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THEGOODNEIGHBOR As a Zionist soldier, civil-rights advocate, and pioneer of joint nonviolent activism between Israelis and Palestinians, Hillel Bardin has dedicated most of his adult life to the pursuit of a most elusive peace. BY TREY POPP ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIANO PONZI 32 NOV | DEC 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE NOV | DEC 2014 33 defining moment of Mazen Bank four months into the Palestinian “When our unit arrived in Jericho for The Badra’s life as a father came popular uprising. our first real taste of the intifada,” Bardin during the second year of the First Intifada. Bardin was born in Mandate Palestine recalls, “the company commander of the It was 1989, and the 31-year-old Palestinian in 1935, but spent his formative years in outgoing reserve unit taught us the ropes. was returning from Birzeit University in the United States. The eruption of World He said that we would find this to be an the West Bank, where he had recently War II in 1939, during a family trip to visit entirely different experience from any- begun teaching business administration, his maternal grandfather in America, thing we had done in the army. He said to his home in Beit Sahour, a village that prevented their return. Yet Israel’s pull that he had commanded soldiers who had abuts the eastern flank of Bethlehem. was strong for Bardin, who from his early supported the Peace Now movement, but When Badra arrived, his house was filled adulthood to the present day has consid- after they saw what was going on, they with anxious neighbors. ered himself “first and foremost a Zionist had changed their thinking 180 degrees. His five-year-old son, the middle of who sees the necessity of the Jewish home- He showed us that he kept a bottle with three children, had locked himself land as an unassailable issue.” At 30 he some gasoline in his jeep at all times, so behind a bedroom door in terror. Badra moved to Jerusalem with his wife, Anita. that if he killed a Palestinian, he could quickly learned why. For reasons no one Apart from several years pursuing higher convince the inquiry that the Palestinian would ever understand, a passing Jewish education back in the States—Bardin had thrown a Molotov cocktail. When the settler had sprung out of a car, chased came to Penn to study computer science Palestinians closed their stores for the the child down, and pinned him to the between 1967 and 1971, during which time daily strikes called by the intifada’s lead- ground to beat him. he also worked at the medical school’s ers, he demonstrated how he destroyed “The neighbors estimated that the man Institute for Environmental Medicine— the front of a poor man’s shop by driving was about 45 years old,” Badra recalls. Israel has been home ever since. his jeep through its locked front door.” “He had his wife and other people in the Bardin, a secular Jew with a pensive face Bardin’s military tour in Jericho was car. He put a gun to my son’s head, while framed by a springy beard that has faded filled with cognitive dissonance. He his foot was on my son’s body.” from brown to white, was not a run-of-the- watched European tourists visiting the Through the locked door Badra tried to mill army reservist. His unassuming site where John is said to have baptized assure his little boy that the family’s home demeanor concealed what Penn history Jesus, Arabs who largely modeled dignity was safe. He pled for nearly two hours professor Michael Zuckerman C’61, who and nonviolence by day even when before his son opened the door. After that, befriended him as a junior faculty member Molotov cocktails lit up the night, and an the young boy made a pledge that his and fellow kindergarten parent in occupying army whose behavior ranged father has never been able to forget. Philadelphia, calls an “ethical athleticism.” from willful cruelty to noble restraint. “He said, ‘Dad,’—now remember, he’s “He knows what he thinks is right and “It was hard to understand what was five years old—and he said, ‘Dad, when I what he thinks is wrong, and he thinks going on,” Bardin writes in A Zionist grow up, I want to buy a gun, and I want that right and wrong have to be con- Among Palestinians, a long-incubating to kill that person.’ nected to your life,” Zuckerman says. memoir published in 2012 by Indiana “That was a turning point in my life,” “Yet he had a remarkable gift for making University Press. “We were prepared to Badra says, 25 years later. “I was left with clear that what he did was what he did, kill children throwing Molotovs, yet were three options. One, do nothing about it: let and that no one else was expected to be casually relaxed with the population of your son live with fear and trauma and like him. I never experienced Hillel as this rebelling town. I was confused, but nightmares and God knows what. Two, self-righteous, or holier than me.” my actual contact with Palestinians was raise your son with the desire for hate and In Jerusalem, where Zuckerman recon- strangely reassuring.” revenge. Or three, try to change the situa- nected with his friend as a visiting professor The day his reserve stint ended, Bardin tion for you, your family, and your people. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in ventured into Jericho as a civilian to make “That was my choice, and it wasn’t 1977 and 1978, Bardin had an unusual sense of what was going on. Dressed in going to be an easy choice,” he continues. knack for getting along with his neighbors, running shorts, he made his way on foot “I needed to reach out to, quote-unquote, including some of the Arabs in nearby Sur to the home of a released prisoner he had my enemies.” Bahir, a village located a mile away from encountered while on guard duty in a And so it came to pass that Badra’s life his apartment in the upscale Arnona quar- detention facility. The man, whose hand became enmeshed with that of Hillel ter. Yet unremarkably for a Jew living in the was still bandaged where it had been Bardin GEE’74. Holy Land at that time, Bardin was hardly struck with a billy club, invited Bardin in. eager for the city’s Arab population to grow. They talked. Bardin was taken aback 1989, Bardin was a longtime “I had a way of thinking about things: that by “the unexpected experience of meeting IN resident of Jerusalem who had they were the enemy, and you don’t want an Arab with moderate political views.” continued to volunteer as an active them to multiply,” Bardin recalled in a recent “From the Israeli press I had understood reserve soldier in the Israeli army into interview, pausing to remark on the casual that the intifada was a new method for his early 50s, even though compulsory racism that informed that attitude. achieving the Arabs’ age-old goal of throw- military service ended at age 45. The It was an attitude that was hardening ing us into the sea,” Bardin writes. “Yet year before, he’d done a three-and-a-half around Bardin when he reported for Sa’ed was obviously one of the rare Arab week tour of duty in the occupied West military duty in the spring of 1988. moderates with whom we could really 34 NOV | DEC 2014 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE make peace … Everything he said seemed Center for Rapprochement between Peoples with those people, especially Hillel and a acceptable to me, unbelievably so.” (PCR) was founded in the West Bank; Bardin few more people … Now I have friends, Bardin warned his host not to speak helped to charter the Rapprochement people that I care about and who care about so openly; if his neighbors should over- Dialogue Center (RDC) in Israel. me. And that’s what makes a difference. I hear, surely his life would be in danger. Nearly 30 years later—even against the don’t think about them as enemies anymore. Sa’ed replied that the truth was quite the backdrop of the 2014 war in Gaza—joint I care about them and I know they care about contrary. All his neighbors favored a Israeli-Palestinian civilian activism is com- me. That’s the power of this activity: the peaceful two-state solution. monplace (see sidebar, p. 36). But at the human contact, the human touch.” “If that’s really so,” Bardin said, “what time, Bardin’s approach was unusual As the groups pivoted from dialogues to if I bring a group of my friends and neigh- enough that the Israeli Interior Ministry demonstrations aimed at shifting public bors from Jerusalem. Would you be will- blocked the RDC’s registration until the opinion, the challenge grew more daunting. ing to bring some of your neighbors Association for Civil Rights in Israel took Bardin, who describes himself as a “very together so that we can hear what people the matter to court. And even apart from shy person who has trouble being forceful,” are really thinking?” bureaucratic obstacles, the social and eco- emerged as what Badra calls “the back- The Palestinian’s immediate agreement nomic barrier between Israelis and bone, at least from the Israeli side,” of the was the first in a chain of events that would Palestinians was a high one.

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