The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us today. We’re talking with two women who are activists in Combatants for Peace. It’s an organization of Israelis and Palestinians who left the battlefield, who work for peace to find a way for Palestinians and Israelis to live together in that place. They believe in nonviolence as a tactic, as a way of life. There are binational movement, resisting oppression. They believe in collective liberation and a world of peace built out of conflict. There are brave warriors for peace and a tour in the United States to tell their story and what it means to resist despair and separation, and instead choose repair and solidarity. Our guests today are Nimala Karoufeh. She’s a Palestinian Christian from Jerusalem and Beit Jala. She’s a social worker and a Palestinian healer and educator.
And Noa Harrell is a former Israeli soldier and now Israeli coordinator for Combatants for Peace. And shortly after Hamas attacked the Israeli settlements, she worked to keep dialogue alive during the most difficult times. Both have lived through war and rising violence, and now Bo stand at the forefront of a joint movement for nonviolent co resistance and co-creation. So Namal and Noah Harrell, welcome. It’s good to have you both. I appreciate you taking the time. I’d like to start by really describing for people what Combatants for Peace is all about, how it started, who you are, because I think most people in America don’t know about it. They know about the Palestinian Israeli conflict and the pain and the war, but not about people who’ve been through it and come together to create a movement for peace. And so I really would like to explore that with the two of you first and Nimala, lemme just start with you and then Noa, jump in. Please give us a little sense of the history of Combatants for Peace and how you got there.

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah, actually I would give this question for Noa.

Marc Steiner:
That’s fine.

Noa Harrell:
Okay. So Combatants for Peace is a movement that was started in 2006, and it did obviously arise from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. And it was started by two groups of Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis and the Palestinians were former combatants who were involved in the cycle of violence, and if they had met each other in different circumstances than the ones that they did eventually they may have killed each other. So it’s very lucky that they met when they decided to speak to each other and not point their guns at each other. So this happened in 2006. These groups of mainly men met together and started to look into the possibility of having a dialogue together. And this evolved into a movement that is now reaching its 20th year. We’ve done a lot of evolution over these years. It started by dialogues, by protests, by freedom marches by the two groups, and also speaking abroad and telling people about the movement, which is committed to co resistance by nonviolent means to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
And in Gaza we’re mainly involved in activities in the West Bank, but obviously in the past two years we’ve been involved around things in Gaza as well. So over the years, more and more women joined the movement. So you don’t have to be a combatant or a mixed combatant to join the movement. Anyone can join if you align with our nonviolent actions and communication. And we have educational programs which mnemonic can tell you about. We have protests together, we have joint activities like rebuilding places that have been demolished by the army or by the settlers in the West Bank. And we have two main events annually. One that was started in the beginning in 2006, which is the joint Israeli and Palestinian Memorial service, which I think many people are aware of because since COVID, we started broadcasting it because it was impossible to bring people together in masses for the ceremony. It’s a ceremony that’s held on the same night that the Israeli memorial services are held every year.
But as opposed to the regular Israeli services, it’s a ceremony that is joined for Israelis and Palestinians grieving together their losses over the years in violent cycles. And it’s actually the only one that openly brings hope to the people participating in it. So this has been going on for almost 20 years and for the past five years we’ve had this event for the Nakba ceremony, which involves the happenings of the Nakba in 1948 and commemorating the people who lost their lives, their families, their houses, their homes in 1948 and grieving together about these losses. Our movement obviously had to deal with some changes in the past two years when the October 7th
Attack by Hamas broke out and the immediate retaliation of the Israelis. And we found ourselves dealing with internal conflicts as well because on the first day of the attack of October 7th, Israelis were receiving very different news from the Palestinians and we were living in completely different universes and we were receiving certain news and the Palestinians were receiving completely different news and we had to start talking together to get our information aligned and grounded. And it was very difficult in the beginning because we were all grieving, we were all very angry, we were frustrated, we were they spared and shocked and it took time for us to gather our feelings together, starting to share them. And actually among many Israeli and Palestinian movements that were active before they 7th of October, we are among the very, very few that held together since then for the past two years.

Marc Steiner:
So I want to pick up on the last point here. Given the devastation taking place in Gaza, how do people respond to you in this movement in the Palestinian world as well, given all that’s gone on? I mean I think this is, the Gaza Award has kind of changed things in a way that’s very dramatic, probably more dramatic than I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been involved since the sixties. So could you talk a bit about that?

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah, I can say that in the first, at least few months, it was hard for us to work outside of the organization because what Noah just said, she described the situation that period of time
And we needed to work with the team members and then with the inside the organization and then the activists, the members of Competence for Peace, we call it the first circle of activists. So this is what we focused at least the first three, four months after the 7th of October. And also some of them, they left the organization Palestinians and Israelis. And we had that time like a decision, people who were recommitted or committed back to the violence, they are not welcome in the organization. So it took us time to how to say, hold ourselves speaking just on the feelings, how do we feel? What is it for you? And then after that we collect our strength and we start to do something on the ground. And I do remember that in February we did February, 2024, we did the first joint demonstration, which took place in junction between Jericho and Jerusalem. And we had a big number of mainly Israelis activists who joined. That was in the beginning, but it was not easy to reconnect again between each other as a team first.

Marc Steiner:
That’s really interesting because the fact that what you both described just now of the tensions inside combatants for peace in the peace movement itself on both sides kind of lends itself to the reality of how horrendous this war is and how deeply personal it’s become on both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side. And having known people in the Israeli Peace movement and Palestinians for decades. And my conversations, I find this may be the most difficult period that people have gone through emotionally.

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yes.

Marc Steiner:
How do you hold that together? Lemme take that back. How do you see the possibility of peace of people living together coming out of this, given the depths this has sunk to at this moment? How do you see that happening?

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah, I just want to say something that we as organization, we call it the genocide war, like we call it genocide, not only war. And this is something I just want to clarify.

Speaker 4:
It’s important.

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yes. And it was the statement that we released few months ago after the report of actually my way. This is how I see it personally. And this is also one of the pillars that competence for peace working on is through education. Because if you come today to the street and ask people what is peace? They told you nothing. Peace is nothing. What is peace really? Are we working on peace just by trend or it is like the value that we both need, not only Israel, it is not only Palestinian, but we all need, and not only for Palestinian Israel, but also generally in the Middle East. So one way that I’m working on, and it’s a main program in combatants for peace, is education. Education. It’s building peace. But before that, there are some values that we need to be there to be understood, to be activated in our communities like justice for odds, freedom, liberation, freedom of movement, raise the awareness about each other, different narratives and identities. So this is important to create a new understanding with a new consciousness about each other. And before that, before we reaching, that we need to have a spaces to heal
And to bring our grief, our sadness, our loss, because we lost thousands of people there back home. So it’s not just easy to come and sit and yell, let’s have peace. Plus we want brave leaders that they are willing to walk this path of peace, acknowledging the rights of each other, acknowledging the rights to exist in this land for all of us, not only for one group of people. So I don’t know the peace concept or a word to be honest. It’s not relevant. So let’s talk about justice, the injustice and justice,

Speaker 4:
Noah.

Noa Harrell:
So I would like to answer your question in two parts. The first part being where are we coming from? And the second part being where are we headed? So the place that we’re coming from, our starting point has been the personal connections that we have with each other. The fact that we are not only partners, but we’re friends that we meet, that we physically do things together and we’re not theoretical to each other. And the fact that over the years we have been able to come as close to equality as is possible within the power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. We’re making decisions together, we’re making the plans together, and none of us is dictating to the other side what to do, which was very helpful in overcoming this crisis. Also take into account the fact that we decided when we started speaking to each other after October 7th, we made it a rule to listen to each other when the other was talking, not to judge, to understand, to accept for a fact that what the other was saying is really how they felt.
And it’s not any type of manipulation or trying to trick the other. And so it took a while, but we were able to come together and stay together as a movement. And when you ask how we as a movement, see how is peace building possible in this horrible time of polarization and pain and grief, I must say that each community needs to feel that their needs are being met in the process of peace building, in the process of any political resolution so that they have something to look for, that they have a future to look forward to. If you ask the Palestinians, it would be, we need freedom, we need recognition, we need dignity. And if you ask the Israelis, it would be, we need security. We need to know that we’re not going to be attacked. We need to know that we are safe. And obviously that’s just not just military security, but also security in all aspects of life. So that that’s a starting point for peace building. I think that many Israelis think of peace as rainbows and birds and singing and things like that that are No, I’m serious.

Marc Steiner:
Funny, serious. I know you’re serious. I know

Noa Harrell:
You’re serious. And they don’t realize that peace is a state where people are able to live next to each other without killing each other. Let’s start by that.

Marc Steiner:
So I just very quickly like to know for the two of you how you came to this place where you are now. I mean, I know from Palestinians I’ve been interviewing for the last 40 years or whatever, that’s been my own family in Israel. I’m Jewish, my family in Israel that the divide is very deep. So you came as an organization that is probably not popular with many people, especially on the Israeli side, maybe on both sides. So I’d like to know more about your journey getting to this place where you are, how you came to this place. Do you want to start?

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah. I was born to a Christian Palestinian family. And our home, like my family even it’s normal Palestinian open family. I grew up in Beja all my life. And during my childhood it was normal to see Jewish Israelis in the area of Bethlehem. And I’m talking about the eighties I can say.
And that time, all the land from the river refer to the sea, but especially the West Bank was under the Israeli military administration. So it was normal to see Israelis, Jewish civilians walking around, buying some stuff from Beja Bethlehem. I was familiar with the language, like some people they used to speak, even members of my family, they were speaking some Hebrews. So I was really familiar with the language and although when I really opened my eyes, it was the first Intifada, I knew that there is something wrong here, that there is something not normal. And there were like civilians, people coming and buy some stuff. And then there were the army soldiers in the Jeeps throwing gas bombs everywhere. So I knew that there is something, but I was not aware, what is it? My first encounter with the occupation system, this racism system was when I become 16 and I didn’t get my ID card.
My mom from Jerusalem, my father from the West Bank, from Bethlehem. And the year that I was born, they registered me with my mother identity, which is Jerusalem, my identity. And the year after they changed that law, so the baby related to the father, especially for Palestinians. And we never felt it until after agreement. And after that I become 16 and then I have to move with my mom to Jerusalem and to keep our house in Beja for my father and my siblings. And in the Israeli system, as I said, based on racism, they categorize the Palestinian in four categories. The first category, which is me, which is Jerusalem, Palestinians who have Jerusalem, my ID based on the 67 borders who have Jerusalem, my id, Israeli travel document, but not citizenship. They don’t have Israeli citizenship and they are not allowed to vote for the kines.
This is the first category. The second category, Palestinians of 48 who are Palestinians living and remain in their land in the 48, which is after Danah, the catastrophe that happened to the Palestinian 48 who remain there, they have Israeli passport, Israeli id, and they are allowed to vote for the ED and participate. And the third category are the Palestinians in the West Bank who are living in the West Bank having Palestinian id, Palestinian passport, but they are not allowed to go to Israel or Jerusalem unless if they have permission and who are lost or lost most of their land in the favor of illegal settlement and settlers in the West Bank. And today we are facing this issue dramatically very difficult, very violent way, and very violent actions from the settlers and the last category who are Palestinians from Gaza, Palestinian, having Palestinian id, Palestinian passport.
But they are not allowed to go out of Gaza except if they have permission. I personally never been to Gaza. I was not allowed to be in Gaza unless if I have permission and it should be very go through security, and if I’m working with the international organization, I might go, but I’m not allowed to go to Gaza and they are not allowed to go out Gaza. So those are the four categories of the Palestinians under this occupation system. When I become to this position, or related to your question, how I become to this position coming from this circumstances, from this separation family, and we are one family I was introduced to in 2005 to organization called Holy and Trust, where I took a nonviolent resistance training. And that was for me, the transformative moment in my life. To see another way to end my suffer first and to use other tools that to spread out my personal suffering and struggle to be as one family, as Palestinian family, normal Palestinian family. That was the moment that I said, this is my path. This is who I am, this is my values. And since then I’m completely committed for in this nonviolent path
In the land.

Marc Steiner:
That’s a journey.

Nimala Karoufeh:
It was a journey.

Marc Steiner:
It’s a journey.

Nimala Karoufeh:
It was a journey because when I was still young and I was believing in violence, I was thinking that violence is the way. I was also anger of this situation. And immediately when I become 16, also 17, the second father started and it was very armed and violent one. So all that was very, very heavy to me as a young, young person.

Marc Steiner:
And Noah,

Noa Harrell:
Yes, my story is really different from this obviously,

Marc Steiner:
I’m sure. Yeah,

Noa Harrell:
Yeah. I come from a family of peace activists actually. But as I was growing up, I wasn’t a peace activist myself. I consider myself to have been a very average Israeli. I went through high school and then I went into the military, but I wasn’t involved in any direct combat or direct violence in the military. I was a sail instructor in the Navy and

Marc Steiner:
A singing instructor

Noa Harrell:
Sailing,

Marc Steiner:
I thought you said singing, sailing, sailing, sailing, right. Got you. Yeah,

Noa Harrell:
Sailing instructor for Naval Cadets. So it just struck me yesterday that we were doing our sailing experiences from along the coast of Israel. We actually ended it in Gaza. So Nimal, I have been in Gaza many, many years ago, but when we went there, we didn’t meet any Palestinians. There were no people there on the beach where we landed. So Palestinians were sort of theoretical to me. They were there, I knew they were there, but I had no contact with them. And actually until I became an activist in the Ants for Peace, I’d never met Palestinians face to face.
So it was all like a theoretical thing. I knew there was a problem, I knew that it had to be solved, but it didn’t touch me personally. And one day in 2016, my aunt called me up and she said, we’re in Tel Aviv and we’re going to see this movie. How would you like to join us? So I went in and we saw the movie, and the movie is called Disturbing the Piece by Steve Epcon. It was the first movie Full feature, done on for peace in 2016. And if anybody has not seen it, I really urge you to look it up. And for me it was a jaw dropping experience. I came out of that film transformed.

Marc Steiner:
How old were you?

Noa Harrell:
It was like, this was nine years ago.

Marc Steiner:
Okay,

Noa Harrell:
I’m not going to tell you my age.

Marc Steiner:
Fine, that’s fine. That’s fine. That’s fine. That’s fine.

Noa Harrell:
And so I came out of that film Transformed, and I said, where do I sign up Israelis who can talk to Palestinians? Palestinians who are willing to talk to Israelis? I’m in, get me in. So I became an activist and I wasn’t fully committed and dedicated. I mean, I did participate in the activities whenever I could, but I had another transformation just over two years ago because as our former general Israeli coordinator was stepping down from his position, I was offered to submit my application to be general Israeli coordinator. And of course I said, no, I’m too busy. I’m a vet by profession. I’m too busy being a vet. I’m not going to do that.

Marc Steiner:
By a vet you mean a veterinarian?

Noa Harrell:
Yes.

Marc Steiner:
Okay. Yeah, I was just checking. Yeah, right, right, right.

Noa Harrell:
And this was in September, 2023. And then I thought it over it. I said, well, maybe it’s a chance to be more active and make some more impact. And on September 29th, I said to the committee, okay, I’ll submit my application. And October 4th, 2023, they said, okay, you’re in. You’ve been elected. And that was October 4th. So these past two years have been really turmoil. They’ve been really significant for me and personally, it has given me a chance to be proactive, to have agency in doing things for my country and to do things for both people in the land. And I’m really grateful for that. So now as I’m stepping down, and I will remain active in Commands for Peace of course, and I’ll follow up on some projects that I’ve started during these two years, but I’m, I’m fully committed to the process.

Marc Steiner:
So I’m curious all that you’ve been through and with this war in Gaza, how you see it in the long term, how you see peace evolving? I tell you a story. In 1968, I went to Cuba and I came home with this poster that I still have. And the poster is a map of all of the holy land with a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other side. And down over the map it says one state, two people, three faiths. Now that may never happen, but how do you see peace evolving given what’s happening now and the intensity of what’s going on now, where your hope come from out of the despair, that peace can actually happen and Israelis and Palestinians can live together?

Noa Harrell:
There are several angles that you can look at it from. The first one for us is there are 14 million people living between the river and the sea. No one is going anywhere. We need to stop killing each other. There is another way other than war. We have to have a political resolution and a political program for this to be able to come true. Now, there are several programs on the table, whether it is a one state solution, two state solution, Confederation Federation, I mean you name it, there’s more than one

Speaker 4:
Option.

Noa Harrell:
That’s one thing. The other thing is the process needs to be not only top down, but bottom up for both societies to be able to build some trust in each other. And now with the trust, there’s a huge gap between the two societies. It’s going to be very, very, very difficult to bridge. But that’s one thing that needs to be done, is some kind of bridging process to build any kind of basic trust between the people. I mean, it’s been done in Northern Ireland, it’s been done in Yugoslavia, it’s been done in places. So we need to learn from these people how they did it and apply it to our region. So that’s one thing that needs to be done.

Marc Steiner:
What are your thoughts?

Nimala Karoufeh:
First, I don’t promise you that we will bring peace, but we are working to build peace in this land. And I just want to tell you a story

Speaker 4:
Of

Nimala Karoufeh:
My grandfather. When I was a child, also my mom, memories that she shared recently with us, my grandfather from my mother’s side, he was living in Jerusalem, from Jerusalem. And he was telling me once that he used to have a breakfast in Jerusalem, lunch in Amman, Jordan, and dinner in Lebanon, Beirut, Lebanon. And he lived those moments. He lived what he told me, my mom as well, she have memories that she was in Lebanon with their car. And this vision is there for me. And I want to live this vision. I want to really have my own car driving from Jerusalem to Aman and then Beirut, maybe the mosque later, Iraq. I don’t know. But this is a dream that I want to live it. So this is one thing, but until we reach there, we need to have a lot of things. There is a lot of effort that need to be done there.
So as you said, it’s peace building. It need effort and energy to do that. And for me, education is one way to acknowledge each other life. That our life is matter. To learn how to live next to each other as neighbors, something else that really to be human for me, acknowledgement and responsibility is something so important. And I saw that a model is giving results, especially in the case of Germany and the second World War. And something so important here in the land is we need to stop this ideologist and extreme right wing to spread out and expand because we will never end it. And to stop this religious thoughts about each other, especially when it comes like we are the chosen people. We are the right people. This land for us, this land for us. This will not reach us to anywhere because if God promised that so God can solve it.
So really to put this conflict, not a religious conflict, because that will, if it’s a religious conflict, only God can solve it. And we will lose our agency to solve it and to think as a human being that we can solve it. And one last thing, which is that I also see it needed, and especially the last years, we saw it vivid to have brave leaders to have a decision not only locally, but also internationally, to see sanctions on the settler’s, violence to see supporting the right wing, especially in Israel, to have also global decision or support to relieve, to solve this conflict. So there is a lot of things that we all need to do. It’s all our responsibility, not only Palestinian, not only Israelis, but globally.

Marc Steiner:
Those are important things. You’ve both said, just watching what both of you and your people around you are going through. First, it makes me think about my time many years back as a civil rights worker in Mississippi, where every day we thought we might die, where it was just intense to end segregation. So I am curious how you all live through the despair and find the hope that peace, the place you were just talking about can come to and how you both do that. And how do you think we there given the moment that we face right now? I mean, I think that what you’re doing, what you both are doing is really incredibly brave

Noa Harrell:
For me. Once you have seen that there is another way, you can’t unsee it. So there’s just one path that I can see possible for people to stop killing each other. And that’s the only path I can walk right now. And I do despair and I do have these days when I catch my head and my hands and I say, it’s not going to work. And I’m not even sure that this, I will see the fruit of our efforts within my lifetime, but I am committed to it also because I care for my children’s future and I care for every child’s future in this area. So I have to keep working at it. It’s like I’m committed to it. I can’t see any other way to go about life. And when I get tired, I try to take care to do other things so they can pick me up like sports, seeing my family, seeing friends, doing things that remind me that there is a normal life somewhere. And then I go back to activities.

Marc Steiner:
I understand that completely. Yes. Define the normality and the madness so you don’t lose your mind.

Noa Harrell:
And we actually don’t really know how to be normal. Israelis have never lived in a state where we’re not feeling endangered, we’re not feeling attacked or at risk. So we’re going to have to learn to be normal. Which is, I mean, maybe you think it’s a given, maybe you think it’s trivial, but it’s not.

Marc Steiner:
No,

Noa Harrell:
It It’s like changing a whole state of mind.

Marc Steiner:
Go ahead, please.

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah. I have a dream to have a better future and I don’t want other generation to suffer like I did. I have been witnessing all the war that happened to Gaza and the genocide, the first father in Father. So it’s enough. I want to be a normal human being. Having a dream for a better future and working with youth, it always give me hope to continue what I am doing today because it is important. It is important not only for me, but for all the people in the land to create really different consciousness. Like we are sharing the same land, the same environment, the same water, the same sources. So why we cannot share the same future?

Marc Steiner:
I really do appreciate the time you’ve taken that. And I know that in these struggles it’s very difficult at times, really difficult, especially with the two of you are experiencing every day. Lemme say this, just one question. Do you see your movement growing among Israelis and Palestinians? Do you see the movement for peace and bringing something together, actually growing and building? How do you see the effect of your work and on the people of Israel and Palestine?

Nimala Karoufeh:
I think, yeah, I will say that I think I will see it in the near future. It’ll grow all those who are working in core resistance. I see this movement is growing because we don’t have other option because what we saw in Gaza, this scenario, the genocide, it might be in the West Bank and we need to prevent that. So we need each other today more than any time before. This is something that I see it’ll happen.

Noa Harrell:
Part of the goal of our visit to the US this week is for us to raise awareness within the communities that we’re meeting. So growing the movement can also mean people supporting us from outside, even if they don’t join the movement itself, which is really important to us for people to carry the message. And also there are peace building organizations in Israel and peace building organizations in Palestine. And part of our growth means also collaborating more and more with the other movements which are doing the same thing. That’s part of our growth as well.

Marc Steiner:
I think it’s really important, the idea here, what you all have created in combatants for Peace coming together to really try to build a different future. And I think people need to know more about that. And people don’t know about that enough. We see the violence, we see the killing, we see the destruction of Gaza, we see what happened with the kidnapping of Israelis, but we don’t see this enough that there are people combatants with peace, people coming together from both sides saying, enough we’re going to build a place for peace. I think that’s really critical. Do you have a final thought for folks across the country and across the world that are listening right now about what you want to leave them with?

Noa Harrell:
I would like to, oh, we both have, go ahead. Yes, go ahead Noah. Okay. I would like for people to bear in mind this one message that please do not stand with Israel and do not stand with Palestine. Please stand with all of us. Please stand with peace. And remember that if you stand with just one side, you’re sabotaging the peace process. We need people to support all of us together. Please do that and please share the message.

Nimala Karoufeh:
Yeah, I like that. And I just would like to end with the cause of all pain and suffering is ignorance. So I encourage you to go out from this comfortable zone of you and open your eyes, educate yourself, do your own homework and research and find us, find this model that we are holding, not only for us, but for all the world. So this is what, this is my message.

Marc Steiner:
Well, Al and Noah, I want to thank you so much for being here today. And also thank you for the work you’re doing and the bravery you’re showing. Bystanding up for peace in the middle of war is not easy, especially when you’re in the war. And so I want to thank you both for the courage that you show and the work you’re doing. And we will connect to Combatants for Peace, let people know how to be in touch, and we will continue our dialogue together. We have to

Noa Harrell:
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having us here.

Marc Steiner:
Thank you. Thank you.
I want to once again thank our guests and Noah Harrell for joining us today. Their full bios and stories are attached to us online as well as how to find more about Combatants for Peace. And thanks to Cameron Grino for running the program today. Audio editor Seman Frank for working his magic producer. So for all her work and research that makes our program sound good and the titles Keller Avara for making it all Work behind the scenes. And everyone here through our news, we’re making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at m ss@therealnews.com and I promise I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Nafe and Noah Harrell for the brave and important work they’re doing and for joining us today. And we’re link here to Combatants for Peace. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening and take care.