Frank Schaeffer In Conversation with Richard Forer, Author of Wake Up and Reclaim Your Humanity: Essays on the Tragedy of Israel-Palestine
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Richard Forer was brought up in Trenton, NJ in the 1950s and 60s. His identical twin brother is a prominent member of an Orthodox sect of Judaism. Another brother is a past president of one of the largest Reform Synagogues on the East Coast. Other members of his family live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Certain the Arab world would not rest until Israel was wiped from the face of the earth, Forer, a former member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon. However, the anger and anxiety he felt compelled him to begin a process of self-discovery in which he realized that he had been demonizing Palestinians and Arabs, the so-called enemy, for an entire lifetime. He recognized that he had taken for granted unexamined beliefs that are common within Jewish and American society, and that in doing so, he had been contributing to a ceaseless struggle that has brought death and destruction to Palestinians and Israelis alike and has been the focal point for Arab anger toward the West. Through extensive research, based primarily on the most foundational resources available (the Israeli State, Central Zionist, IDF, and David Ben-Gurion archives, etc.), he discovered that much of what he had believed was inaccurate. Forer’s first book, published in 2010, is Breakthrough: Transforming Fear into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
