In 2002, riots tore through the campus of Montreal’s Concordia University prior to the scheduled speech by past Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. International news media flocked to our college town of Montreal, and the city gained an immediate reputation as a hotbed for tensions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Three years later, in January 2005, we each attended, independent of each other, the launch party of Yalla: A Reflection on the Middle East, a fledgling Jewish and Arab youth-run journal. We didn’t yet know each other, but we both recognized that we wanted to join the project. 200 people showed up for the unprecedented event, which was co-sponsored by Hillel and the Arab Students Association. Since then, the editorial board has grown from a Jewish brother-sister team to consist of three Jewish and three Arab editors and publishers spread across Canada. It turns out to be just the community we had been looking for.
On a campus rife with political schisms, we recognize how crucial it is to create a peace between people, not just between politicians. This reality came to light one night this winter when we were discussing B’nai Brith Montreal’s response to “Israeli Apartheid Week,” a new campaign put on by the McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.
Dina argued that harsh criticism of Israel does not constitute racism, as the Jewish organization was investigating, and that its inherent bias prevented it from making such a distinction. Although Rachel agreed with the necessary distinction, the fact of the investigation seemed perfectly fine to her.
“If Jews don’t look out for anti-Semitism,” she maintained, “who will?” And besides, it wasn’t as if Israeli Apartheid Week came from an unbiased group.
Ultimately, we discussed the surrounding issues and recognized each other’s frustration and the history behind it. Through our conversations with each other and through the debates we put in Yalla, we are taking steps toward nuanced, probing dialogue, and are moving away from the rhetoric and self-congratulation that preaches to the already converted in pro-Israel and pro-Palestine communities.
Yalla aims to create a forum for readers to confront even the most extreme perspectives. Only on the rarest occasion do we censor our authors’ words. Aside from occasionally sending calls for violence back to the drawing board, we have consistently erred on the side of tolerance. We avoid sanitizing the language of a piece with whose underlying assumptions we disagree. Authors are encouraged to develop and stand by their perspectives, whatever they are, for the sake of others’ engagement.
Although Yalla has been received with warmth in segments of both communities, the project is controversial and responses to it have been split. We have faced indifference and antagonism from both Arabs and Jews, which has only advanced our belief that there is pain, anger, frustration and hope on both sides that needs to be expressed. We have been accused of glossing over the harsh issues, and of equating the two narratives when there are obvious power differences. We’ve been accused of morally justifying both Palestinian and Israeli injustice.
It seems that these feelings have manifested themselves in a rather unfortunate way. As the constraints of the real world are creeping in on us we find ourselves lacking the financial support we hoped for, and are far short of the funds to print our goal of 10,000 books of the next edition to be distributed across the globe in the spring.
Nearly three years after Yalla first started taking shape, we are now in the process of putting together this second collection, which has taken on a much more global and less Canadian focus, by including the expressions of youth across the world. It is our hope that this collection can be as much of an inspiration to others as the first one was for us.
Yalla is a word that is translated in both Arabic and Hebrew. It means, “Let’s get going!” Our title embodies the view that we have spent long enough hearing the old tired excuses echoing obstinately in our communities We appreciate that there is a certain discomfort in listening to and incorporating other viewpoints but believe that this understanding can help us move on.
