#73 Bloodlines

From a SAND Community Gathering in January 2024. You can watch the full video of this Community Gathering here.

As many of us grapple with feelings of disillusionment, outrage, impotence and grief at the horrendous tragedy unfolding in Gaza, we gathered as a SAND community for an intimate conversation with meital yaniv, an ex-israeli soldier / ex-zionist fighter and Sulaiman Khatib, Palestinian co-founder of Combatants for Peace.

With meital and Souli reflecting on their personal journeys of loss and transformation, we uncovered ancestral legacies of trauma and coping, belonging and indoctrination, individual and collective grief, awakening, and resilience. Their dialog was facilitated by Rae Abileah, a Jewish faith leader, social change strategist, and writer. Through sharing our stories, and engaging in open and compassionate conversation, may we find collective healing.

Sulaiman Khatib is the Co-Founder of Combatants for Peace. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has been recognized internationally for his contributions to promoting peace, social justice and equality for all. In 2006, he co-founded Al-Qud’s Association for Democracy and Dialogue, a program which works with youth in order to create effective and sustainable projects focusing on the promotion of peace, democracy and civic participation in the Palestinian Territories. For the last twenty years, he has been a committed advocate for peace in the Middle East and an active member of various programs aiming to promote a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He is the author of In this Place Together.

meital yaniv was born into a sephardic and ashkenazi lineage of in/famous war heroes and pillars for the state of israel, meital is the author of bloodlines, an epic and intimate dive into the israeli apartheid regime from the perspective of an ex-israeli/ex-zionist soldier. In the book, meital yaniv traces their paternal family narrative from surviving the Holocaust of the second world war to migrating to Palestine and their subsequent indoctrination as zionist colonizers and defenders of the state of israel. yaniv directs our attention to the cycles of history and how genocide not only repeats but grows monstrously in the crevices of state belonging. They see themselves as “a death laborer tending to a prayer for the liberation of the land of Palestine and the lands of our bodies.”

Rae Abileah (she/her) is a Jewish faith leader, social change strategist, writer, and facilitator. For the past two decades, she has worked with nonprofits and social movements, from volunteer to executive director.

Topics

• 00:24 – Introduction with Gazan Musician, Haneen Sabbah singing Reem Banna (The Absence one)
• 04:16 – Introduction from Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo
• 06:52 – Rae Abileah Introduction
• 12:12 – Sulaiman Khatib
• 17:32 – Sulaiman’s Time in Jail
• 33:18 – meital yaniv’s Story
• 48:16 – Healing the Land Through Ancestors

SAND’s Helpful Resources on Israel/Palestine