NEW LAUNCH: Women Ending War Podcast

Eva Dalak and I are determined to activate peace. Join us!

Meet Eva Dalak, a Jaffa-born Palestinian-Muslim peace activist. She has been to 22 conflict zones as a gender and negotiations consultant, and has taken part in conflict resolution in some of the most war-ridden settings in the world.

And then there’s me, a Jewish American-Israeli anthropologist, author, and grandmother, with religious Zionist roots in Brooklyn, New York, living in Israel for 30+ years. Together we are going to use the power of our words, our relationships, and sheer determination to get women’s power into the world and activate peace.

One podcast episode at a time.

Take a listen to Episode 1: Women, War, and Peace Activation on Spotify.

Or watch on Youtube below.

Or read the transcript below the links

⁠And let us know what you think!!

https://www.facebook.com/WomenEndingWar
⁠https://www.youtube.com/@elanahope ⁠
Instagram@hmselana1969
⁠https://www.elanasztokman.net/ ⁠
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elanasztokman/
⁠https://peaceactivation.org/ ⁠
www.jewfem.com

S1 E1 Women Ending War Transcript

[Music]

This is Women Ending War, the podcast where you'll discover that there is another path, that peace is possible, and that the women here can lead the way. I'm Dr Elana Sztokman. I'm here with Eva Dalak my co-host.

[Music]

Elana: Welcome Eva, Salam, Salam Aleikum.

Eva: Shalom Aleichem.

Elana: So nice to see you today.

Eva: Very nice to see you today.

Elana: Yeah I'm excited about starting this new podcast with you.

Eva: Same here. Especially here today.

Elana: Yeah why? What's what's speaking to you today?

Eva: I just had a long week of working with Palestinian and with Israeli and the ongoing genocide, so it's just like really tough.

Elana: Really tough

Eva: Yeah these are tough times. Tough times challenging times.

Elana: Challenging times. Which makes the work even more important.

Eva: Absolutely

Elana: Because we have to figure out ways to do the work of first talking to each other and listening to each other. So I'm glad to start doing that here with you.

Eva: Yes. And bringing real topic core issues into the the narratives.

Elana: Yeah and to focus on women.

Eva: And to focus on women. Yeah yeah I'm excited about that.

Elana: Yeah.

Eva: That's been my mission in life.

Elana: Yeah. You want to talk about that a little bit since we're just getting started?

Eva: Sure well bringing women to the peace table bringing women to the negotiation table, I think sometimes -- my background is in gender and conflict and I worked a lot on woman peace and security agenda from the UN and the EU perspective. And very often when I do training on leadership, I say it's not enough to bring women to the table, because once they're at the table they need to speak. Once they speak, they need to be heard. Once they are heard, we need to take that into consideration. And once it's taken into consideration, we need to implement it. And so I feel like there's so much work to be done, and starting with bringing them to the table. But it doesn't end there.

Elana: Right. so you you've done a lot of this work for 20 years you working with UN women.

Eva: Some, with the UN agency, different departments of political, the DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operation which is now the Department for Political Action and with different institutions specifically on the women, peace and security agenda.

Elana: And you've been to a lot of countries in conflict.

Eva: Yes, I've been to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo. I mean, you name it. I worked with the UN in Ivory Coast. I work specifically with women's movement in Yemen Libya and different other exciting places where women are excluded from negotiation, where women are excluded from power and decision making places. So yeah, I'm very passionate about including and making sure that women are having a voice and a decision making power.

Elana: And some of those places women's voices have been very instrumental in bringing about peace. Like Liberia for example that you mentioned.

Eva: Yeah

Elana: I mean, in Liberia, the women did it. I think about Liberia all the time. I think about Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Prize winner/ She won a Nobel Prize for what she did I think about her all the time. Where she basically took a group of women, she she basically amassed women, she walked through these villages amassing this movement of women, and the women showed up where the negotiations were taking place, in a room full of men, generals, and the women surrounded the room and wouldn't let the generals leave until they came up with a solution. And the generals tried to leave and when the generals tried to leave the women started taking off their shirts because they knew that the generals would run back in the room -- which they did -- and they sat there until they did got the work done. And I keep asking myself whether we could do that now. I mean, I keep bringing this up in all the different women's groups that I belong to, why aren't we doing that? You know why aren't we showing up, and showing up and standing holding hands around the room where the negotiations are taking place and not to let them leave? Just don't let them leave.

Eva: Yeah I want to challenge even that. Not only to not let them leave but to burst into the places of the negotiation. I feel like this has been such a testosterone-run war and it's time for us, for those who really believe in a possible solution to stand up and speak up and take their place.

Elana: Yeah

Eva: I think what what was impressive about the movement in Liberia is also that it was it included men. It was targeting a specific agenda for peace, and making sure that they're all working towards one major goal. And I think our challenge is that -- is what goal are we working towards. And can we agree on one vision? Because that's what will give us power. Envisioning the future -- which right now very few of us are able to envision.

Elana: You're having trouble envisioning a future too?

Eva: I would say I have a I have a vision.

Elana: Yes, would you like to share your vision?

Eva: I do have a vision. Yeah, I mean, I think that -- I live in Costa Rica and I live in in a environment that is surrounded by nature and various communities that are living together. And many of them are actually from Israel you know.

Elana: Really? I just just want to tell people who haven't read your bio yet that you're originally from Yafo.

Eva: Yeah I'm originally from Jaffa. Palestinian born in Jaffa and left Israel at the age of 20 to study in France, and then worked in Brussels and then in various areas, conflict zones mainly. And now based in Costa Rica since, 12 years, yes.

Elana: I'm sorry to interrupt you were talking about your experience yeah

Eva: So so my experience is like seeing how we're living together. Like of Israeli come to Costa Rica buy land and settle and nearly create communities kibbutzim.

Elana: Wow!

Eva: And I always think like --

Elana: I can imagine like people listening like now looking up Google, "Kibbutz in Costa Rica." That sounds so good right about now. Sounds really attractive.

Eva: It is attractive and and we're living we're living really in peaceful state. And so my vision is to be able to do that here. We have such a beautiful land. We're all so in love with this land. How hard can it be to imagine sharing this land and living in peace. And rather than using security excuse to remove or take away the freedom of one people. And I think I always think of, like, "freedom versus security". We cannot live in that in this type of state. You know, it's "freedom leads to security". Our freedom -- inner freedom -- is our birth right and safety is our birth right. And so if we're able to integrate that from within and able to share that vision that your narrative, your truth, your security is not denying my freedom, my truth, my narrative, and it's not a competition of suffering, it's not a competition of who is more victim than the other, but rather are we able to share the same love for life

Elana: Right

Eva: You know, right now we're all dying to live. It's ridiculous. Why why should we die to live? Why should we lie -- I mean die -- it is a lie actually, it is a lie of that we're telling ourselves and that we are told, that we need to fight, that we it is a complex conflict, that it is something that we cannot end that it's been like this forever and ever

Elana: The war of no choice, like you hear the there's no choice

Eva: There's no choice and we just have to protect ourselves -- and it's not true. It's absolutely not true! And I find like even with this project of "people to people", "let's get Palestinian and Israeli together to love each other or to speak to each other" -- it's ridiculous! The issue is not "people to people". I mean, I'm here with you, I like you, you like me, we can hang out. Like, I have, we have many relationship like this. So the issue is not whether I'm going to sit with or speak with Israelis or with Jews. The issue is, there's a structure of violence here that has been built in a neocolonial way and nobody's admitting it. And we need to keep this lie going on, so that we can justify more confiscation of land.

Elana: I feel like a lot of it is the way we're socialized. This has been, like, this has been my personal struggle and also like a little bit of my professional work. My background is anthropology and sociology and so I spend a lot of my time analyzing language and looking at language and the connection between language and power and social hierarchies and things like that. And also looking at my own background. You know I was brought up religious Zionist and I built my life around religious Zionism until I started to really unpack the language myself and started to like ask those really hard questions about, "Wait a second, is that true? Is that really true what we're being told about this, that we have to fight, that fighting is a glorious thing, that dying for your land is somehow noble?" And once you start to unpack it and once you start to peel back all those layers and all the language of US versus them and all of the mechanisms of dehumanizing the other -- this is something that I'm that I've really spent a lot of time in the last year or two, especially with this like new government, I spend a lot of time unpacking all of this language of the dehumanization, how we, you know -- and that has now become the backbone to all this, you know, so-called "war of no choice." And it's all not true. It's -- all of it is not true and so yeah.

Eva: I want to pick up on this dehumanization because you know in my 25 years in conflict zones -- I went to work in various conflict zones because I couldn't take it, what was going on here, and I needed a different perspective. And what I learned in Burundi, that was my first mission in the Great Lake Region, I learned that we need to dehumanize the other to justify our own violence. Because if we are to stop and think, we won't be doing what we're doing.

Elana: Right

Eva: You know, and so in order for me to fight you, to kill you to treat you as nonhuman, I have to disconnect and create the dissonance between me and you, and separate and fragment. Exactly like what the Israeli state did with the Palestinian population. There's like such a different layers of like Arab Israeli that has no nothing, no no serious meaning. But I feel at the same time, what I saw also in Liberia and other in West Africa is, like, how child soldiers you know -- power is something that is very detrimental in use because that's when you think you're all powerful. And when to use this power to destroy the other unless you are raised and supported in a loving environment and that's not what we have here. And so we disconnect and we dehumanize the other. And then we dehumanize ourselves. We lose our own humanity.

Elana: Right, that's what we're seeing now. Like, this war, I feel like Israelis don't even realize -- maybe some do but -- this war is not only terrible for the people of Gaza, obviously. It's also really terrible for the Israeli soul. I mean --

Eva: Yeah

Elana: Who are we exactly? What is this doing to us? And I feel like people are starting to little by little address that. And really because you know you have people who've been doing, who've been at war now for months and months and they're altered.

Eva: Yeah

Elana: They're altered from this and we can't deny that, you know. It's a very very painful thing to watch. But also maybe it's like a bit of a wake-up call to say like, "Who are we? Who are we? And what are we doing? What are we doing?"

Eva: And in the name of what? In the name of what are we doing that? Because most Israeli I know are either outside of Israel because they cannot stand living here. And some of them think that this is the only choice they have to protect themselves. And how can you protect yourself when in the name of this defense -- and you know you're manipulated. Like most of, if you're really authentic and true to yourself, you'll know that you're absolutely manipulated and you have a choice. And your freedom matters, your life matters. And everybody -- every person's life matters.

Elana: It's very hard to have that conversation though because people don't want to think of themselves as being manipulated.

Eva: Of course.

Elana: They don't -- nobody ever wants to think of themselves as having been like,

Eva: Lied to.

Elana: It's such a hard thing. it's such a hard conversation to have. Nobody wants to think that.

Eva: And that's the challenge actually because for Israeli -- I mean I do have compassion for what's going on right now, because it's as if for an Israeli to accept that what's happening right now in Gaza and the genocide that's happening is their responsibility, they have to question every single thing in their life. And that's very hard. On the soul level it's very hard. And that's why very often I say Palestinian and Israeli are noble enemies that have chosen to really get into this situation, to be witnessed by humanity, and see will humanity win? Will humanity prevail? And will we be able to move beyond this victim consciousness into the consciousness of the oneness that we are? There's no difference between Palestinian and Israeli. It's a structural violence that is justified for really just neocolonialism and economic benefit and resources.

Elana: My question to you is as someone who's been around the world and I've seen conflicts. I bring this up with people a lot -- like I'll mention you know how you know in Ireland when women were included in talks that really helped bring peace and, then Liberia like there are lots of places in the world where conflicts that seemed unresolvable were resolved, and that a big piece of that was getting more women involved -- more diverse voices, more compassionate voices -- and the reaction that I often get is, "Israel's different. This is different."

Eva: Yeah, I know. That's why I went to work in other conflict Zone because I was tired of being of hearing that Israel is special or if our conflict is the only conflict that is non-resolvable. It's not true every conflict is resolvable and every conflict is an opportunity. It's danger and it's an opportunity and it's opportunity for growth. And right now we're resisting this growth. And we will get there whether we want it or not because we cannot sustain -- we're like in nine months of genocide -- we cannot sustain that you know. And I think at some point people will wake up and those who won't will bear the consequences of of that in their own body, illness. And it's it's just killing the spirit of every single person on this land. And the land itself is screaming, "Enough! Enough of this violence! Enough fighting for me! Enough dying for me!" If we look at from a different perspective from Costa Rica, for instance, where a lot of people come for permaculture for self- sustainable off-the-grid spaces, and a lot of them are Israelis. And I'm like, what if these people would go back to Israel and would shift this dynamic of the extreme right that is justifying this violence, what would happen then? And I feel that we have responsibilities that were not yet taking, and it's time for us to take.

Elana: It's so interesting that you describe that you know Israeli earthy yoga permaculture personality. It's it's very real. Like, it's a very real thing. And it's everywhere around the world. And it's almost, sometimes I think like maybe we Israelis have like a split personality. Or maybe, a lot of times like you know -- I spend, I've spent a lot of time in India. My husband runs an organization there so I've been there a whole bunch of times. And there's something called the Hummus Trail in India which is basically where Israelis go -- that's what it is -- Israelis are going, like India is full full full full of Israelis. We once had a conversation -- my husband tells the story about a conversation he had with someone from China, when they found out he was Israeli they said, "What's happening in Israel? Is it really that bad there because everybody's here! They're all here!"

Eva: Exactly exactly

Elana: So it feels like maybe, I sometimes think to myself that maybe it's a kind of like recovery

Eva: Yes

Elana: Like it's a way to say, "Hang on a second. I don't want that!" Even though maybe Israelis don't always have the language to say, "Something is fundamentally wrong with the whole story," and also you know, they're connected here too --Israelis, they're connected, land, family, history all those things. But like somehow going to India going to Costa Rica is a way of like, letting go, releasing something that just they know deep down is just,

Eva: There's a couple of things I would answer to that because I had this conversation with many of my Israeli friends in Costa Rica. And it's schizophrenic because a lot of the Israeli leave Israel after the after serving in the Army.

Elana: Yeah.

Eva: And they're traumatized. I mean we live in a country that is so traumatized and then they carry this trauma outside of Israel and when they find a place where they can just, like, be, they and relax into their being they're like, "What was that?!" At the same time they do want Israel to exist as if it's like the safe haven. "If something happen somewhere in the world I can always go back home." But now going back home symbolizes this place of constant war, violence, and the raison d'etre of Israel of being a safe haven for Israelis is not is not fulfilled.

Elana: Yeah that's the irony.

Eva: The irony.

Elana: One of the great ironies of October 7th is that suddenly Israel is the most unsafe place in the world and the more we try -- as a J ew, let's say -- and not only that but the more we try to like, you know, all this the the language of violence and the language of "Finishing it off!" and all of that stuff, it makes Israel less safe. And also it makes Jews around the world less safe. I mean Jews have become the last nine months have been one of the worst periods of anti-Semitism around the world in the last hundred years since the Holocaust. And it's so ironic and it's so hard to wrap our heads around this reality that this is what we've become. Because what it's going to take to do that is is a whole paradigm shift.

Eva: Exactly.

Elana: We have to shift and we have to address the lies -- and it's so interesting when we talk about addressing -- I'm here in this process of unpacking my upbringing and unpacking my childhood. And one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is talking back to the way I was socialized. I was socialized that anytime a Palestinian talks, they're lying. I'm just telling you. This is really painful for me to say and I'm really sorry I have to say it to you but this is how I was brought up. Is that, before I was even had even visited Israel, when I was a teenager in school and I took classes in Zionism, the point of Zionism was to be able to disprove anything that Palestinians say. We're going to prove that we know the truth and that and so it's like this. And now I see it all the time.

And then one of the things that happened to me that got me to really make a switch about like 15 years ago or so when I had a job as a content writer for um a so-called Media Watch type of organization. My job as the content writer this was my assignment: my assignment was that I got articles, newspaper articles, if a Palestinian was quoted, my job was to prove that the Palestinian was lying. That was my whole job. And so I showed up to this staff meeting once, and I said, "Why?" I said, "Why can't we let people tell their story and let people have their life story and just you be okay with people telling their stories and accepting it?" I don't know if I used all of that language but that's basically what I was trying to express. The whole table like stared at me like deer and headlights. They were all like looking at me like, "What are you talking about?" It was like I challenged the entire paradigm and so like the next day I was fired so. I mean, seriously, next day I was fired. But it sent me on a journey. And that that really did launch my whole, like, a deep shift, of learning to stop that whole knee-jerk reaction that I was taught when I was 14 years old. When I was 14 years old I was taught to do this and I had to teach myself to stop and look at another person as a human being and say, "Let me hold that person's story." We all have life stories. You know, why is it my job to undo the other person's story? Why do I have to talk to another person and say, "No you're lying!"? And so that really like started this like snowball effect for me.

And then from there come to the place of where I do a lot of work with women and women's groups. And I spent five years running a women's dialogue group with -- we had women Jewish women from Modiin and Muslim and Christian women from East Jerusalem and each week we would spend, we would open up -- not each week, each month; we met monthly -- and we would spend the beginning of each session with two women telling their stories, one Jewish Israeli one Palestinian, we'd spend 20 minutes just telling their life their story of where the conflict, "Where I am in the conflict." Just telling their story with the conflict. And then the practice was just holding the story. Just holding the story of someone whose story challenges you or makes you uncomfortable or you were taught to deny or you were taught to not believe. Just hold it. Just be present with it and just allow it to be. That was the big deal practice. It is a much bigger deal than it should be because we're so taught to do the opposite.

Eva: Yeah but it is a big deal and you've been in some of the meeting that I organized because that's exactly what peace activation is all about. It is actually can we hold space for different truth and different narrative without arguing with the narrative. And I think in my other initiative One Whole Peace that is inspired by spiritual psychology, it's also again is, "Am I able to hold truth of the other in my heart while still not dropping my own truth?" And I think that's the challenge right now. And that's why the world is divided between either/or. or these two camps. And I when I launched peace activation I I said, "Out there beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing there's a field -- I'll meet you there." That's a quote from Rumi. And I think in this field -- and that's the field I want to work on and I think that's the field you're working on -- is to create this field where we're not contesting or arguing about the other person's truth because every person has their own narrative. We're all radically different and it's totally fine. It's fine to be different it's fine to disagree yet at the same time we're all human and we're all spiritual beings having this human experience for the experience. And right now the experience is really painful. And it doesn't serve me to hate you or to kill you because your experience is different or your perspective is different.

Elana: Can we talk about women and what the role of women is in this work?

Eva: Yes absolutely I think that I think more than women I'm interested in talking about the feminine which some women carry more than others and some men carry as well. And I think what's happening right now in a lot of conflict zones is this masculine control dynamic of power. And what women represent is softness and tenderness -- yet at the same time ability to hold space for a multiplicity of being. Because as a mother and as a caretaker and as someone that is with feet in the ground and really practical -- and we've seen it,I've seen it in so many different places in conflict zones where I did evaluations of project, very often when there's no woman in a project, you only have the perspective of the man or a masculine perspective, you miss on the needs and interests of a big part of the population. And so for me it's really "Women ending War" project is that we need to bring a different perspective. Because what you're seeing right now is people or men rather that are not in touch with the ground with what it means to carry life and care for the life that you brought but also the life -- you see a lots of caretaking of the elders, of the sick, of the children -- and very often these are the responsibility of women. Not only but very often. And even if it's a man having this responsibility, then it's feminine qualities. It's the same, it doesn't matter whether you're a woman or a man, but right now we are we are in a majority where women are doing the caretaking and so just that is bringing more sacredness for life, more compassion.

Elana: Absolutely compassion nurturing caretaking thinking about everybody. I would just say that from my perspective, I love what you're talking about, that perspective that's so missing, the perspective of thinking about people's needs thinking from a place of life and compassion and caretaking and considering people's needs and all of that. I would just, I feel like it's important to point out that even though we call it feminine there are plenty of women who it's it's not it's not -- I wouldn't equate it to -- this is what I, this is a point that's really important to me and sort of a sensitive point for me because when we say "feminine" we don't necessarily mean all women and "masculine" doesn't mean all men. We are just, we're talking about qualities.

Eva: Absolutely.

Elana: It's important to me not to not to go to a place of like "Women have this kind of brain and men have this kind of brain." I was I was brought up with all that. Like, I was brought up with you know the idea that women don't have common sense you know and women weren't supposed to -- my father used to say it all the time. He was like, "Women don't have common sense, women don't know how to handle money, women shouldn't work in all kinds of places." I was brought up in a house of all girls we were four girls. So I'm a little bit sensitive on that point. That's why I brought this book actually because I was wondering if this was going to come up. This book "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia fine and so she talks a lot about what you were saying but she's like very clear to say it's not because we have different brains. It's not about the brains it's about what you said about the socialization into these roles.

Eva: And in the experience. The direct experience and how people relate to you and how you're being put in a in a box. I just met my a dear friend of mine a Christian a man very feminine. He is caretaker of his girls and he parents and he's not a woman, you know. So I just I just want to make sure that we're not boxing, whether woman or man or feminine or masculine, and understanding that we have different layers within personalities based on the experience and the background and what we've lived. And that ultimately we're all radically different and we're all and the our freedom lies in our choices of being. Whether I'm going to call myself a woman a man a she a he a they, you know. All these games that we're having right now around the gender identity and what does it mean to have this type of gender identity, I think we need to really step back back and look at nature and be inspired by nature. And I think a lot of the movement Back To Nature is because it's so all-encompassing of all the difference. Like did you ever see an oak tree fighting with a bamboo saying, "I'm more important than you"? I haven't.

Elana: That's beautiful

Eva: So yeah

Elana: I would just also want to like point out here a really difficult thing when we're talking about women and the role of women and wanting to bring -- when I think about bringing more women into decision- making, it's not necessarily all women. Because you know, there are a few women in this current Israeli government. Not that many by the way, it's really a low point just in terms of numbers of women. But also um the women in the government are very anti-compassion, you know -- anti-feminist, anti women, anti-gay, racist. I mean May Golan who's the head of the Committee for Gender Equality in the Knesset calls herself a "proud racist". She has dedicated her life to, I don't know National Purity or something I don't know exactly. And she she goes she uses her perch to attack feminists so there's that. You have Orit Struck who is super I mean, she Prides herself on being homophobic and representing a homophobic agenda. yeah

Eva: That just proves that it has nothing to do with women. You know like when I was working with the UN DPKO in in Ivory Coast, women were the ones who were instigating and manipulating the conflict. So for me it's not about being a woman. It's about are you actually developing and supporting a human agenda that is participatory inclusive and cooperative. Because that's what women tend to be when when women are in their natural supportive environment. That's what they would do. But not all women would do that just like not all men would do this not just like not all black will do -- Like having, boxing people in tribes or in this category is just like, "it's us versus them", "the Jews are like this", "the black are like this", "the women are like" -- it's not. We have, we are all radically different. And this is really for me the key. So for me, rather than focusing on woman ending war I want to focus on ending war, whether it's a woman or man. Let's just end this.

Elana: Yeah

Eva: And the best way to end this is to be participatory to be inclusive to be collaborative and to work together on, like, what what needs to be done versus who does it. This is like my favorite sentence: What needs to be done versus who does it. Remove the ego from the equation. Because right now we're losing a lot of life on all sides and it just doesn't makes sense.

Elana: Right. Wow so I think that that's a great line to wrap up this podcast with. This introductory episode that we're doing just to introduce ourselves and introduce the topic. I think that really you summed up what we're planning on doing here. Each week we're going to be doing interviews with women -- hopefully women, even though who knows maybe we'll have you know some other members of other genders on the podcast as well -- people who are really fighting for ending the war, ending the bloodshed, and building a new reality. And we're having people on both who are who are working both from top down and bottom up. People who are working on getting more women in leadership positions, getting more diverse perspectives in leadership in diplomacy negotiations, and also people who are working on the ground up to change the reality on the ground.

So I'm super excited yeah I'm super excited to do this with you Eva. it's really a really great opportunity. So thank you.

Eva: Thank you Elana, thank you for the invitation to join you on this podcast.

Elana: It's a pleasure okay

Eva: Let's activate peace !

Elana: Let's do it!