That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could end one day was never explicitly stated during legal scholar Tomer Broude’s recent talk on “Global Human Rights: An Israeli Perspective” at Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid.
But the focus of his talk — the concept of “transitional justice” — provided a thought-provoking examination of post-conflict landscapes in any country.
“Transitional justice is very relevant for Israeli society in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and we can learn from other problems that exist in the world,” he said.
“It is also related to human rights because it deals with the transition from where there are human rights violations and oppression to where there are normal conditions and peace,” he continued. “It’s not about solving conflicts. It’s more about how you deal with the past after the conflict has been resolved.”
Broude is a senior lecturer and tenured professor in the Faculty of Law and Department of International Relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He was at CBINT on Feb. 21 as part of the American Friends of the Hebrew University’s “Meetings with Great Minds from The Hebrew University” series.
He prefaced his introduction to the idea of transitional justice by talking about Hebrew University’s Minerva Center for Human Rights. The center, he said, has been a significant factor in elevating the discourse around human rights in Israel.
Because it is grounded in academic research, discussions focus on the results of evidence-based inquiry. As a result, he said, the center provides an environment in which discussions on some topics that would otherwise be impossible are able to take place.
Transitional justice, a term that encompasses many separate ideas, Broude said, is among those topics. But the center also provides opportunities for law students at Hebrew University to experience transitional justice processes first-hand.
Can’t live apart
“We sent students to Rwanda for an extensive study of a genocide that was faster than the Holocaust,” he said. “In 1994, 900,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. So it is still very fresh. But Rwanda has enacted many examples of transitional justice.”
One of these is called DDR, short for Demobilization, Disarmament and Re-integration. Often the problem with individuals or groups of individuals who have perpetrated atrocities is that they see no possibility of being allowed to return to live among the people they’ve harmed.
After the Holocaust, Broude said, the Jews were able to live apart from their persecutors. In Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu countrymen, the persecutors had to be re-integrated back to the community where their victims resided.
“This was done through the village square — in what were called Gacaca Courts,” he said.
The Gacaca courts were used to prosecute masses of local perpetrators. Those who confessed and accepted responsibility for their atrocities were sentenced to perform public works in the communities where they’d committed their crimes.
“Do they like each other after that? Do they love each other? Hardly,” Broude said of the process. But through it, he said, they are able to again function as a community.
Ten Hebrew University law students on a study trip to Rwanda got a taste of that community after a day listening to hundreds of former guerillas talk about what they had done during the Hutu-Tutsi conflict.
At one point, Broude said, a court official said to the students: “We have told you our stories. Now please tell us yours. Why is it that you Jews can’t solve your conflict with the Arabs?”
The students were taken aback, due in part to the challenge of providing an honest and reflective answer on extremely short notice. It wasn’t long before the ten — nine Jews and one Arab — had chosen the group’s spokesperson — according to Broude, a self-described proud Palestinian citizen of Israel.
“She gave a very concise answer that was on point, and also a very nuanced and very balanced description which ended on a high note, and she did it with great courage,” he said. “It was a very inspiring moment. It was not a very academic moment, but our students come home and think about moments like these when working on more academic matters.”
The next planned study trip is to Northern Ireland, which “bears a lot of similarity, in terms of the fragmentation and divisiveness, to the place that we call Israel and Palestine,” he said.
The complexity of the situations in which transitional justice has the potential to play a part in helping navigate conflict came into sharp relief during the question portion of Broude’s presentation.
He concurred that the lack of symmetry between the Israeli and Palestinian situations — occupied/occupier, differences in governmental status, and challenging internal divisions — are rough terrain in which to attempt enacting transitional justice.
Establishing a reality in which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are able to coexist without the constant worry of terrorism or open warfare, he said, is “a research project and a long-term project and a topic for debate.”
The modern world differs from the state-to-state battlefield model, he said, and because of that, there will always be someone who is not ready to believe that a conflict is over.
Despite that, he said, “there is a road map. You kind of know. It’s not that pessimistic that conflicts never end. Sometimes they do end and you can see that. Every society you can think of has some skeletons in their closet, but how you deal with it is what matters.”
Broude ended his presentation with a story about a performing drum troupe in Rwanda. Although drummers in Rwanda are traditionally male, this group was comprised entirely of women.
“They were both Hutu and Tutsi, and therefore, this was a victims-related-to-perpetrators group. They weren’t doing hard-core transitional justice, but what they were doing was person-to-person reconciliation.
“One young woman in the group had thought her Hutu family hadn’t participated in the massacre, and when she found that they had, she couldn’t go back to them,” he said. “The first person who took her in was a fellow troupe member who had been a victim of the genocide.”
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
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