With 'long letters,' how 2 writers — one Arab, the other Israeli — formed a rare friendship

Even before the recent turmoil in the Middle East, an Israeli and Arab writer developed an unexpected friendship.

"Now we've never actually met. And we've never actually spoken. We write long letters to each other," says Yossi Klein Halevi.

For the first time, Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi and Arab writer R.F. Georgy will have a conversation, live on our show.

"I acknowledge your humanity, you acknowledge my humanity. And as long as we acknowledge our collective humanity, hate will start to diminish," Georgy says.

Today, On Point: Halevi and Georgy's friendship and their hopes for peace in the region.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Israeli writer and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. His latest book is called Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Author of the op-ed The lonely people of history, published in The Times of Israel.

R.F. Georgy, Egyptian-American author. His novel, Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story, is slated to be adapted to film by Israeli director Eran Riklis. Author of the op-ed The disposable people of history, published in The Times of Israel.

Part I

DEBORAH BECKER: I'm Deborah Becker in for Meghna Chakrabarti. And this is On Point. Amid talks about a possible truce in the war between Israel and Hamas, we want to have a conversation this hour about how two writers with different viewpoints are processing the conflict. We're sitting down today with Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi and Arab writer R.F. Georgy.

Halevi's author of the book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. He's also a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He's joining us from Jerusalem. Welcome, Yossi, to On Point.

YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI: Well, thanks so much for having me.

BECKER: And R.F. Georgy is author of the book, Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story. He's joining us from California. Welcome, Georgy, to On Point.

R.F. GEORGY: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

BECKER: So the two of you have been corresponding by email for years, but you've never met or spoken to each other until now. So we're very honored that we are able to broadcast your first conversation. So thank you.

HALEVI: Thank you. Indeed.

BECKER: But let's go back to the beginning of your first correspondence. Georgy, you were first to reach out. You sent an email in 2018. Would you mind reading a little bit of that email?

GEORGY: Sure. I said, "I must congratulate you. The world in general and those of us from the Middle East need people like you. People who have a vision which goes beyond the immediate trappings of hate, blame and counter-blame, and the projection of our own shortcomings onto others."

BECKER: And Yossi, when you received that email, what did you think? How did you react?

HALEVI: Well, first of all, I just have to say, Georgy, I'm so moved to actually hear your voice reading your — reading that letter. So I'm just thrilled. I'm thrilled.

GEORGY: The feeling is mutual, Yossi. It's wonderful to hear your voice.

HALEVI: So, you know, Deborah, when I got this email from Georgy, I had just published my book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. And Georgy is not Palestinian. He's an Egyptian-born, Arab-American writer. And I was just overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed first of all by his generosity of spirit, his open heart. And his capacity for empathy to both sides, which is so rare. Usually you choose a side and you barricade yourself into that position. And here was an Arab writer responding to my book, telling me that he was touched by my attempt to reach out. And I felt that, when I got his letter, I felt the project had already been vindicated. Just receiving that letter made it worthwhile.

BECKER: And Georgy, what do you think of that?

GEORGY: You do me too much honor, Yossi. I would like to say a few words about the book, because I had a chance to reread it again a couple of days ago. And it has nothing to do with the conflict. It's the literary style, Yossi, the lyricism in your work and the compassion that comes through your work, I thought was very powerful. And that's what moved me.

The way you've talked about the yearning for the other side, right? That we want to be neighbors, that we don't want to be adversaries anymore. And that you say towards the end of the book that it's your fervent hope that you invite them into your home. And I think there's nothing more profound than that.

BECKER: Georgy, why did you decide that you wanted to write to Yossi?

GEORGY: Because, honestly, it touched me in 2014 when I wrote Absolution. And by the way, it took me four years of research, as if I was doing maybe a couple of PhDs. It took me four years to do the research, not just on the events of the Middle East and the history, but on the biographies of major figures. And writing Absolution was a cathartic experience for me. Because I had to put myself in the Jewish perspective, narrative. And that was not easy, but I'm glad I did it.

BECKER: And it's actually — Absolution is actually about doing just that, right? Immersing yourself in a different perspective, and how that might result in change.

GEORGY: Yes, and if I have a minute later if you wish, but I'd like to discuss the story behind the novel, because it's just as interesting.

BECKER: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. I just want to first just make sure we establish, you know, that the two of you have not had a conversation until this point, and I want to talk a little bit about how this relationship started, and then we'll talk about some of your work.

So, I wonder, Yossi, you've welcomed feedback about your writing from folks and you've actually published some of the reaction and we'll get to that a little bit later in the program as well. But I wonder, was there something about Georgy's correspondence with you that stood out? And when you tell your family and friends about your correspondence and relationships that have developed since your book, what do they say? What's their reaction?

HALEVI: Well, first in terms of what I responded to in Georgy's response was — I received many responses. The book was translated into Arabic and placed online for free downloading. So I got responses from Palestinians, from people across the Arab world. But what was really in some ways singular about Georgy's response was his capacity for empathy, not only with the human stories of both sides, in a way that's easy. I mean, it's easier than developing empathy with the historical narratives of each side and understanding the legitimacy, the indigenousness of both peoples from within their own stories. And that's what really stood out for me with Georgy's letter.

And then, of course, I read his novel, Absolution. And Georgy, I just recently re-read it as well. And that same love of these two peoples, these two tormented, tormenting peoples that are stuck with each other and can't seem to recognize the other's legitimacy. And here's this Arab writer, who's an outsider and an insider simultaneously. This conflict, as he wrote to me, this conflict was not strange to him. He grew up with this conflict and yet wasn't directly involved. But chose not only to immerse himself in the conflict, but to immerse himself in both sides. And just look at what's happening to the discourse today, around the West, and you can appreciate how rare that capacity is to keep your heart open to both sides.

BECKER: Right. And I think this is a good time, Georgy, for you to talk a little bit about Absolution. And it is a love story, as Yossi mentioned, but tell us about where this novel came from for you.

GEORGY: Yes, absolutely. It was 1985 and I was at the University of California at San Diego, UC San Diego. And I was walking on campus one day and I met this red-haired Palestinian girl. To be honest, I thought she was Swedish or something or Northern European. And I asked her something and turns out she's Palestinian. And I didn't know a soul there, Deborah, in San Diego. So her and her family showed me such kindness and such warmth that I was overwhelmed by it.

And at the same time, I attended a course on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which was taught by the Israeli professor, a visiting professor, Jacob Goldberg. And I also belonged to an Arab organization there. These lectures with the professor, Deborah, were in many ways — they were just a conflict zone. The Arab group standing behind me in the class — it was standing only, people who didn't even register for the course, it was standing room in the auditorium. And they pushed me, "Oh, you have to challenge what he's saying."

And so I thought I was articulate and clever, where in reality I was naïve and stupid. But you know, "How could you say this, professor?" And throughout the whole process, the professor, Goldberg, he was calm and wonderfully kind. And I decided to, I didn't stay long at San Diego, I decided to transfer to Berkeley. And before I left, he took me aside and he said, "Georgy, you are brilliant. Your mind works very sharply." "Okay, thank you." And he told me, "If you truly want to understand the conflict, read other perspectives. Read Jewish perspectives. Then you have a balance." So, as a naïve, as I say, person, in my mind at the time I dismissed it and went on to Berkeley.

And it was at Berkeley that I started to read, consume actually, whatever I can get on Jewish history, Jewish literary tradition, the Holocaust, literature that followed the Holocaust, all the way to our present time. And when you get that much reading done, absorbing other perspectives, you can't help but change your own perspective in regard to a people that were, X number of years earlier, an enemy.

And then decades later, all of what he said to me, I had to acknowledge him because it changed me. And so Absolution was inspired by this red-haired Palestinian girl. And Professor Jacob Goldberg, who went on, by the way, he became an advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, after, yeah.

BECKER: And the book is being made into a television series, correct?

GEORGY: Yes, the director, Eran Riklis, your viewers, your listeners might have seen maybe The Lemon Tree. He's famous for that movie, but he's going to adapt it to an eight-hour television series.

BECKER: Alright. Well, we're going to take a break and we'll continue our conversation in a moment.

Part II

BECKER: Gentlemen, before the break, we were talking about Georgy's book. We're going to get to yours in a minute, Yossi, but I think we need to address first October 7 and the Hamas attack on Israel.

And one email that Yossi, you sent to Georgy last month read, and I'm quoting here, part of it, "It's frankly impossible for me at this moment to be in any mode other than defending Israel from the hatred that's spreading around the world. My goal at this moment, along with almost every Israeli Jew, is victory over Hamas. I need your voice along with others to remind me that I have other commitments that go beyond the Jewish people. And I ask for your patience."

Can you tell me, Yossi, how has October 7 affected your writing and your correspondence at this point? You're right there. You can see things firsthand. Tell me what you're experiencing.

HALEVI: It's really hard to know where to begin. In some sense, the rest of the world has moved past October 7 into the next phase of the war and the overwhelming misery and rising death toll in Gaza. It's certainly understandable that the world's attention would be focused there. But in Israel, we haven't begun to absorb October 7.

October 7 shattered so many fundamental assumptions that we Israelis had about our security, our strength. We always knew that we lived with a certain amount of vulnerability as the lone non-Arab, non-Muslim state for thousands of kilometers around us. This conflict — we've always experienced this conflict as a regional war and not just Israel and the Palestinians.

But what happened on October 7 was a kind of a death blow to our faith in our ability to defend ourselves. Our seemingly weakest enemy delivered the worst blow in Israel's history. The whole premise of Israel is that Jews would never die helpless in this country. That was the promise of Israel to the Jewish people, creating a safe refuge. And over a thousand of our citizens died in a state of helplessness, in the most grotesque ways that Jews anywhere in the world have ever been murdered. But this happened within the borders of a sovereign Jewish state.

So that's the first shock. The second realization was that what was exposed on October 7 was a near-fatal weakness. And in the Middle East, if Israel doesn't maintain a credible military deterrence, then the other enemies on our borders — Hezbollah, Syria, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who have established bases in Syria — we are surrounded by enemies that are like-minded with Hamas. And if we don't manage to maintain our deterrence, we don't have a future in the long term in this country.

And for that reason, that realization is why over 90% of Israeli Jews support this war, including almost the entire Israeli left. And I can't remember the last time we were in a situation like this, where there was such unanimity of purpose in a country that doesn't agree about anything, 90% of Israelis can't agree on anything. And to have that level of unanimity, is, I think, indicative of the realization that almost all Israeli Jews share that this is one of those existential moments in Jewish history.

BECKER: I don't want to debate with you exactly what's happening here in the response. What I do want to talk about is because this was such an important moment for Israel, how does that affect your writing? The writing of someone who said, "I want to understand my neighbor, I want to find common ground, I support a two-state solution." When something like what you've called, a "death blow," when something like that happens, what does that do to you and to your writing? How is it affected?

HALEVI: It forced me to focus on issues that I would prefer not to write about, which is survival. I would much rather be devoting my energies to a vision for the future, to seeking people of goodwill with whom to amplify our small voices. And that's the commitment that I hope to return to when this war is over. But right now I feel in, to be honest, that a part of me — maybe the best part of me is frozen, is stunned. And that's also why I was so touched when Georgy wrote his op-ed.

And we didn't discuss it but I wrote an op-ed about how the Jews around the world are feeling alone at this moment, misunderstood. And Georgy wrote an op-ed in response which was beautiful. My piece was called The Lonely People of History, which was about this deep sense of Jewish aloneness that we've carried as a people, really for thousands of years. And Georgy's response was to write about the Palestinians as "the disposable people of history." And he wrote it in his characteristically humane and empathic way.

BECKER: Georgy, tell us a little bit about that. Why did you write it and what was the goal of that?

GEORGY: Yeah, before I say that, I just want to say, if you'll forgive me, something on October 7.

BECKER: Yes, yes, certainly.

GEORGY: It touched me as well. And I wrote in the op-ed that there is no moral framework that can accommodate the vile, vicious, and disgusting atrocities that were carried out on that date. And I'm always impressing upon my Arab friends, Palestinian friends: criticism of the Israeli government, they are not mutually exclusive for condemning the atrocities of October 7. You see, a lot of people think, "Well if I admit to the the moral vileness of this act it's gonna weaken my position." Reality doesn't work like this. We're talking about human beings that were slaughtered, you know, raped and so on. And so as someone from the Arab world, you have to be honest with yourself.

I wrote the article in response to Yossi's because it struck me that when you look at the scale of destruction in Gaza, regardless of what your political or ideological views are, these are human beings. And I want to add something, by the way. You know, I should let the listeners should know that I've been influenced, Yossi and I have disagreements on Edward Said — I've been influenced largely by Edward Said. And on the other side by Abba Eban, you know, the former ambassador to Israel, ambassador to the United Nations and foreign minister and so on.

In any event, when you look at the television screen, and you see that scale of destruction, what happens is we, in the West, look at that, and our heart goes out to these people. But ask yourselves this question: Aren't these people treated as an amorphous mass of undifferentiated misery? They are not fully formed human beings with narratives of their own.

But when you look at — and I wish it would be done this way --  the Israelis and their suffering, and their suffering is important, but they're presented to us in the media, right, fully formed, and that's the way it should be. These are people who have lives, who have families, but that is not accorded to the other side. And I'm not pinpointing individual networks and all that. I'm talking — it's a kind of cultural criticism. That the Palestinian people, for a long time, have been disposable in a way. And this is an opportunity, Yossi, to unfreeze. And I know it takes time, you see. But it's only when we're on the precipice of destruction that we can act.

HALEVI: So I, I — it's good to be able to disagree, Georgy. Because it makes the interaction, I think, more grounded in our reality.

GEORGY: Absolutely.

HALEVI: And my strong sense is that the Palestinians in the past, and certainly the Palestinian narrative, were both treated as abstractions by much of the Western media. I don't think that that's true anymore. It's certainly not true for me. I have Palestinian friends. I've engaged. I've spent a lot of time in Palestinian society. And I have a great deal of empathy for the Palestinian narrative.

I think that the tragedy of this conflict is that this is a struggle between right versus right. If it wasn't right versus right, it would be much easier to solve. It would be a much easier conflict to disentangle. But it's precisely because you're dealing with two very compelling narratives that makes this such a brutal conflict.

On the Israeli side, there is more and more feeling that we're becoming an abstraction. Certainly in the progressive West, we are not being seen anymore. And so, for example, October 7, if it's recognized at all in progressive circles, it's seen as, "Okay, one more tragedy. Tragedies happen in war. Maybe there were rapes. Maybe there weren't rapes." What we experienced on October 7 was atrocity as a deliberate strategy, as a premeditated act of war. And Hamas fighters — we know this — crossed the border with the intention of mass rape, with the intention of dismembering, cutting off limbs. And the purpose was to terrorize Israelis, to convince us that we have no future in this land and we might as well just flee.

And of course, the Israeli response when we're — and that's really the Jewish psyche — when we're confronted with that level of hatred and hostility, our response is to pull together and defend ourselves.

BECKER: What do you think would help ground you in this, Yossi? Is it correspondence with folks like Georgy? What would help?

HALEVI: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that what both sides need to hear is a measure of empathy. And Georgy is right, empathy has become politicized. And before anything else, one needs to be able to feel the horror of what we're doing to each other. And leaving aside the question for a moment of how each side perceives the conflict just on that level.  That's why Georgy is so important to me. He forces me back into my primal humanity.

And what I need as an Israeli is some acknowledgement that we are in an impossible situation where we are dealing with a genocidal regime on our border. That has already proven not only its genocidal intent, but its genocidal capacity. October 7 was a miniature experience of genocide. You know, Israel is being accused now of genocide. And I hear that, and I just want to scream. Because there is a profound moral difference between deliberate assault on civilians and the tragedy of civilian deaths in war. A deliberate assault is what defines war as barbarism. And an accidental killing of civilians is what defines war as tragedy.

And if that moral distinction can be made, and then one can argue whether the price is still too high, whether Israel is fighting this war as justly as it should. But that basic distinction of one side, Hamas, whose goal is to maximize civilian casualties and to create terror through atrocity. And on the Israeli side, to not maximize civilian casualties and to really try to fight a war under the most impossible circumstances. There is no way to fight a war in Gaza without, tragically, involving civilians. The place is too intimate. It's too small. Hamas hides behind human shields. They've used hospitals as command centers. Schools. Mosques. That's Hamas' mode of operation. And so --

BECKER: You know, we've got about a minute left before we have to take a break. So hold that thought, but I just wonder, both of you have been writing about this for a long time, trying to understand the other's perspective and find some kind of middle ground. Is this point — this "death blow," as you call it, Yossi — and I want to hear from Georgy as well in this last minute, so let's be brief, is this different? Are we at a different point right now, and is it more difficult?

HALEVI: It is. It is. And look, you know, each side is experiencing this moment through the lens of its worst historical nightmare. For many Jews, October 7 was a kind of throwback to the Holocaust. And for Palestinians, this is a throwback to the Nakba. And I don't like either of those historical analogies for this moment, but emotionally, that's what both sides are experiencing.

BECKER: Okay, we're going to have to take a break, and Georgy, I'm going to come to you and have you answer that question after the break.

Part III

BECKER: Before the break, we were talking about empathy. Both of you write about this in your books. And finding a way to understand the narrative of someone with a completely different perspective and how that can help resolve conflicts, particularly the conflict between Israeli and Palestinians.

And I asked Yossi if it was different now — if it was different and difficult to find that sort of common ground after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. And Georgy, you did not get a chance to answer. I wonder how you think October 7 and the current events are affecting the ability to compromise?

GEORGY: Yes, at least from my perspective — you know, I'm not in government, all I can do is represent myself — is that we do need empathy and we knew we do need compassion. But this is one of those punctuated moments in history. And what I mean by that is it could either serve us as a powerful moment to explore peace, or it could make us retreat and become cold or frozen, right? And maintain a status quo.

You see, Deborah, the status quo for over a century now, that old paradigm does not work. It cannot work. When you debate someone about this conflict, you have what I call ready-made syllogistic responses. You're gonna make a point, I have my counter ready for you. You see what I mean?

BECKER: Mm-hmm.

GEORGY: You know, in my novel, I created my character in the novel, Avi. I made him brilliant. Stunningly brilliant. And there's a reason for that. Because Avi had to undergo a transformation that no matter how clever you are with your language and your defense, peace is far more simple. It is something that you can taste. Because Avi had to taste Palestinian food, right? It is something that you can feel.

And so, if I may, I just want to read something very briefly, if I may, Deborah.

BECKER: Certainly.

GEORGY: This is from the opening of my novel. "Peace is not determined by the signage of treaties or the wishes of leaders. Peace is not a discrete event. Rather, it is a renewable proposition filled with affirmations designed to mitigate against the collective distrust of two people who knew little beyond hatred, suspicion, blame and counter blame, intellectual gamesmanship, fear, paranoia, historical necessity, retribution, and a host of other deeply ingrained emotional projections that are constantly lurking beneath the surface."

This summarizes that century, right? Of fear or of hatred and so on. This conflict, in my opinion, has two overarching frameworks. One is what I call representation, how we demonize the other side. And two — by the way, this is going to come, you know, your listener might say, what? — the other side of it is the digital age.

BECKER: Explain that a little.

GEORGY: In my other novel, Notes from the Cafe, I explore how the digital age is changing us, which I think is very important. So when this conflict broke, it is filtered through misinformation, lies, conspiracy theories, and so on and so forth. The digital age today, we live in what I call a time of where ideas have become ephemeral, fleeting images, alternative facts, right? The very structure, the epistemic value of knowledge itself is under attack. And so to have this kind of discourse that Yossi and I are having — and I want to simply say thank you to you and to NPR for allowing this to happen, because it does not happen.

BECKER: I wonder, Yossi, what you say to some of those comments from Georgy. And also I do want to hear both of you reflect on how you think writing and your roles as writers can help, especially when we're talking about the barrage of misinformation that people are getting from social media that's affecting our thoughts. Yossi, what do you say?

HALEVI: Well, you know, listening to Georgy speak about how writers can help bring mutual empathy, writing is really what brought me to an appreciation of the Palestinian side. And I went on a journey in the late 1990s, a two year journey into Palestinian society. And I was especially interested, as a religious Jew, I was especially interested in Palestinian Islam and Christianity. And so I spent those two years traveling through the West Bank, Gaza, parts of Israel, and encountering Palestinian stories. And I wrote a book about it. And that was published 20 years ago.

And that was the beginning, really, of my, of what I would call a journey of hard empathy. Because it's, especially at a moment like this, I do feel that those parts of me are harder to access. But what I think about writers and conflict is that writers are their own little tribe. We belong to nations, cultures, religions, but we also belong to each other. And that's a transnational identity. We recognize each other. We all have the same struggles in sitting for many hours a day, alone in a room, confronting the limitations of our creative abilities.

And we all love stories. And writers are devoted to stories. And this conflict is really a conflict over stories. And the way that these stories these two national narratives have been posited is as mutually exclusive stories. But for writers, stories are not mutually exclusive. Writers can have the ability to hold conflicting stories. That's surrealism. That's magical realism. And so there's something about the writer's process that allows you to hold mutually conflicting narratives.

And what I tried to do in the Letters book was write my story. "This is my narrative." And then inviting Palestinians to write to me about their counter-narrative and their criticisms of the book. And then I published those responses along with Georgy's letter in the next edition of the book, so that it now modeled exactly what I feel a writer's soul really is supposed to contain, which is multiple stories. And the stories don't have to fit neatly together. In fact, from a writer's perspective, jarring stories are, quite honestly, more interesting.

So I was drawn to understand the Palestinian narrative, first of all, out of curiosity, simply a writer's curiosity. "I live next door to you and I don't know anything about you." And so this is a conflict over narratives. Because both peoples, the Palestinians, the Israelis — or more broadly, the Arabs and the Jews — are peoples that live by their stories. It's not like Westerners, who really are living more in the now. Middle Easterners, and this is true both for Jews and Arabs, live in historical imagination. We're in constant communication and struggle with our stories.

And one of the mistakes — and I'll stop here — but one of the mistakes that I feel the peace process made, the diplomats in charge of the peace process made in the past was that they tried to circumvent these two powerful now conflicting narratives and this is not just a conflict about a line on the map. It's not just a conflict about tangible problems. It's about the intangibles of identity and history and memory and trauma and dreams. And maybe the next time we try to make peace, we should think about bringing writers and poets and theologians and philosophers at the table, along with diplomats.

BECKER: Georgy, what do you say to that? What do you say about those two powerful narratives and how writers influence and might influence this?

GEORGY: Yes. Thank you for saying that, Yossi. He's absolutely correct, it is a conflict of narratives. And as long as the narratives are defined or filled with hatred and enmity and so on, an enduring peace simply cannot happen. You need overtures from both sides. And when I mean overtures, I don't mean sort of some false acknowledgement or inauthentic acknowledgement, right? You need to put yourself in the other's perspective. Can I give you an example?

BECKER: Briefly.

GEORGY: The Holocaust. And here, leave it to an Egyptian to talk about the Holocaust, right? The Holocaust was perhaps the greatest evil that befell human history. It was beyond anyone's comprehension in the scale of suffering, death, destruction. The Holocaust — and I would like the Arab world to understand this — the Holocaust transmits to us, to this day, to Jews to this day, it transmits profound, collective, generational trauma. So that's an overture.

On the other side, the overture is, "Please acknowledge, your Palestinian neighbors that are around you, that they are human beings. Acknowledge their humanity." And I hate to use the terms right to self determination. You know, I'm trying to come up with a new language, actually. That they deserve something better than what it is today. That the Gaza Palestinians in Gaza, they have endured lives of quiet desperation. And I'm not going to get into whose fault it is. See, when we go back to that kind of thinking, this back and forth, peace is not possible.

BECKER: Right. But that's the predominant thinking. That's the predominant dialogue. So I don't know how you move away from that, especially when you're talking about the influence of social media — not just misinformation, but the way people's views are presented as well. And how, how differing views are just completely shut down. So I think you're both in a difficult spot and I wonder if you feel like you're part of a very small group and whether you're getting any traction to these ideas of being able to listen and understand the other's viewpoint?

HALEVI: Not now. This is a moment where both sides feel they are in existential crisis. And it's not a moment where people on either side can hear a reasoned conversation. And I understand that. I understand that. When you're under assault — this is a conversation that is very hard for me. And even though I've been involved in variations of this conversation for many years, it's very hard for me to have this now because I feel under multiple assault from so many directions, whether it's being accused of genocide, it's the demonstrations around the world, to say nothing of the threat of living next door to Hamas.

But if that's difficult for me, imagine how difficult it is for people who haven't been exposed to the complexity of these interlocking narratives. And who didn't, and who weren't exposed to people of goodwill on the other side. Who for me are not the other side when I have partners — and Georgy, you're certainly one of them. You're not on the other side. We may disagree. You may think that — and I know you do — that Israel has overreacted. I think we don't have a choice. And yet here we are, we're still communicating because we are on the same side.

BECKER: So let's end with an optimistic — that's a good segue here. We've got about a minute and a half left. And I want both of you to just give me a few words on what it was like to finally have a conversation with each other. Georgy?

GEORGY: To have a conversation with Yossi, it serves to me as an affirmation that peace is possible. You know, I am perhaps an eternal optimist, but to have peace, we have to embrace the other. And without that, you may sign various documents and treaties and whatever, but it's not going to work.

BECKER: Okay.

GEORGY: A few seconds! The digital age, and I usually go back to it is because what we do today is we consume information and whatever we consume, we go out on the streets and we lash out without having any substantive understanding of the history.

BECKER: Okay. Yossi, I have to give Yossi a few seconds here before — Yossi, really, really brief.

HALEVI: Georgy is my friend, my brother, my partner, and having a conversation with you at this moment is just liberating.

GEORGY: It's an honor, Yossi. It's an honor.

HALEVI: It's very mutual. And I'm just enormously grateful to you and to you, Deborah, for making this possible.