Written by Roi Silbeberg
Image credit: Provided by Kefei Cao. An old tank is stranded on the beach in Kinmen.
In September 2025, as part of a peacebuilding fellowship in Taiwan, I found myself standing in the White Terror Museum in Taipei – surrounded by silence and stories of political prisoners who were tortured, disappeared, and erased. At the same time, Gaza was starving.
The Israeli army had called for the evacuation of Gaza City, adding another 500,000 displaced people to an already staggering 1.5 million. Over 90% of Gaza’s inhabitants had been forced from their homes, according to Human Rights Watch. Children were dying not just from bombs but from starvation. Standing in the cells that once held political prisoners, I wasn’t only thinking about Taiwan’s history – I was thinking about my own. About my responsibility. About what it means to resist.
It is not only a political position—it is a human obligation. I feel it toward Palestinians, who are oppressed by a state and a society that claim to speak in my name. And I feel it toward my children, who are growing up inside a society that is committing war crimes and who will one day ask, or be asked, “What did your parents do during those times?”
I want to provide an answer. I want them to grow up knowing that we did not stay silent. This commitment of giving children answers requires more than sentiment – it demands an unflinching examination of how power structures shape conflict and identity.
On Identities and Power
At the School for Peace, dialogue is not framed as a casual exchange between individuals. It is structured as an encounter between collective identities – between Palestinians and Jews – each carrying the histories, narratives, and power dynamics of their respective groups. This approach, which is also detailed on the SFP’s website, insists on seeing the conflict not as a personal misunderstanding but as a deeply political and structural inequality.
The Jewish group enters the room with institutional and national power: military, legal, and cultural dominance within the Israeli context. It also holds the memory of the holocaust inflected by Nazi Germany and with a perceived identity of being liberal, humanistic, and “western.” The Palestinian group comes in with the weight of dispossession, occupation, surveillance, and structural exclusion. Palestinians are carrying the memory of the Nakba inflicted by Israel and of the year of political oppression and occupation, which is still ongoing. There is also a difference between Jews and Palestinians in their attitude towards the encounter itself. Palestinians carry a deep disappointment from the change processes; most notable is the Oslo Accords in 1993, in which Palestinians agreed to meaningful concessions, including the recognition of Israel, and found themselves in a worse situation. Jews who participate in dialogue come from a society in which the majority considers them naive or even traitors and are therefore surprised that the Palestinians are suspicious and resentful towards them.
Dialogue that ignores these differences risks reinforcing the very oppression it claims to challenge. That’s why we insist on speaking through the asymmetry, not around it.
My fellow peace fellow and clear-visioned Palestinian researcher Hazem Almassry, originally from Gaza and based in Taiwan, has written about the lie of distance – the impossible demand that Palestinian scholars explain their own family’s destruction from a position of neutrality. At the School for Peace, we know this lie well. Dialogue that pretends to stand outside the asymmetry only reinforces it.
The dialogue method is open and is based on the content being raised by the participants. The facilitators keep the discussion focused on Jewish-Palestinian relations and encourage the group to be personal and open while maintaining an intergroup dialogue perspective. There are several structural attempts through the settings to create a more equal footing between the groups, such as making both languages legitimate in the activity (unlike other contexts in which Hebrew is the only official language) and having two facilitators, one Jewish and one Palestinian. The goal here is to encourage the silenced Palestinian voice and to raise awareness of the unequal power relations. There is an extensive body of academic and professional writing on this topic, with a new paper on conducting such work during and after the Gaza war.
What becomes clear in these dialogues and even clearer during my visit to Taiwan is that identities are never formed in isolation. Just as Jewish and Palestinian identities are often built in opposition or reaction to one another, the Taiwanese identity is constantly being shaped by its relationship with China: its historical and cultural entanglement with it and, of course, its fear of it and its resistance to it.
Being in Taiwan made visible to me how much of what defines a people – their story, their sense of self – is shaped by their perceived “Other.” In Taiwan, China is always in the room, even when it’s not named. Conversations on politics, culture, or education always consider the potential danger posed by China. In an ecological tour, the guide shows you garbage on the beach. The main point is that this is floating garbage from China, not about how to address it or clean it. When discussing wildlife, the guide mentions invasive species from China. China is ever-present.
In Palestine/Israel, the same is true: we shape one another’s identities, even in conflict, even in violence. This insight brings with it both danger and possibility. The possibility of reflecting on my identity and on the relationship with the other. A good example of that could be found here.
So, I was surprised each time I met young people in Taiwan and raised the issue of identity (national or ethnic), that the atmosphere became uncomfortable. Asking about the family’s story and origins, and what they mean today, felt like breaking a taboo. Young people giggled, tried to change the subject, or explained that these issues are not talked about. Even a young history teacher told us that he had never spoken about this and would never dream of raising it as a topic in the classroom.
If the conflict shapes our identities, then preserving the conflict also preserves the rigid walls between us. Real peace – or even a meaningful easing of hostilities – will not come from coexistence slogans or symmetrical handshakes. It will only come from a willingness to change: not just policies, but the very structures of identity, power, and memory that define how we see ourselves and each other.
Both Jews and Palestinians must be willing to undergo that change if they truly want their relationship to transform. The same holds true for Taiwan and China. Without internal change, there can be no real shift in the relationship. Dialogue, then, is not about softening differences. It is about confronting it honestly and asking what each group is willing to let go of, challenge, or reimagine to build something new.
On international pressure
The seventh month of the lunar calendar is known in Han Chinese societies as the Ghost Month, which usually falls around September in the Gregorian calendar. During this time, the gates of the underworld open, and the spirits of the dead – especially those who died unnatural, violent, or lonely deaths – return to roam the living world. At the same time, more than 70 Palestinians were dying each day in Gaza, almost half of them children. I felt their spirits accompany me to every meeting and lecture. At the School for Peace, we try to work. Yet people say they keep remembering Gaza, and it comes up all the time in meetings and conversations. It became a part of our subconscious. I know that the souls of Gaza will remain with us for long after the month of the ghost in Taiwan has ended.
In Taiwan, I read Lung Ying-tai’s Big River, Big Sea, and I couldn’t let go of her image of Chinese mothers in 1949, forced to send their children alone to Taiwan for safety, with promises of reunion that were never fulfilled. I understood then, more than ever: for some, fear is a moment. For others, it is the entire landscape of life.
And it became clear to me that by sitting in Taiwan and thinking of Gaza, the connection runs deeper than emotion. It is political. If Taiwan wishes to live in a world where the international community will stand up to protect its safety, sovereignty, and democratic future, then it must also act when others, like Palestinians, are denied those very things. A functioning international system, grounded in justice and accountability, is not just a moral ideal. It is a matter of survival. Taiwan cannot afford a world in which international law is ignored, and occupation is normalised and might is right. This is why I believe it is both right and urgent for Taiwanese people, and for Taiwan as a state, to speak out and apply pressure – to demand that Israel end its occupation, that Palestinian rights be recognised, and that the path to equality and self-determination be opened.
What happens in Gaza may feel far from Taipei. But in truth, the strength of the international moral order binds us all. When it fails in Gaza, it is weaker everywhere – and when it is defended, it protects not only Palestinians but the future of Taiwan as well.
Carrying it Home
Peacebuilding taught me that clarity – however painful – is where responsibility begins. Not comfort. Not hope as a sedative. But the kind of honest reckoning that makes meaningful action possible. That is what I carried from Taipei. That is what Gaza demands of all of us. Silence is also a choice, and the children – mine, Taiwan’s, and Gaza’s – will one day ask what we chose.
They will not ask whether we felt sad. They will not ask whether we were busy, overwhelmed, or uncertain. They will ask whether we spoke; whether we acted; whether we stood on the right side of history when it was still possible to do so – before the cells were filled, before the gates were closed, and before the ghosts had nowhere left to go.
We must speak the challenging words – genocide, apartheid, displacement – not to wound, but to awaken. We must demand change not from hatred of Israel but from love of all people and from the belief that Jewish safety can never be built on Palestinian suffering.
What I have learned to hold onto is that I resist through dialogue – not as therapy but as a political act: through organising, language, clarity, and international alliances that expose injustice without flattening complexity.
Roi Silberberg is a distinguished political educator and dialogue facilitator committed to Jewish–Palestinian peacebuilding and critical political education. He holds an M.A. in Human Rights Studies from the University of Malta and a PhD in Philosophy of Education from the University of Haifa, where his research critically examined the theoretical foundations and practical dilemmas of peace education. He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Educational Research Journal and UNESCO’s International Review of Education and has contributed widely in Hebrew and Arabic on critical pedagogy and politicised education. Dr Silberberg was named a 2025 Peace Fellow of the Lung Yingtai Cultural Foundation.
This article was published as part of the special issue on ‘War and Peace, Taiwan and the World: LYT Foundation 2025 Peace Forum Reflection’.