Building a House of Grace: Feat. Jamal Shehade

In this episode of Jerusalem Talks, Avraham (Avrum) Burg visits the House of Grace in Haifa to speak with its director, Jamal Shehadeh, about the center's transformative work. They talk about Jamal’s parents - who founded the House of Grace as a rehabilitation center for released inmates - as well as the center’s core philosophical approach. As a Palestinian-Israeli Christian with Swiss heritage, Jamal reflects on his experience as an outsider to both communities and how he has come to embrace all elements of his identity in order to foster dialogue and build bridges. Towards the end of the conversation, they address the challenges of rising violence and the need for more spaces like the House of Grace that prioritize compassion, trust, and dignity.

With gratitude to the production team - Daniel Schwake, Gabriel Mitchell, and Avrum Burg - as well as Eli Krogmann and David Turjman for making this season of Jerusalem Talks possible.

Transcript

Jerusalem Talks ND

Season 2 Episode 5

Host: Avraham Burg
Featured Guest: Jamal Shehade

Avraham Burg: Peace on you, Jamal Shehadeh.  

Jamal Shehade: Welcome

Avraham Burg: Thank you for having me, having us at the House of Grace, Beit HaChesed, which is at the mouth of the Bay of Haifa, which I would say the harbor of the Holy Land. 

Jamal Shehade: Yes, most welcome. And it's my honor to have you here.  

Avraham Burg: What are we doing here? What is this place? 

Jamal Shehade: Okay, so the house of grace was established in 1982 by my parents the late Camille Shehade and my mom, Agnes, with the idea in giving a shelter to the prisoners,  released prisoners, who had no place to go. And that's how they established the first halfway house to rehabilitate released prisoners  in the country.  And, from there on, it developed to become a really big social institution supporting families in need, youth at risk, homeless people, for a certain while also women. And the whole, with the idea of, you know, of conserving the family atmosphere, and that's what makes the place so unique.

Avraham Burg:  Family atmosphere of you or the Shehade Family. 

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. Our family living with those people who attended the house of grace seeking support and comfort. 

Avraham Burg:  Which means the concept is, and we'll get into it later. I'm a prisoner. I was done. Okay, my period in prison before I go back to my community, I have a kind of getting used to life and scenes.  And then comes the Shehade family or the Beth Chesed family and say, Don't do it alone. Come, go through us and relearn, restudy  normative life.

Jamal Shehade:  Yeah, I mean, when it first started, those released prisoners didn't have a society to go back to because they were banned by their families, by their friends. They didn't want to have any contact with them. They didn't get a second chance for finding a job, for example. So they were pretty much alone and had no place to go. And this is where the idea came from to try and support those abandoned people through the society after getting out of jail. And after that, of course, the whole concept of rehabilitation, started developing and now it's really being a bridge between the life in prison and the life in society  by supporting those individuals after getting out of prison to reintegrate step by step into the society and not just to face all the challenges alone. 

Avraham Burg:  Well, I want to hear a little bit more about it, but first about the place. I mean, you go downtown Haifa and like every hub or you have boutiques and shipyard support and commerce and you are in the middle of, I mean, it's a kind of an oasis under huge governmental buildings and all of a sudden it's a different place. What is this oasis, physically speaking, where are we? 

Jamal Shehade: So the oasis you are describing at the moment, it's pretty much new because when my parents got here, it was the abandoned part of the city. We are in the middle of the old town, which used to be the heart of Haifa. And after 48, the majority of the neighborhoods here were demolished by the army. So the church stood almost alone as one of the few buildings in the neighborhood, which used to be the heart of the city. 

Avraham Burg: And this neighborhood was very Christian at the time.  

Jamal Shehade: It used to be called the neighborhood of the churches. You have several churches here in the neighborhood,  but since the majority of the population didn't stay here or moved to different parts and the army demolished the houses that were abandoned. So the church stood empty for about 40 years in  between ruins and inbetween or in an area where it was a big parking lot. Okay? if we want to describe it, but the mid and end of nineties, the whole complex of the governmental compound started being built. And now we are in the middle of the court, governmental buildings, a of a law firm offices and so on. So it became again a kind of the heart of the city.

Avraham Burg: So I'm a prisoner. I committed a crime, whatever it is. I went to court, which is 20, 100 meters from here. Yeah. They send me to jail, wherever it is. And then I'm released and I come back here, but it's not the court is that it's the house of grace. So it's a kind of a complete circle. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah.  As I  said, this is all new having this around us. And,of course the law also changed. And now Prisoners, they are allowed, according to the third law, to be released after two thirds of their sentence if they behaved well in prison and under, and went under, treatment. And one of the places offering this rehabilitation is on us. Actually, we were the first before the establishment of the Rehabilitation Authority. And we are receiving those released prisoners who committed usually a very hard crimes. Like they are about from four years and up sentences.

Avraham Burg:  Even lifetime prison? 

Jamal Shehade: We even have lifetime prisoners. The only two groups we are not dealing with are political prisoners and sexual offenders. Otherwise, we have All kind of...

Avraham Burg: Because…  

Jamal Shehade: First of all, for political prisoners, there is no concept of rehabilitation and  the, 

Avraham Burg: Yea I know I've been there. It's difficult to get rehab from politics 

Jamal Shehade: And with sexual offenders. You need very special, special…

Avraham Burg: Education

Jamal Shehade:  Facilities for that very special treatment. And since the place here is open, we receive women, we receive children. The doors are open, so it's a little bit hard to deal with this group of people, and they have special facilities for such kind of crimes.  

Avraham Burg: Who from the family was born around? I mean, your father is a Haifa, was born in Haifa?

Jamal Shehade: Yes.

Avraham Burg: Where? here in the Wadi Nisnas? 

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. My father was born in 54 in Wadi Nisnas. My mother she is from Switzerland, from Zurich. And she came to volunteer in the Holy Land in an institution for a severely disabled children and it's in Haifa and they met and they fell in love and they got married and that's how the story started.

Avraham Burg: Okay. So it's a welfare love affair. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah. 

Avraham Burg: Okay, I see. So we are here as we called it the oasis the rehab I mean, maybe the new gate for better life for so many people. How many people through the years went through the process how many people benefited from the grace of the house of grace?

Jamal Shehade: So if I think if we put all areas we were involved in, which, also developed throughout the years and changed, I would say we had over a thousand people coming in and out through, through the gates of the house of grace. 

Avraham Burg:  and you have any kind of an alumni network that you are in touch with these thousand people? 

Jamal Shehade: Sure, Sure.

Avraham Burg:  How does it work?

Jamal Shehade: I mean, we are dealing with a certain target group, which also has its own challenges outside of this is a outside of the House of Grace when they go back into the society. So with with some we lose contact because they go back to crime to prison or they don't want any contact to their previous lives. With others, we are still in touch. And further than that, we have now three members of our professional staff that are graduates of the…

Avraham Burg: They were criminals. 

Jamal Shehade: They were criminals. They were in prison. They got rehabilitated. They finished certain courses in order to be able to support others who are coming out of prison and now they are part of our professional staff..

Avraham Burg: How many years?  the longest serving x-prisoner. 

Jamal Shehade: I think at the moment,  one of them that had the longest is for about 12 years. He was in prison. 

Avraham Burg: No, how many years he's here? 

Jamal Shehade: He's here now. I think six or seven years. The one with the most years working at the House of Grace, the others about  two years now. Yeah, almost. 

Avraham Burg: Tell me a little bit about the project that you're running here. I mean, okay, I'm a prisoner. I come here, I wake up in the morning. Then what happens? Okay, how is my day looking? How is my routine? 

Jamal Shehade: At the moment we are dealing with three main groups. The release prisoners. We and they are the ones who stay with us here at the house of grace for nine months and we have a place a place for 17 of them  and now it's full house. The second project is supporting families in need from the area of haifa from all backgrounds. And the third project is youth at risk that we are supporting in order to prevent them from coming and doing rehabilitation sometime in the future.  So for those who stay with us are the release prisoners. So, part of the therapy and rehabilitation is that they have a job. We help them find a job. So in the morning they go out to their normal jobs. And in the afternoon when they come back, the sessions of treatment, which could be individual, could be in group therapy, workshops, free time activities and so on. It's happening in the afternoon. And this is more or less their schedule.  Of course, they also have vacations that they can go visit their families on feasts. Families can come and visit them here because part of the rehabilitation is to strengthen the healthy connection, family, bonding and connections. 

Avraham Burg:  In times like we have now. At least at the Israeli side of the Holy Land, that the crime is very up, especially the Arab society, which is  a huge pain for every humanist.  Is it more difficult to go through the rehab because when they go back so the temptation out in the street is higher than it used to be at the time of your father  

Jamal Shehade: So unfortunately as you mentioned the crime rate and especially the organized crime is just becoming a disease in our society, in the arab society, but not only also, also by the Jewish society. We see the rise of organized crime and killing and using explosives.  The whole issue of protection money from businesses and so on.  Dealing with drugs with arms, especially in the recent times. So this is becoming really a very very difficult issue and it's causing even people to consider leaving the country because of that because they were affected by the order.

Avraham Burg: How do you feel it here? Because you are, I'll say the receiving side of this criminal atmosphere. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah. So, we definitely feel and see that there's a change of the group of people arriving to the House of Grace while, till last year or two years ago, the majority were, ex offenders with addiction problems. And today we have more and more people who might be have problems of addiction, but the main issues are the  violence.

Avraham Burg: Wow

Jamal Shehade: So and we feel a drastic change in that. And we need also to adapt our ways of treatment, because we were specialized with 

Avraham Burg: A personal weakness and all of the sudden is person to person…

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. 

Avraham Burg: …Attitude. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah. And, also involving the victim involving the court system and so on. So it becomes more complicated and you need a different type of measures to use because an addicted person has a kind of understanding of his problem, how to deal with it, how to stay away of it. but when it come becomes to violence, violence, it can explode any moment outside of you and then harm people. And with that, dealing with that it's a little bit more complicated. 

Avraham Burg:  Tell me, give me two illustrations, if it's possible. One which is the success story that when you say to yourself, wow, it was worthy, it is this one. And another one, which is the failure. So in between the two,  we shall try to  build an art of understanding the place. 

Jamal Shehade: So it's, it's very difficult to choose just one story because for me personally, every success story is

Avraham Burg: Is the one.

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, is one of the most important stories because this is actually how we get our fuel to continue this work, especially in a work where you have also a lot of disappointments. So every time we were able to change the perspective or the attitude of a person towards life, towards family, towards others to make him be able to build up the trust with others, with society, with himself, even, this is for us a success story. And as I told you now, like the best success stories we can, are the ones who are working with us.  Exactly. Supporting others to become better in life.  Getting out of prison and every person, as I told you at the beginning, we are trying to keep the family concept here. So everybody who enters the House of Grace becomes part of the family. We share the same food, the same table when we were young and still living at the House of Grace with those released prisoners. They were our babysitters. When my parents left, we had murderers, drug addicts, thieves, arm dealers taking care of us as children,  which is insane in a certain way. But on another hand, this is also a way of building with them this trust that they didn't have at all. So as soon as one of them is going back to drugs or doing a crime, leaving the house of grace for any reason.  This failure also affects us a lot. So just to choose one story is very difficult for me. 

Avraham Burg: Okay, I understand the I understand but I If I take it, if I take it, I will say the spectrum of the places between somebody babysitting you when you were a kid up until a situation today in which somebody like that is actually helping others to say, I've been there. I've done that. Don't do it. Don't go there. So this is the nature of the place. I mean, when I think about it, the intuition and the homework I did before I came here, I had a feeling that it's a kind of a youth movement values for elderly for people who didn't have a chance at the youths to become Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts You say trust, community life working together, things like that. That you offer them something they never had before.  

Jamal Shehade: So, yeah, I mean,  like, we can get into many stories to show those elements in their lives that were missing and those are the things that brought them to become criminals because they were not born as such. And not having a protective family supporting family directing family or even sometimes the family being involved in crime that caused them going there. So once they are here, we're trying to to give them something else. So it could be the very small elements of life like celebrating a birthday for somebody who never celebrated it before.  Other issue could be involving them in volunteer work to benefit or give aid to others, not only receive the support.

Jamal Shehade: For them, it was always harming others. And now with such activities, they can help others. They are part of something that it's contributing to the society. All these small elements give them a different perspective towards the society. And sometimes those small things encourage them to seek hope that they never had before because they knew the system is against us, families, against us, societies against us. Why should we fight for anything better in our life? So that's what we are trying to do with them. 

Avraham Burg: It's a house of goodness, mercy, compassion,  grace.  In an era, and especially in times in which all of these positive human virtues eroded severely in our region.  So, I ask myself,  when you wake up in the morning and you come here or you start working,  What do you feel? That you are alone against the entire tidal wave of the region? Or that you are the alternative or  how do you face the reality outside of the room? Or the house of Grace?

Jamal Shehade: I tell you, I mean, the reality we're living at the moment is very complicated and it's not very encouraging, but I mean, the whole concept of House of Grace was established on the Christian faith to be there for others to help the needy ones, the prisoners, the hungry, the thirsty, and, and these are the values for me as a Christian that I should follow In a very, very easy concept and methods and approach without looking at the person in front of me from what background he's coming, what color he has, what nationality, because after all, as a Christian, we believe that every person is born with the image of God. So this is the concept was built on that at the House of Grace. So if i want  to preserve the this heritage that my parents passed over to me my father after passing away to my mom and then my mom after retirement to me I need to keep those values and it's not easy in such a world, which is becoming very individualist, it's becoming very greedy, it's it's full of challenges. Sometimes, yeah, even myself, I have doubts about what I'm doing, or I'm asking myself if everything that we are doing, it's worthy.  Are we doing a change? Are we able to help others? So all those questions raise, of course, naturally. But anytime, I arrived to a point where I see a person who's coming here with a lot of distress, leaving with a half smile on his face. This is the strength that shows me that this work is important and this work is valuable. So we need to keep working towards those values because after all, we are  human beings and that's how ….

Avraham Burg: But hang on, hang on. 

Jamal Shehade: Yes,  

Avraham Burg: Its too… it sounds too good. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. 

Avraham Burg:  Wait a second. Okay. When you say I come to this moment of doubt.  Whom do you look up to? I mean, what do you take? I understand you take a lot of power or a lot of empowerment from those who do the real work for changing.

Avraham Burg: Okay, when you come to this junction of what do I do?  The reality is so harsh, And the challenges of the day, and the budget from, and the.. Who are you looking up to?  

Jamal Shehade: So I don't hide it at all and on the contrary, I'm very proud of my parents. So I look to my parents. I mean, they started all the concept here out of nothing. It was a ruin for 40 years that building itself at the old church of our community. And from almost nowhere, they rebuilt the place and started all that. and with all the challenges they went through. So I understand somehow that if you have the faith, if you have the will this, you need to, you need to combat for that and you need to make efforts. It doesn't come easily, but it is doable. And we went through many challenges throughout the years. I don't have to explain too much about our  reality here, all the conflicts, all the crisis we are going through every now and then.  And I think also there's a very strong effect and impact of the faith. I mean if you are dealing with something which is coming out of faith  you sometimes you get miracles you get strengthens from places. You don't realize and you don't know where from. I mean,  as a person of faith you understand but you… 

Avraham Burg: You once said, Jamal, for Jews, we're Arabs. For muslims, we are christians. For the Arabs, we are traitors. So where are you on this bridge of identities? 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, exactly. So, unfortunately people here and throughout the world usually look about what's happening here without the complexity of it.  And this,, of course, makes it very difficult to try and reach a solution and build bridges among people. So yes, for me, as a Christian in the Holy Land, I face it sometimes that for certain people that I'm in Interaction with them on daily basis because this is part of my life, I'm an outsider. So it could be from my fellow christian that has different kind of denomination. It could be from the muslim that  sees me as another religion from a jew that looks at me as an arab. And from the world surrounding us that for me I decided to to say or my grandfather decided decided to stay in this country. So he is normal or he's a normalizer or we are you collaborators and so on. So this is part of things that we are dealing with on daily basis, but I'm not very much afraid of that because I want people to look at me with the whole identities I have. I cannot.

Avraham Burg:  Identities in plural. 

Jamal Shehade: Yes. Because everything that I'm connected to if I'm a Christian, if I'm an Arab, if I'm a Palestinian, if I'm an Israeli citizen, if I am half  Swiss

Avraham Burg: Swiss, 

Jamal Shehade: Exactly! 

Avraham Burg: That's the most difficult part, right?

Jamal Shehade: So these are the parts that are making me whole. And usually the discussion here, the discourse, people are just turning to one part of the identity and they want to address only that and try to eliminate all other identities I have. And this is something that I don't accept because you cannot just choose what's comfortable for you and come and deal with me.

Avraham Burg: And tell me who am I.

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. So this is why for me, it's very important to show all the identities that I have and use it. For the benefit for being able to be there for the weak parts of the society in order to have a strong society. And maybe I'm talking, you know, now too much in this topical world.

Avraham Burg: No, it's not abstract. I'll tell you why. Naeem Malouf,  the Lebanese author, I think he now lives in Paris. wrote a book about identities. And what he said is something very much like we said, no one nowadays has one identity. You have augmented identities and you have to address the other with the whole package. 

Jamal Shehade: Exactly.

Avraham Burg: And this actually, what you say, it's a kind, I'll tell you, but I hear very carefully what you tell me and I I don't know Haifa very well, but once one of the previous mayors of the city told me Avrum You know why Haifa is a perfect city? I said why Haifa is a perfect city? It's a sleepy one I mean, what do you mean? And he said that's the only city in the Holy Land in which neither Moses nor Jesus nor Muhammad ever set a foot in and therefore it functions. And I asked myself, is it possible? I don't know it. I challenge myself, actually, but with you, that this kind of beautiful, beautiful Christian based values that become a general humanitarian involvement is possible in any other city in the Holy Land, but Haifa. 

Jamal Shehade: This is also a question that I asked myself and according to what I see I  think it would have been more difficult if I don't want to be too negative. Okay, 

Avraham Burg:  Be too positive.

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. I think that the atmosphere in Haifa made it possible to allow people from different religions to come under this same roof.

Avraham Burg: What is this atmosphere for those who do not know the city?

Jamal Shehade: I mean, Haifa is not the perfect city. We do have challenges. We have. We do have tension between different segments of the society.  We had events happening here throughout history that were really not easy and brought different groups of people,  Arabs and Jewish,  different religious groups  to have tension among them. But what I cannot really give you just one explanation Why this is possible in Haifa. But  what happened throughout the years is that the citizens of Haifa, even though they went through those tension and difficult times, they were able to come back to normality much faster than other places that experienced such a tensions. And I think this is because of the diversity that you have in Haifa and that throughout the years they were able to live together and they understood that living together is the solution and not fighting each other and this fortress of keeping and eliminating all small groups that are trying to penetrate this fortress and to destroy this structure of life.

Avraham Burg: Not giving up to the extremists, actually. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah,

Avraham Burg:  It's very moderate.

Jamal Shehade: Exactly, exactly. And, we've been successfully as citizens of Haifa facing that I will not hide it from you the past few years. They were very challenging also in that field. But even after the events of May 21  that happened all the violence between the groups having people outside of Haifa extremists from different parties coming and try to   

Avraham Burg: Incite and put Haifa in flames.

Jamal Shehade: Yes Yeah, but Haifa citizens were able to get back to normality faster than other places. If we compare Lod Jaffa, or Akko, that they are still suffering…

Avraham Burg: Which are all mixed cities, mixed cities, Jews and arab communities

Jamal Shehade: Exactly. They are still suffering of those events till now. I mean, we still have a lot to do in order to push back those elements that are trying to ruin this. But somehow Haifa, because of its history, is still keeping together.

Avraham Burg:  In order to live together, this is what the French are calling cohabitation. I mean living together.  You have past, you have wounds, you have traumas, you have memories, and you still have to go on. So there is a basic requirement of forgiveness.  So, for somebody like you, and you described all the multidimensional identities of yours, multidimensional identity of yours,  who has to forgive whom about what? What is the forgiveness here and there?  To enable it to make it possible.

Jamal Shehade: I think this is where the problem starts. when you start expecting from one side that or you are blaming one side and he is the one to make the first step you're already blocking the possibility of building bridges we have to realize that each group, each person each element of what's happening here in Haifa has his own story, has his own identity, has his own reality. So maybe I don't agree with it, but if I come from a certain point of acceptance, of listening, of understanding that my reality is not the only reality.  I should accept that others are surrounding me. And in this way, I think it's, it's more, more possible to start making the first steps as soon as I come to the other side with any expectation that he is the one to make the first step. This will immediately, start kind of fear and blocks him,

Avraham Burg:  But don't make life too easy for yourself. Okay, I understand. 

Jamal Shehade: Okay. 

Avraham Burg: I understand the concept of dialogue between equals, but still I mean, there are wounds, there are pains, there are memories. So if you look at all the narratives that are running the city, the reality, or even the House of Grace,  give me a map of pains and angers, not say who will go first, but what are we talking about? 

Jamal Shehade: This is becoming now a very complicated issue that I think you will need hours and hours talking about it, but let me say for me as a Palestinian Israeli citizen.  I mean my grandfather who decided to stay in Haifa after the war, he lost a lot of things. He lost  family members because of the war, he lost some land, he was under martial law for a while. So he went through many traumas. Okay? So, I feel that from my point of view that I need also people to understand this pain that my grandfather and his children and now us went through throughout the history.  And what I feel is as an Arab citizen of the state of Israel, that this pain is not something that it's worth listening to, because the reality we are living in the moment, it's more towards one side and the other side. It's okay you stayed here. It's like a generosity from the, 

Avraham Burg: Which means I, Avrum, as the member of the majority of the jewish majority I'm not sensitive enough to understand what you went through. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, 

Avraham Burg: Either I take you for granted I'm not sensitive enough to you. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, and you tell me like if you don't like it here, go to any arab country. But this is the place I was born In why should I leave?  Let's see. Okay, the reality changed we have a new thing happening here.  I stayed here. I am part of it. So let's make the best out of it. Let me feel part of it. But as an Arab citizen, I don't feel that I am part of this society that  is being built or has been built here. And always feeling, you know, a second degree or third degree citizen. And I don't want that because I'm contributing. I'm paying taxes. I'm going to elections. Okay, I'm filling my duty as a citizen,  but somehow I've not being trusted in many parts of our many aspects of life.  And you from the one one side, the majority is calling me to be fully integrated.  But from the other part, this integration or the definition of integration or being part off.  You know, 

Avraham Burg: The majority tells you be flexible, be like me instead of, 

Jamal Shehade: But still I cannot be like you because also the religious element, there's the cultural elements, there's the history, there's my story. So this sensitivity is not there.

Avraham Burg: Tell me if I understood correctly.  Maybe I understood correctly when I take Jamal privately, Jamal, his identities, family, memory, the lost childhood of grandparents and homeland, whatever it is, that's a person who went family story, not  one to one went through pain and mistrust and even abused his story.  So you take  this  public position of yours and you translate it into the house of grace and tell the individual rehabbed prisoner, listen,  I have the same experience in a way as a, as a collective. Let me help you to  use the tools I use as an individual in my general society in your private life. Is it the same? 

Jamal Shehade: I don't know if we can put it in that way completely because our doors are open to everybody. So I'm not only addressing one part or certain part of the society. But what I can give on is that  even if you went through difficulties in life and some of us, like the Jewish society went through horrible things 

Avraham Burg: In a way, all of us, in a way. All of us, 

Jamal Shehade: But also on, on the individual part.

Avraham Burg:  Yeah. 

Jamal Shehade: Like being in prison, being living on the streets, not having food, not being able to see your children. This is also traumas and things that you went through.  But what I want to say is that if you have the.  If you have certain values and you have acceptance of the person in front of you as a human being, then you can overcome the trauma. It doesn't mean put it on the side. You need to talk about it.  Honestly, put it on the table, challenge it, discuss it. It's not just

Avraham Burg:  Accept disappointments,

Jamal Shehade: Accept disappointments and so on. But it doesn't mean that you always have to use this victim a…

Avraham Burg:  So the key is, yes, I have pains, but I'm a proud person and not an internal victim.

Jamal Shehade: And from this pain, I want to learn for the future. I mean look at the Jewish society. They came from the Holocaust and look what they achieved. A country very developed, high tech nation or whatever.  There was like a transition…

Avraham Burg: Quantum leap

Jamal Shehade: To become better, and this is not only the story of the Jewish people, it could be the story of everybody who believes that out of the pain that I lived through, which made me only stronger, I could go to a more positive place, to a better place and be aware of this pain. Okay? pushing me to the success and not use this pain to keep me dragging a drag down and stuck in a place where will not make me give me the possibility to  go steps further. And I think this is part of the key of us also now as a minority in this country. If we look at it in this way, we put hands together towards a better place to because we have qualities, we have skills, education, we…

Avraham Burg: Who are we now?

Jamal Shehade: We as Arab. Arabs here.  We lack nothing to be able to stand up and say we want something better. Okay, there are difficulties on the way. There's a political situation. As a minority it's always more difficult to step up to better places. But if we look at individuals we see how many  successes we have as an Arab society in this country. Look how many doctors are leading hospitals. Look at our education system, which is leading in the whole country. Look at our social services that like the House of Grace and other institutes, we have something to contribute to give and to be proud of. I think we just need to find a way how to put things together and be able to stand stronger for our rights and be integrated in a honorable way in the society. 

Avraham Burg: It's a vision. It's a dream.  It's a dream.

Jamal Shehade:  It is a dream, but  it's something that I think,

Avraham Burg: A realistic dream, let's call it like that. Okay.

Jamal Shehade: I accept

Avraham Burg: Your father, your parents were both dreamers and doers, but visionaries.  So and you said, whenever you look up to the mountains, you look up to the mountain of your parents.  So I asked myself, Jamal, I ask you, Jamal, give me your vision. No. Bear with me for a second, okay? Okay. We praised Haifa as a very unique human laboratory in the Holy Land.  You mentioned two or three times already your half Swiss background.  So I ask you,  And you are, when you walk into the, this beautiful House of Grace, you see that this is actually the consulate of Switzerland at the Bay area at Haifa, because you are the only council of Switzerland in  the Northern part of Israel, right?

Jamal Shehade: Yes

Avraham Burg: Take all the three elements together, the neutrality of Haifa and the containment that each society, each community contains each other.  Switzerland and the vision of your parents and maybe the vision of yourselves. Is it possible that by the end of the day between the river and the sea  Israel Palestine will be very Swiss, which means the Swiss system of living in cantons with different religions, different languages, still in a kind of social oneness.  Now be Swiss with me. Don't be Palestinian. Don't be Christian. Be Swiss.

Jamal Shehade: Yeah. I don't think I reached this level of diplomacy of how things could really work, but I believe  that  there is no other solution than having  like both  conflicted nations here living together. And even I see more than that, that I see the potential  in peace times that can raise here and reach, I think, picks in life that can contribute not only to the region, but the whole world. So I feel this is the only solution that can  take away all this hurt feelings and suffering that people are going through, especially in the recent events that the area went through and are still going through.   To be like Switzerland  I don't know because the whole atmosphere, culture nature here, diversity of human beings and, the region ,might make it a little bit more difficult. But I think there is a place for, 

Avraham Burg: But we are cantonized in a way.  Cantonized maybe not in places, but in communities and identities, etc. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, but this is actually Canton, like cantonized, if you are using this term is still  instead of bringing people to be able to live together under one good way of life, like Switzerland, it's more dividing people, like even segregating neighborhoods within cities and within areas It's not bringing people together to understand that there is a common or there are common things that we could live according to. It's rather bringing people more apart from each other. And I think this is something very negative at the moment happening, which is not contributing to the peace process or bringing people together, building the bridges, whatever you want. It's actually polarizing people from each other more and more, and not only on the level of Arab Palestinians, Israeli, but also within the societies, the Jewish society, the Arab society, which is also a society containing so many fragments. And this polarization is happening.

Avraham Burg: So what do you say, actually that the entire space of the Holy Land requires the House of Grace Beit Hachesed to become the government of the place in order to introduce the methodology of forgiveness and dialogues and living together with each other. 

Jamal Shehade: I mean, thank you for the compliments. 

Avraham Burg: No, it was a question. I mean i'm not yet there  

Jamal Shehade: No, I think it's still…

Avraham Burg: Because there is a vision here

Jamal Shehade: Yes, there definitely and we've seen that people could live together under the same roof. Okay? but I think giving a solution to a conflict, which has been now, I think, even more than the 76 years over 

Avraham Burg: Yeah, more than a century. 

Jamal Shehade: Yeah, more than a century. And I mean, the whole region has been under control of outsiders and for centuries and more even. So you see that it's not easy to make the change and to reach the optimal solution in one day or one night, or just in a peace treaty that you bring upon people and say, agree to it. And this is your new reality. 

Avraham Burg: You say patience. 

Jamal Shehade: You need patience, but you need also understanding and continuing the dialogue. I mean, today, we hear that among most of the people, they say there is no place to dialogue. On this side and the other side. And I think, actually, dialogue, maybe not at the moment where people are still processing the trauma, but we cannot neglect that. We need that to continue happening because at a certain point people will need to talk about their traumas. They need to share that they need to show, the experience they went through to others and share it maybe, and only through these kind of actions we can still bring people closer together and not just by labeling people according to their faith, according to their heritage, according to their tradition, according to their language  and making this the title of each person and person. Because after all, the mix here is so wide and so big. And as we said at the beginning that the identities are multiple and you cannot just choose one according to your, to your decision to make it more comfortable for you. If you have something difficult to talk about, put it on the table, find a way to talk about it and not just use all these, you know, pretty words that we like to use normally being correctly political, politically correct and so on. This will not help. There are issues that we need to face and it might hurt. It might be difficult to face and talk about. But without doing these processes that will leave scars on you, we cannot  approach a better climate and a better situation.  

Avraham Burg: I accept the pain of the process and the wounds of the dialogue. And I tell you, I mean, I thought a lot about this meeting because I had to drive and I had to think, and it's different than my daily encounter, the kind of population that you serve, and the kind of hope you bring to the world.  And not everything fell together to space. Only when I walked in,  I understood something.  That this place is not so much about  harmony, it's about contradictions.  And I'll tell you what I mean. Within the compound, I realized that there is the old Malachite Greek Catholic asaida church. Asaida is our lady, Notre Dame. Okay?  And at the entrance, there is a beautiful piece of ceramic done by Haya Tuma.   So who's Haya Tuma? She is a Jewish married to a Christian was Jewish married to a Christian who was a communist quite atheist  next to the church. And all of it together is the House of Grace. And only when I walked in, I understood the tension between what you call the different identities that makes this place possible. 

Jamal Shehade: Definitely, because I think, and that's what my parents also educated us to is and I think this was the blessing for me to grow up in such a place and having such a wide family members. Okay? Or people calling them as a family. We were told to approach the person in front of us as a human being and I emphasize this word and I said it a few times. Now we're on our conversation because I believe this is the way.  Put all the masks, all the identities, all the colors aside. After all, we are from the same race, human beings that all what we want is to live in an normal, peaceful life and to have a good future for our children. This is what we strive for. And this is what we fight for in a positive way of saying that. and  I think this is what the House of the message of the House of Grace is trying to give out.  approach first of all, the person in front of you as yourself, and this is also based on the Christian faith love the one next to you as you love yourself.  And from, from that, from that starting point, I think you can start looking at the world differently. I mean, we had here people from all religions almost  and we could always find something that is common between us

Avraham Burg:  The human points that made it possible to connect

Jamal Shehade: Probably family members at the same age probably same birthday, probably same stories, same school we went through, went to or our family members went to. A family connections or friendship connections. You always can find something that brings you together and show you that despite all the differences we have, we also have a lot in common and these things, what the House of Grace has been trying to live accordingly, but also to make those people who enter the House of Grace see it.  Like we had the Muslim coming in and it was a church and he was concerned a little bit, but then we told him,  It's not our mission to bring you into the church and baptize you. We have mosques, we have a synagogue just nearby, you pray wherever you want. We just need you to act with respect towards the one in front of you. And then look at all the challenges. Look at all the suffering. Tell me your story. Let me listen to it. Maybe I can find something there that could also from my side help you.

Avraham Burg:  Actually what you say. And this is maybe the good point to depart this chapter of the conversation that what both Jews and Muslims in conflict in the region need is a little bit of a Christian dialogue or, mercy,  or forgiveness. 

Jamal Shehade:  Like if we look at it from the basic simple side of religion, I think all religions are calling for that. 

Avraham Burg: Stop here. I think it's a beautiful moment.  Jamal. Fantastic. I mean, I moved. It's a beautiful place, and your parents did a great job with the place and looks to me like also with you.

Jamal Shehade: Thank you.

Avraham Burg:  Thank you very much, my dear. 

Jamal Shehade: Thank you.