Jewish-Palestinian perspectives: WNC residents prove perceptions vary widely
Beinart and Steiner spoke at the Gaza Soup Kitchen fundraiser.
Lily Levin photo
Yousef routinely travels back to the West Bank to see his family. And always, the Hebron City landscape where he was born and raised looks unfathomably different.
“I typically try to go every year, at least for a month. I was actually planning to be with my family during the fasting month, Ramadan,” said the Asheville resident who, out of concern for his safety, requested The Smoky Mountain News refer to him on a first-name basis.
But after U.S. and Israel bombed Iran, the timing wasn’t feasible.
So when asked to speak at a March 10 local fundraiser for the Gaza Soup Kitchen, Yousef said he was available.
Two Asheville events
The private fundraiser was the latter of two Asheville events featuring Peter Beinart — a major left-wing Jewish professor, journalist and author whose most recent book is “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza” — and it appeared as but an addendum to the prior evening’s panel with Rabbi Sandra Lawson.
Lawson, currently serving as the executive director of pro-democracy nonprofit Carolina Jews for Justice, took to Substack to explain how the panel arrived at its theme and title. A donor had initially asked the rabbi to speak with Beinart about Israel-Palestine itself. She declined, proposing that the conversation instead center on tensions within the Jewish community surrounding Palestine and Israel.
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“That distinction matters to me. It’s not a dodge. It’s a different question — and I think it’s the more honest one for where the American Jewish community is right now,” she wrote, noting that “[Holiness] emerges from a community willing to build together even when they don’t see everything the same way.”
“Community and Belonging in American Jewry” attracted a nearly 300-person crowd to the Diana Wortham Theater in Asheville, including Mayor Esther Manheimer.
The 90-minute conversation, while acknowledging a growing divide between older and younger generations, largely confronted the predominant and institutional American Jewish narrative about Israel.
For example, Beinart spoke of the strong support the Civil Rights Movement received from Jewish institutions.
He said during the mid-20th century, groups like the Anti-Defamation League knew that Jewish safety was intertwined with the safety of other marginalized communities, believing “if American Jews supported the Black freedom struggle, which was essentially a struggle to make America a multiracial democracy,” success of the movement “would mean that Jews also move towards being fully equal citizen.”
But that’s not how these organizations operate now.
Instead, Beinart said, “The fundamental question they ask is, ‘Does this politician unconditionally support Israel?’”
Lawson, a former ADL employee, said she is “heartbroken to see the direction that they are going.”
There was also the question of congregational attitudes.
Beinart recounted that while his synagogue had “an incredibly powerful mourning process” for Israelis killed and taken captive, “there was no reckoning at all with the Palestinians who were being killed.”
Lawson mentioned the “ridiculous litmus test” put on congregational rabbis, especially when it comes to Israel.
At the March 10 fundraiser, Beinart was asked an hour-long series of questions by event organizer Lauren Steiner. When asked how one might come to better understand what’s happening in Palestine, he said “the most powerful thing” is to listen to Palestinians.
Then Yousef spent 30 minutes answering questions about his story and the Gaza Soup Kitchen, which is still in operation.
Yousef’s connection to GSK was formed out of his friendship with Hani Almadhoun, the nonprofit’s co-founder. Almadhoun, an NYC resident, met Yousef in 2018 during a human rights organization fundraiser in Asheville.
Yousef said after October 7, 2023, Almadhoun’s family in Gaza floated the idea of “starting a community effort to feed our neighbors.”
Hani’s brother Mahmoud was the kitchen’s chef, and the initiative grew larger and larger. They were worried the Israeli government would observe the crowd through one of its many security cameras and come to the wrong conclusion.
Just to be safe, the Almadhouns decided to inform the authorities of the presence of the soup kitchen.
Mahmoud was targeted and killed by an Israeli drone one day later.
Differing opinions
After the Asheville events, SMN summarized key points of the panel for Rabbi RuthE Levy of Franklin-based Mountain Synagogue and asked a few questions.
Though Levy doesn’t agree with everything Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done, she is of the mindset that “it’s important for Jews to support Israel.”
“One of the things is that you have to separate Israel and what it can be as a country and the political situation with — we are not always going to be ruled by Mr. Trump, and Israel is not always going to be ruled by Mr. Netanyahu, and we have to hope that the countries will be better in the future,” she said.
Levy also emphasized that Israel does an “unbelievable amount of good in the world that people just don’t know about— the fact that they treat many Palestinians in Israeli hospitals and provide them medical care.”
Israel is required by international law to provide adequate medical care to all Palestinians under occupation.
And for as long as Yousef can remember, the situation on the ground has been inhumane for Palestinians. From an early age, he could discern by ear whether an object was a sound bomb or a hand grenade, a munition or a rubber bullet, a sedan or a VH, an M-16 or a pistol.
Yousef endured more violence after college, however, when he began working as a journalist. His first job involved “primarily reading the news” at a local radio station.
“And I remember 2012, 2013, when actually the Israeli military started to raid radio stations in West Bank and actually arrest crew members and confiscating equipment,” he said, adding that these events motivated him to leave his job in favor of solo freelance reporting.
“I learned the hard way immediately that I shouldn’t be by myself on these roads, because that’s when the Israeli military would look at me and say, ‘Oh, that’s an easy target,’” he said.
Being an “easy target” would have serious repercussions. Once, alone with his camera on an assignment, he was tear gassed by the Israeli Border Police. The canisters were thrown at his feet for maximum impact.
Following that incident, Yousef only moved in a group, and usually with four or five other journalists. They learned to detect Israeli snipers and decode nonverbal line-of-fire warnings from soldiers.
Still, he said, “there was a lot of journalists, unfortunately, who got either shot or killed in that process.”
“Throughout that journey, [we] learned immediately having a vest and having a helmet, having a tear gas mask, is not gonna protect you from being harassed or being arrested or being harmed physically in a lot of different ways,” he added.
During his several years as a West Bank journalist, Yousef was — among other things — threatened with a loaded M-16, shot by a rubber bullet and sprayed with skunk water, a substance leaving the body coated for days in an odor of sewage and rotting corpses. The perpetrators in every instance were Israeli forces.
He was also a victim of experimental technologies.
“We were exposed to these sound waves that — we felt fatigued. We felt tired. We felt constantly unable to walk,” he said.
Sound as a weapon was reported to have been used by the Israeli government against Palestinians — producing the effects Yousef described — as early as 2005.
But of the instances Yousef remembers most was a verbal interaction. It was predicated by the Israeli military observing him entering Levant with his camera.
“I was held on a checkpoint, detained on a checkpoint for hours, until an Israeli Border Police [agent] decided to put me in a military Jeep and drag me to an interrogation room” in the middle of an Israeli settlement, he recounted, adding that he had no idea why he was there in the first place.
Yet, Yousef was arrested and interrogated for multiple hours for allegedly assaulting an Israeli Border Police agent, a charge he said was baseless.
“I told the police officer, ‘View the security cameras before you threw a charge on me that way,’” he told SMN.
As for what happened next, Yousef remembers it verbatim.
“And [the officer] said, ‘Why are you speaking English to me? Speak in Arabic to me. I want to practice Arabic.’”
Working together
When asked what an ideal future would look like for Israel, Levy said she’d like to see “Israelis and Palestinians living side by side,” but that both sides have to be willing to work together.
“In other words,” Levy said, “the best example I can have is that in Palestinian schools, they teach hate of Jews.”
Yousef attended school in the West Bank and had different things to say about his education.
“I hated math, I hated English, as any other student. But again, just to focus on the approach of, like, ‘What do we actually receive an educational system?’ It’s as normal as it can get,” he said.
Levy admitted she’d never discussed educational curriculum with a Palestinian, which Beinart said is a common experience.
“One of the tragedies of American Jewish life is that we have built institutions that largely keep Palestinian voices out,” he explained at the fundraiser, adding that “to talk about a group of people without listening to them is a recipe for both ignorance and dehumanization.”
Yousef told SMN that when people first meet him, they often address him as the Palestinian ‘exception’ because he can hold a conversation. But he grew up without money, surrounded by settlers and the Israeli military, just like any other West Bank Palestinian.
His life in the United States is result of his involvement with Community Peacemaker Teams, a group that “builds partnerships to transform violence and oppression,” according to its website, particularly in situations of lethal conflict.
Yousef began working with CPT in 2013 and eventually became fluent in English. His first time in an airplane was 2016, when he flew with the organization directly to a conference in Chicago.
CPT is also the reason he’s in Asheville — he fell in love with an American on its 2014 delegation.
They’d planned to stay in Palestine but in 2015, Rachel, now his wife, was banned from Israel for 10 years, forcing the couple to rethink their decision. Rachel moved back to the U.S., and in May 2017, Yousef got his American immigration visa. They settled in Western North Carolina — Rachel loved the area and had attended Warren-Wilson College.
Not long after moving to the United States, Yousef worked with a few Jewish residents to try to get a chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace — an international progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization — off the ground in Asheville. But due to factors like burnout and JVP’s chapter membership requirements, the initiative slowly died out.
JVP currently has an Asheville pod, a more informal version of a chapter, which began in early 2024. Since Oct. 7, 2023the organization has seen a surge in interest nationwide, namely among younger Jewish people.
Levy is upset to see that increasing numbers of Jews do not support the state of Israel.
“I’m sorry that that situation exists,” she said, adding that people with this belief system should go to Israel and work to change it for the better.
“Sitting here on this side and saying, ‘I don’t like Israel’ is not necessarily productive,” she noted.
Levy also suggested that younger Jews questioning their belief in Israel should participate in the Birthright program.
“You need to go and see Israel and really see it. People who make their judgments, make their judgments from afar,” the rabbi said.
Birthright offers a free 10-day Israel trip to Jews age 18-26 who have not yet visited.
Yousef talked about Birthright through a different angle, informed by his 2016 employment at a Hebron hostel that received many post-Birthright visitors.
“They would come, we’ll have conversations, and they would eventually open up, and they would say, ‘Hey, just to let you know, I was part of Birthright trip, took advantage of a free ticket. I’m here. I want to explore beyond the scope of the narrative that was given to [us] throughout the [Birthright] program,’” he said.
He admitted that “it gets scary for [former Birthrighters], because you receive all of this information” about where to avoid, where to travel — and whom to trust.
For example, Birthrighters told him they were warned strictly against entering Palestinian and Area A neighborhoods. The West Bank — made up of areas A, B and C — is divided by Jewish settlements.
“And there is actually a giant, big, piece of aluminum road sign that says ‘You’re entering Area A,’ labeled in red. ‘You’re entering a danger zone, an area that’s controlled from the Palestinian Authority,’” Yousef told SMN.
But those who made it past the notice were “very much shocked in a sense of, ‘Wow, [Palestinian] people are normal. People are hospitable. They invite me for coffee. They invite me for dinner. They invite me for their homes,” he said.
Birthright graduates, Yousef added, were often also shocked by the level of military presence or settler violence, bringing him “non-stop questions” about checkpoints and settlement infrastructure.
This sort of eye-opening journey, he said, was part of a cycle many internationals experienced. During the first week or two, they’d try to learn everything about the region in search of something that might end the cruel treatment of Palestinians.
Then they’d crash, overcome by burnout.
“The amount of harm … applied either on me or on my community, is tremendously larger than anyone could bear or handle, in a way that people cannot think about,” he explained.
They’d ask him about a way they could help that was both long-term and sustainable.
“The true answer” to that question, Yousef said, “is, ‘Go back to your community. Tell the stories from your own point of view. Educate. That’s an excellent thing that you could do.’”
