Israeli and Palestinian activists ask Americans to side with peace

It’s a message that hasn’t been prominently heard or seen at many American protests and rallies. Most events have taken place under the Israeli or Palestinian flag, with the emphasis on the pain, struggle or victimization of one people.

That kind of narrow approach can erase everything around it, says Cara Raich, a conflict consultant based in New York.

“As with most conflicts that you feel deeply and personally, a binary choice often offers the simple comfort of pro and con, or right and wrong,” she said. “The magnetic force of false binaries sucks everything it touches into that paradigm.”

For that reason, the conversations that Mr. Green and Ms. Abed have had with Americans, at least to the audiences they attract, have been a kind of spiritual salve. In dozens of conversations along the East Coast, the two activists have described a desperate need for new Israeli and Palestinian leadership, including leaders willing to work together.

They have called Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip, both “the enemy of the Palestinian people” and a “fertilizer for radical Jewish extremism.” And they have expressed frustration at what they see as a war for the moral high ground taking place outside Israel and especially through social media, which denies their experiences.

Libby Lenkinski, vice president at the New Israel Fund, an organization that funds and supports Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, sat in the front row as moderator. She said she has seen a “tangible sense of relief” among attendees who audibly exhale or place their hands over their hearts. The message is so resonant, she said, because it offers a different kind of simplicity than choosing one of the two sides.

“This is not, ‘Kumbaya, let’s hold hands and love each other,’” Ms. Lenkinski said. “It is: ‘There is actually no question of one party winning. Our futures are intertwined and the only way we can keep ourselves alive is by keeping each other alive.”