Amid conflict, regardless of the root of that conflict, respect and dialogue are fundamental steps toward a peaceful future. That’s a lesson members of the St. Thomas community learned from speakers at related campus events, including two bereaved parents – Israeli Rami Elhanan and Palestinian Bassam Aramin – and the award-winning Irish author Colum McCann, who immortalized their stories in his best-selling book Apeirogon.
“The moment you are able to listen to the pain of the other, you can expect the other to listen to your pain,” Elhanan said.
He and Aramin both had daughters who were killed in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Elhanan’s 14-year-old daughter, Smadar, was killed from a 1997 suicide bombing attack by three men on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street, while Aramin’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was an innocent bystander fatally shot by an Israeli soldier in 2007.
The men are members of the Parents Circle – Families Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization comprising over 700 families who have lost loved ones due to the conflict. Their shared experiences of grief have united them in a mission for peace, even as the war between Israel and Gaza rages on.
A shared humanity
“We are not friends. We are brothers,” Aramin said. “We rediscovered our humanity. We belong to mankind. We care about human beings as human beings everywhere around the world.”
The fathers were invited to campus by the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) for a spring virtual event about seven months after the Oct. 7, 2023, war between Israel and Hamas began.
It was a follow-up event from one in November 2023 called Praying Over Jerusalem, where Fuad Naeem and Kimberly Vrudny, both faculty members in the Department of Theology, shared their perspectives on the history of the region and the deep causes of the conflict. The event was moderated by Shaherzad Ahmadi of the Department of History.
The faculty panel conversation was both challenging and productive, said CAS Dean Bill Tolman, who realized that additional opportunities to learn more about the history of the conflict and healing were needed on campus to bring about understanding and unity, rather than divisiveness.
Tolman learned about Aramin and Elhanan from reading McCann’s novel, Apeirogon, which is named after a shape with a countably infinite number of sides – a symbol that reflects the myriad perspectives and stories within this conflict.
“I was overwhelmed and awed by the book on several levels,” Tolman said. “The story of Rami and Bassam is so unusual. It’s hauntingly sad, but also hopeful and deeply moving.”
“Like Bill, I was deeply moved by the story of Rami and Bassam’s friendship,” Vrudny shared about her experience reading McCann’s book. “For me, reading the novel was like picking up pieces of shattered glass, each of McCann’s cantos providing some insight to what had occurred when Rami and Bassam’s lives were broken by violence and its deep causes.”
McCann is from Ireland, which has its own history of war between north and south. When he spoke with President Rob Vischer and the St. Thomas community at an in-person Finding Forward event, he explained how his experience with this history allowed him to relate to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is in part a conflict over land that has pitted people against one another.
The power of story
Regardless of whether it is due to political or ideological differences, McCann said that listening to one another’s stories is a foundation for understanding and healing in ways that can build bridges across divides.
“Storytelling is really powerful,” he said, “but it becomes even more powerful when it becomes story listening."
Listening to someone else’s story on why they did what they did or believe what they do, is something McCann said can be a powerful healing tool. He learned that when he co-authored the 2024-published book American Mother with Diane Foley, whose son, journalist James Foley, was killed by ISIS. Foley forgave her son’s killer. In order to do so, she first had to listen. He said Diane Foley sought to know why this man had done what he did, believing that her son, James, would have wanted the same.
“Stories can take your house away. Stories can take your country away. Stories can take your car away. Stories can take your identity away,” he said. “But stories can also … heal us in extraordinary sorts of ways.”
That’s how he felt, he shared, when he first met Elhanan and Aramin in 2015 during an event for Narrative 4, an organization he co-founded to provide educators with tools to teach compassion, develop strong leaders, and create a global network of changemakers in schools and communities.
“I am not ashamed to tell you,” he recalled, “that within a half an hour I was in tears at the texture of the story that they told me.”
Addressing the St. Thomas community by video from Egypt during the separate spring event, Aramin shared that their stories are part of “the soul of the Parents Circle.” He said, “We can use this tragedy to build more bridges instead of to dig more graves.”
When asked to share some strategies people can use when attempting to build relationships across significant cultural and emotional divides, Elhanan, who joined from Haifa, Israel, offered that “the essence of it is the ability to listen, or to teach yourself how to listen. To teach yourself how to look at the other guy next to you as a human being with pain, with history, with victimhood, with a set of values. And only then, together, you start this very long journey toward reconciliation, and maybe some kind of peace in the end.”
In visiting St. Thomas, McCann helped arrange a Story Exchange for St. Thomas students, along with Amy Muse and Kristi Wenzel Egan – faculty members in English and Communication Studies, respectively, who received training from Narrative 4 to facilitate the event. The experience was highly relevant for them as co-founding faculty leaders of Scene Setters, an interdisciplinary initiative launched in 2024 to elevate the art of storytelling at St. Thomas.
“We exchanged stories about repair, forgiveness, the importance of community, friendship, and meaningful moments in our lives,” Wenzel Egan said.
Participants in the Story Exchange ranged from first-year undergraduates to students in the Creative Writing MFA program.
Jack Scodro ’26, an MFA student who is interested in writing short fiction, said he had a very rewarding experience with the story exchange. “The story exchange made me feel connected and got me inspired to write,” he said.
While details of the stories shared are meant to remain confidential, Scodro confided that his own story related to an embarrassing moment. “I knew the group would be supportive and nonjudgmental,” he said. “We all felt connected by the end of the exchange.”
It is through such shared stories that “we will break down these barriers between us,” McCann said. “We must understand one another. If we don’t understand one another, we’re doomed.”
