It’s amazing what a hat can do

Mika Almog, joint head of ‘It’s time’. Photo by Shoshana Lavan

‘It’s time’ poster in ‘Syrup’ in Haifa. Photo by Shoshana Lavan

Almost a year later and ‘peace’ is still a dirty word in our classroom. And that’s in a liberal, left-wing, hippy kind of school, where the majority of teachers believe in a two-state solution and are also demonstrating for an end to the war and the return of our hostages.

Last year I was called a ‘traitor’ by some of my students, a ‘Hamas supporter’. They draped Israeli flags over the walls of the building, supposedly taunting me, as though it would offend me to see the flag of my country, where I was not born, but actually gave up my old, comfortable life and made the choice to live here.

Apparently, I should not be wearing my yellow ribbon necklace, my daily reminder to all that I do not forget the horror and catastrophe of our hostages still ‘surviving’ in Gaza, because I believe in making peace with the Palestinians. The Palestinians all hate us and support or even belong to Hamas. This is what one of my most sensitive and compassionate students told me last week.

So, whatever Netanyahu has failed in doing, he has certainly succeeded in turning many of our gentle and peace-loving children into haters.

There are still only two sides, apparently. You either hate Palestinians, or you are a traitor to the state of Israel.

Last January I had to attend a hearing by the Ministry of Education at our school because they had received a complaint from a parent. ‘There’s a teacher at the school who supports Hamas’, they were told, and so they duly came in to check. What they discovered was that I had gone to a demonstration in Tel Aviv wearing a knitted hat, with the Palestinian flag on one side and the Israeli on the other. The head of police stopped me and forcefully grabbed it, after I refused to take it off, explaining to him it is, and has been for years, my peace hat. This incident was filmed from three angles, and the one showing just the Palestinian side of the hat went viral. Hence my students’ reaction. And yet I was marching with thousands of others for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages.

That was almost a year ago. Imagine how many innocent children and mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, in Gaza and in Israel, and how many brave soldiers, right at the beginning of the adventure we call life, would have had their lives saved had we listened to the calls of that demonstration. And so many others I have been on since.

But I have never worn the hat again.

What I did do, however, finding myself absolutely broken by the whole event, broken by the reaction of the police, broken by the reaction of my students, despite the teachers and management in my school supporting me and defending me and loving me wholeheartedly, I wrote a story.

I wrote about my hat, and how for me, it is a hat with three corners, and the third corner should be visible and a possibility for the world. Yes, it shows the Israeli corner, yes, it shows the Palestinian corner, but there is yet another corner, and that is the one where supporting two peoples at once, the Israeli-Palestinian corner, the Palestinian-Israeli corner, is an option.

I keep asking, time and time again, here and abroad, why can we not support the good people of both sides at the same time? Yes, we know there are terrorists on both sides. We know some settlers are often violent and bloodthirsty. We know Hamas committed the most terrible atrocity to Jews – and Arabs – since the Holocaust, and yet we are intelligent enough as human beings to understand not ALL Jewish people are bad people. Not ALL Palestinians are bad people.

And you know the simplest truth? Most people want peace! Most people do not want their children and their children’s children to continue dying in bloody wars that go on and on and on.

Who in their right mind wants war?

And then there’s all the people in this country who believe everybody abroad hates the Jews. Abroad they all support the Palestinians and everyone is antisemitic and it’s all a disaster. This, again, is what social media would have us believe. Again, Netanyahu has succeeded in that. Making us believe everyone else hates us, for certainly, if they only listen to him and his cronies, they have reason to, do they not?

The story I wrote, ‘three cornered hat’ was shortlisted for the Oxford Flash Fiction prize and I was invited to read it at the Oxford Bodleian Library, one of the most famous and beautiful libraries in the world. I was very worried. How would it be received? But my partner, the one who grabbed my hat back from the head of police, telling him, ‘You don’t know who I am!’ was also the one who convinced me to fly to England with him and receive this incredible honour. I couldn’t believe it when he told me it’s one of the top ten literary competitions in the world. How could I refuse to go?

We were greeted by a professional photographer, the panel of judges which included well known academics and writers, and an audience full of writers and their families. And the organiser and creator of the prize, Freya Morris, with the panel of judges, asked me to read first!

I will never forget the warmth of the support and understanding I received afterwards, the strength of the applause. One Irish woman came up to me and told me, with tears in her eyes, that finally she had heard a story which captured the complexity of supporting both sides, as she had often felt throughout the troubles in Ireland. Many came and asked for my autograph (a very strange feeling!) and others simply to hug me and say thank you.

There was not one person who said even one tiny negative thing.

Everyone understood without making that new corner, we will all end up with nothing but death and devastation.

At the time I’m writing this, there’s a peace bus travelling from the north of the country to the south, innovated and organised by ‘It’s time’, an umbrella peace organisation with the support and inclusion of over fifty peace organisations. They’re stopping at venues all over the country, for evenings of speeches, drama and music. So far, we’ve followed them into Kibbutz Shomrat, Nazareth and Haifa, and we’ll be following them in the next few days to Tel Aviv, Rahat (a southern Bedouin town) Sderot and finally to Netiv Ha’Asara, just next to the border with Gaza. And people from all over the country, Palestinians and Jews, are involved and supporting them.

They too, have not once met with any negativity, violence or ill will. One of the organisers, Mika Almog, told us in her speech last night that everywhere they go, they find themselves welcomed lovingly and hopefully. People want peace. And not only that, and I write this mainly for my dear students who I hope one day in the near future will find out for themselves, we do have partners for peace. We really do. In Israel, in the West Bank and in Gaza, there are plenty of people now willing to speak out against Hamas and Hezbollah, no longer frightened to the point of silence, strengthened by the peace activities we are doing to show everyone that the Jewish Israelis are ready and willing to make peace.

So what about my hat, in the end?

The saga continues.

At the moment, my whole school is involved in an initiative to crochet hats for each other – no, not with any flags, of course, but our aim is to have around 800 hats by the time Christmas and Chanukah arrive, so we can celebrate Christmakah together, giving each other the gift of handmade hats.

These hats will not have three corners. They will only have one.

It’s amazing what a hat can do.

My peace hat, Israel and Palestine together. Photo by Shoshana Lavan