Still calling for “Make love not war” after Oct 7th
I find it instructive to see what people posted on their social media before Oct 7th and just after Oct 7th. I decided to look at Facebook posts for speakers at this year’s conjoint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony, a project of Combatants for Peace and the Family Circle. I vehemently object to events such as this, but nobody asked my opinion. All I can do is report on it. I am bringing you here bits of their talks (so you don’t have to watch the whole thing) alongside their FB posts.
This is a long article, but not long enough to fully explore all the details and issues; that would take a book-length treatise. I hope that I bring you enough material that will make my conclusions at the end of it make sense to you. Even if you do not agree.
After writing all of this up, I debated with myself whether or not to post it. After all, I am providing a platform for what I consider antisemitic rantings presented “nicely” and “with love.” And material here can be used on antisemitic, supposedly just anti-Zionist, digital and physical stages around the world with the claim that this is what Israelis are saying.
After reflection, I decided to publish it just because it was presented so “nicely” and “with love” and the casual consumer of online materials may not be able to see what is so wrong with this, just like the apparently mostly Jewish audience did not see. It is important to note here that the number of Jews in Israel who believe in what this group and others like it are promoting is very small in comparison with those who, while they may not have voted for the current government, are behind it in the current war (while still insisting that there will be a full investigation post-war of what led to it) and want to see Israel fight to victory.
I was a student in Canada when Americans were draft-dodging in order not to fight in Vietnam, and the slogan was “Make love not war.” The people we will see in this article would seem to agree wtih that. But “Make love not war” when your country is fighting against communism in a far-off land is not the same as when your country is fighting an existential war, the consequences of losing meaning more Oct 7ths.
Co-MC Rima Jawabra-Khatib
She doesn’t have any social media accounts that I could find so I cannot report on her.
Co-MC Guy Elhanan
It seems one of his favourite topics is “settler violence” and on Oct 6th, he had a few posts about the goings on in Hawara. His very last post on Oct 6th was of IDF soldiers breaking up a Palestinian wedding in Hebron, supposedly to prevent shooting into the air as generally happens at Arab weddings. There is no source for that supposition and the video looks bad. But we really do not know why the soldiers were there.
On Oct 7th, Guy shared a number of posts uploaded by others, posts that showed shock and horror as information emerged about the terrorist infiltration, and other posts that blamed the settlers for the IDF having to be in Judea-Samaria instead of in the Gaza Envelope.
Among the nearly 30 posts he shared on Oct 8th, this was one. It says: “Kibbutz children were taken hostage by Hamas, Bibi’s children are abroad with heavy security. Doctrine of the State of Israel on one foot.” All the others showed photographs of some of the hostages and murdered or missing Israelis along with a number of posts criticizing the current government and coming down on Ultra-orthodox Jews in Judea-Samaria.
Ahmed Helou
Self-decribed former Hamas member, currently on the board of Combatants for Peace, posted this toward the end of September 2023. He shared it from the Arab language Combatants for Peace FB page.The text reads:
War crimes are committed by the occupation… Targeting civilians, destroying homes, infrastructure, sanitation, and preventing the Palestinian ambulance crews from doing their work are all for a clear reason: fascism, racism of the occupation, its army and settlers, and the silence of the international community that has failed for more than 75 years to protect the Palestinian people from systematic racial persecution. #Watch #Photos of a part of the destruction caused by occupation during its aggression on Nour Shams Camp and Tulkarm City today. (Photo source: Photo by Mohamed Samreen and Jay Media)
Remember, Ahmed says he wants peace. Is this the language used by someone wanting peace? Have the Hebrew-speaking members of Combatants for Peace ever read the Arabic page set up by their supposed partners for peace? Or perhaps they agree with the distortions and lies and vilification.
I guess Ahmed denies that the IDF goes into Tulkarm when there is intelligence regarding a planned terrorist attack against Israel.
Below is Ahmed’s first after-Oct 7th post, probably sent by a Gazan family member. The text above the images reads:
Allah suffices me, and He is the best disposer of affairs against every oppressor.. And every traitor and every collaborator of the occupation
This was just three days after Oct 7th and two days after massive bombing of Gaza began. I have no problem with such a response from someone seeing what is done to the place where he has family. Did anything change in the seven months between the beginning of the war against Hamas and Ahmed’s speech at a conjoint “peace”-promoting ceremony? Look below this post to see what he said at the event.
Ahmed’s talk (begins at about 2:15 minutes) opens by showing his connection with Gaza: his grandfather was born there and in the early 1900’s, he moved to Beer Sheva for work and stayed.His father was born there, and in the Nakba of 1948, his mother’s and father’s families, unable to return to Gaza, moved to Jericho. I don’t know why he says they could not return to Gaza since we commonly hear Gazans complain that they had to flee to Gaza in 1948, following which they could not move back to their homes that were, after the war, in Israel. Anyway, this branch of a Gazan family now finds itself in Jericho.
He remembers, as a child, driving to Gaza to visit family and go to the beach. He later married a woman who came to Jericho for a visit and her family also lives in Gaza. And now post-Oct 7th:
My family and my wife’s family live through nights of terror, and suffer sickness and terror since the start of the war. I follow the news day and night and I fear that my siblings and their kids and grandkids could be struck by disaster during this cruel war. I’m here to raise their voices, the voice of my sister who fled during the war from Gaza City to the south thinking that the south is safe. But, as we know, there is no safe place in Gaza. They had strikes in the south, the north, the east, the west, in all the populated areas.
Before the war, my sister tried to get to the West Bank or Egypt for medical treatment. [Egypt would not let her in for medical treatment even before the war? Why could she not get treated in Palestinian Authority hospitals? What is this about?] She can’t get treatment in Gaza and to this day, she can’t leave and her medical condition is getting worse with every day. [Hinting that it is Israel’s fault, of course.]
On 8 October, his family was informed of the death of a cousin in Gaza. Since that date he has lost 60 family members, 60 martyrs he called them, killed when their homes were bombed by the IDF. I am sorry for his heavy loss. But talking about it in nice language and asking that the carnage stop does not make him a peace promoter. In addition, the IDF does not bomb houses that do not somehow serve Hamas — either for weapons’ storage, offices, to hide tunnel openings, or in which live terrorists are at the moment. What were his family members doing in such a place when the IDF gives sufficient warning where they are going to hit? He says the Israeli army
…is killing shamelessly, massacring and destroying all forms of life. They don’t distinguish between rocks, plants, and human life and they don’t spare anyone in this war, not even the birds. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist in their eyes, a threat to the State of Israel and must be killed. There is no concern for human or animal rights.
I must admit, I found it hard to see all the Jews in the audience sit through this without any signs of discomfort. Do they really hate the Israeli government so much that they swallow such horrific characterization of Israel? Even if I agreed that Israel is an occupier and there has to be a two-state-solution, I would hope that I would have stood up and walked out at a statement like this — or at least shouted out in protest.
I personally understand the great fear and pain that struck the Israelis after the events of Oct 7th [events? That is what you call it?]. However, does killing tens of thousands of people, causing hunger, fear, terror and unsurmountable pain promise security and peace for the Israelis? How do Israelis expect to live in peace while the Palestinian people live under occupation? [There it is again — occupation. The eternal excuse. His Gazan family should have told him that they have not seen a Jew or an Israeli soldier in Gaza since 2005.]
How can the world see us and support Israel in committing these crimes against us? Despite this injustice, despite the destruction and hideous war crimes of the Israeli army in Gaza, I stand before you today as a member of Combatants for Peace to say to you: We must stand strong against terrorism, against violence, against the harming of innocents, and the bloodshed on both sides. We must build a safe future for our children without fearing tomorrow, without fearing the destruction of what we are building for future generations. We must stand with perseverence and strength and say no to war, no to destruction, no to extremism and fanaticism, no to terror, yes to coexistence to us living in this blessed beautiful land in peace and security, in dignity and freedom. Peace be upon you. [Notice, not a word about Hamas in all this verbiage. Did Ahmed say no to war on his FB page after seeing what Hamas did on Oct 7th?]
Michal Lev
My heart broke when I first looked at Michal’s FB page — this Oct 6th post is another in an ongoing blog about a two-year trip in a trailer in the USA. Read the text and weep because the very next day, her son was killed.at the Nova music festival.
This is her post on Oct 7th. The text reads (I edited it slightly so it flows better):
I wished by now to have been able to report that all is good. We still have not received any updates regarding Laor and his friends that are in a mobile shelter in Kibbutz Be’eri. Here is a photo of my amazing son.
I am trying to reach Israel. If anyone knows someone in ElAl, please help a worried mother return to Israel and her son asap.
UPDATE: I have a flight. I am boarding a flight from Denver to Newark soon. Now I just ask for your prayers for Laor. Thanks for all your support.
She wrote a few posts thanking all those who seek to comfort and support her and then on Oct 15th, she announced the place and times for the shiva [mourning week]..Two days later, from the shiva, she posted a video clip pleading that, knowing what the mothers in Gaza are going through, she wants no vengeance be sought in her name.
At the Combatants for Peace event, she talked about how time stopped for her on the 7th of October.(beginning at 9:50 minutes):
Laor went to dance at a party and didn’t return. He didn’t return because he found his death in the death shelter [mobile bomb shelter] at Re’im Junction on Oct 7th. Until his final moments, Laor lived according to the values of our hearts, the foundations on which our lives were based, and that is love, helping others, all living beings, and the environment.
My first reaction which I still maintain and that I want to present here is a sincere request within the chasm that has been opened: No more revenge. No more killing. I allow myself to speak on behalf of all mothers who want their children to have a future. Laor no longer has such a future. …. Now I am here with you. Unfortunately, more mothers and families, with many more killed, have joined me — on both sides of the fence. .. Thank you for believing things can be different. Today, of all days, I want to ask everyone who is able to always choose compassion and love over everything else.
There were many people in the kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope who chose compassion and love and many of them were tortured, raped, abducted, and murdered. This is not news to anyone at that conference.
Rima
She decided to tell us something about herself (25:50 minutes). She grew up in Umm el Fahm
My family roots are planted in the Holy Land for generations. We, the Palestinians, didn’t come from any other place. We were always here and remained as refugees on our own land to this day. [I won’t bother wondering how she sees herself as a refugee when she has citizenship of the country into which she was born.]
She talks about beginning her studies at Tel Aviv University, opposed to hearing any other narrative than the one she grew up on, and then becoming friends with a Jew who she first took to be an Arab. She eventually went to a Combatants for Peace meeting as a translator and found herself translating things that challenged her identity
I went to a single meeting and here I am, an activist for over 18 years as part of Combatants for Peace, as part of a nonviolent struggle to end the occupation and part of the peope who believe that a different life is possible on this piece of land.
Ghadir Hani
At about 38:30 minutes, Ghadir Hani read out a letter sent by a woman in Gaza, a letter telling of her difficulties living under the occupation.
On Oct 6th, Ghadir’s FB page has a number of posts related to crime in the Arab sector. Here is one, in which she features the sign put up on the bridge leading to the Arab town of Baqa al-Gharbiya. It says that 201 murders and the government neglects her citizens.
In another post, Ghadir says that tomorrow is the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and the Jews will get up from their booths of commemoration while the Arabs will remain in their mourning booths [because of crime in the Arab sector]. That is not exactly what happened. How did she react when, the next day, Hamas invaded the country she also calls home?
In a number of posts, she expresses her shock and horror at what Hamas did in the Gaza Envelope without naming Hamas. My translation into English for the Hebrew text in the post above is:
Praying for the residents of Gaza and friends in the south. At the moment, there are hundreds of dead, more than a thousand injured, and in the Gaza Envelope dozens of killed and abducted and hundreds of injured. I have lost friends. I have lost contact with friends. It hurts that innocent victims pay the price.
Later she posts an announcement by an Arab city mayor inviting Jewish evacuees to be hosted in his town. Her posts come the closest to what I would imagine of someone who really wants peace. However, she does not seem to get that Israel cannot just put down her arms and give flowers to our enemies. Or perhaps she pretends to be so naive.
Najla
What about Najla, the woman who called herself that to remain anonymous? Married in 2000, she moved to the “West Bank” with her husband. She writes that three months after marrying, the second intifada broke out and her hardships began. Broke out. Like a volcano erupts without human hands directing it. The intifada did not break out. The intifada was an act of war committed by people.
Exiled in her homeland, Najla continues, she was cut off from her family in Gaza. Her mother was refused permits to visit her in the West Bank and she was not allowed to go to Gaza to celebrate family life-cycle events. The hardest times, she says, were during the wars her family lived through. I can empathize with the personal pain. Then:
… this war came in which the occupation carried out the most atrocious nakba and collective punishment in Palestinian history. … The occupation prevented me from seeing [my brother] after it prevented me from celebrating his wedding with him [years earlier]…. The war insisted on extinguishing my joy and hope. My beloved brother was killed. .. In this war I’ve lost more than 20 family members …. and the death machine is still ready to kill. .. I know that on the other side there are many people who believe in peace and in ending the occupation. … My message today, as a Palestinian woman, who has experienced years of abuse, oppression, loss, and pain, we must, Palestinians and Israelis, strive with all resolution to change this reality for the sake of a better future for our children. …
I didn’t count how many times the letter contained the word, occupation. But it was a lot.
Yonatan Ziegen
Yonatan Zeigen, son of the well-known peace activist, Vivian Silver, spoke next (beginning at 50:30 minutes). I could not find any social media account in his name.
He described a wonderful, caring mother, grandmother, person and how much he misses her, is devastated by her loss.
…the meaninglessness of a death that could have been avoided. … In the end, she died, not as a peace activist or as a leader or as a mother. Death is impartial and war is blind. That’s why it’s so strange to me that we, as humans, continue to bring it upon ourselves instead of blindly seeking peace. … How many generations of bereavement are needed until we understand that the only way for all people between the Jordan River and the sea to live in security and freedom is through peace?
… the Bereaved Families Forum, Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, B’tselem, as well as the Road to Recovery, the New Israel Fund, Women Wage Peace, all the organizations Vivian participated in over the years, I wish we didn’t need all these important organizations in order to act against the occupation and resolve the conflict. … The only obstacle holding us back is will. We all need to realize that the occupation, the 7th of October, the war in Gaza, Jewish and Arab terrorism, and any kind of political violence are not inevitable. They are based on false and toxic ideas that bring and will continue to bring destruction upon us all. Our effort is to create beneficial ideals of devotion to life, of fair and equitable resource distribution [equitable resource distribution? if there was equitable resource distribution either Gaza would have received a lot less or other problem regions in the world would have received exponentially more], of recognizing the other until he turns from stranger into someone familiar until we are no longer willing to kill and be killed. My mother dedicated her life to these simple understandings.
And she was killed as a Jew and an Israeli, as an occupier, regardless of her beliefs and attitudes and regards of what Yonatan says. And she was not a stranger to Gazans. Quite the contrary.
Rona and Inbar Oren
Finally, twins Rona and Inbar Oren, 15, whose grandmother was murdered in a terror attack on a bus in Tel Aviv in 1995 had this to say (at 58:00 minutes):
We want to talk to you, boys and girls living in Gaza. We don’t know who you are, who your family is, what you like to do, what you study at school, or what kind of music you like to listen to. But we do know that we are all children who just want normal lives, who just want to live and grow up in peace. We have grown up in different cultures and we speak different languages but the fact is we are alike. We all care about our families and loved ones and none of likes when they die just because both sides think violence and revenge are the only way. We are all tired of prejudice, racism, generalizations, and war. … We want you to know that there are quite few people in Israel who want peace…We hope that one day we will be able to meet you, our friends in Gaza, face to face, without walls. … and to go hand in hand in the way of peace.
You might not know Gazan children, but there are boys and girls, men and women, living in Gaza who know Jewish Israelis. Maybe it was the Jew who met them at the crossing and drove them to the hospital for medical treatment and back again. Maybe it was the people they worked with when they got work permits to earn a decent living in Israel.Maybe it was the artist who wanted to do a conjoint photography exhibit with Jews in israel and Arabs in Gaza? Jews were not strangers to many of those who raged across the fence and spit in the face (an understatement if there ever was one) of the people who befriended them in good faith.
My thoughts
To my fellow Israelis, Jewish and non-Jew at that event: I don’t know how you can have looked into the eyes of evil and hatred and not understood that your love and respect and wishes for a good future together may be shared with a few individuals “on the other side” but not by enough of them to make any difference at all. And when the majority want us dead, I don’t think we have time to wait to see how many can be convinced to set aside the mandate they believe in for worldwide jihad and a global Caliphate.
I am also surprised at the Arab Israelis at this event — Hamas was worse toward Arabic-speaking Israelis than Jews, I have heard. They regard them as traitors to the Arab Ummah. So what are you talking about here? You would not be treated any differently from Vivian Silver were something like this (God forbid!) ever to happen again.
These conjoint events may make some people feel good about themselves. And as long as we have enough soldiers to make sure Gaza is safe for Jews and all Israelis, they can go on with their make-believe. If we ever do make peace, in other words, if we defeat Hamas soundly enough that it will fear to raise its head for at least 100 years, I’m sure they will take credit for the ensuing quiet. I don’t care about that. Just let us win.
