Identities

Munayer and Bendcowsky reminded attendees that ideas of religion, citizenship, and ethnicity within Israel-Palestine don’t fit neatly in a framework most Americans understand. Munayer, for example, is a Palestinian Christian with Israeli citizenship who, as a child, went to a Jewish school in Jerusalem.

Both panelists stressed key differences in how people in the Holy Land and those in the United States understand concepts of “majority” and “minority” populations.

“When you participate in Jewish-Christian dialogue here in the United States, it’s kind of obvious who’s the ‘majority,’” Bendcowsky said. “And you may believe you would be the minority in my context. But to the Jews in Israel, the Jews are the minority and the Christians are the majority.”

This is in spite of the fact that 75 percent of all Israelis are Jews, regardless of their level of religious observance.

Bendcowsky clarified that, “Being a minority is about our self-perception. It’s not an objective question. We see Christians as a majority because everyone in the world, including Arab countries, has protected them.”

She added that Christians in the region struggle to understand this. “They say, ‘What are you talking about? We are a minority. We are Arab Christians in an Arab Muslim society, and we’re a minority as Arabs within a Jewish society.’”

These nuances of self-perception, according to Bendcowsky, make dialogue a challenge.

When ‘Hope’ isn’t Hope

For Munayer, one of his primary challenges comes from his fellow Christians in the West who are obsessed with asking him about what gives him hope. “That question annoys me,” he said. “I often answer that ‘The hope you are seeking is a weird optimism that I think is unhealthy.’”

He added, “What we strive for as Christians is the kind of hope that exists between Friday and Sunday,” referring to the Christian observance of Holy Saturday, after the crucifixion but before the resurrection of Jesus. This is a space of trauma, according to Munayer.

“I use Mary Magdalene as an example,” he said. “Because while the male disciples were nowhere to be found, she was [by going to anoint the body of Jesus], going to do the next right thing in the midst of the trauma. And that’s the model we should follow, to continue to do the right thing in the trauma.”

The event was held at Northway Christian Church. Faith Commons, founded by the Rev. George Mason and Rabbi Nancy Kasten, is a Dallas-area organization devoted to bringing faith into public life through dialogue and action.