Israel and Palestine: 'If I was to look to anyone for hope, it would be the people on both sides'
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Version 0 of 1. For the last few weeks GuardianWitness has been running two assignments – one for people living in Palestine and the other for those in Israel. Amid the anger at the tragic human cost of this conflict, individuals and organisations have been contributing images, videos and testimony that reflect a desire for reconciliation and peace. Here are some of them. The Parents Circle – Families Forum is an organisation of Palestinian and Israeli families who have all lost an immediate family member in the conflict. A few days ago they submitted this video to GuardianWitness. A message from Israelis and Palestinians - We don't want you here! We are all - Palestinians and Israelis - going through difficult, sensitive and emotional days But it’s time for someone to stand up and say what is on everybody’s mind. Even though it hurts. Sent via GuardianWitness By
Noas123 27 July 2014, 11:24 Guardian readers in Israel have shared their desire for civilians in Israel and Palestine to reach out to each other and live in peace. Feeling sick I was driving home from work earlier tonight, a relatively uneventful day with no sirens, and no running to the bomb shelter. Actually got some work done. All of a sudden a news alert beeped angrily at me from my phone. I opened it whilst driving (yes I know!) and immediately saw why the beep was so annoyed, delivering the jolting news that Israeli 13 soldiers had died on Saturday. I had to stop tha car and nearly threw up. After a few moments of deep breathing I continued my journey home. Once home I spent some time playing with my two shining lights of hope (my kids) and talking to my wife. A quick trip to the supermarket, a bite to eat and then the evning news. I don't normally watch the TV but the past few days the news has become almost an obsession. Tonight I was confronted by harrowing images of bodies lying in the street after the latest round of fighting in Gaza. Once again, for the second time this eveing, I struggled to keep the contents of my stomach in situ. The tears I had shed watching the interviews of dead soldiers families, bravely struggling to cope with the visceral grief that was visibly shredding their souls, where replaced with tears for the citizens of Gaza.I felt sick to the core. I am sick of it. Sick of it all. Sick of the interminable violence. Sick at the thought that my beautiful children face the ugliest of futures. Sick of the hypocrisy of the world's response to this versus the other horrific ongoing atrocities being perpetrated across the world. Sick of reading about Islam-inspired violence and glorified death.Sick of the Palestinian people being betrayed by their political masters. Sick of our shared peace and prosperity being raped by regional power-broking puppet-masters and sick of your hard-earnt tax Pounds. Dollars and Euros being diverted from the people who most need it to the corrupt bastards who claim to represent the Palestinian people but who are, in reality, just the most ruthless and sociopathic mafia on earth. I'm sick of Jewish racism (directed at Ethiopian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Russian Jews etc etc as well as Arabs and other non-Jews). I'm sick of the two-faced silence of Israeli Arabs, who drive around in their SUVs and BMWs, "doing lunch" and living a far better and incomparably freer life than their families and friends unfortunate enough to be the other side of the fence. In case you hadn't got the message yet I'm sick of it. Needless pain and suffering on both sides. Needless rounds of pointless charades of peace talks. Enough already. Stop with the settlements. Stop with the continual attempted destruction of Israel. Its time to draw a line. We don't need Ariel and you don't need Jerusalem. Really. You can still pray at the Al Aqsa (as long as you aren't packing a suicide belt). We can still visit the holy sites of Hebron. We can both happily float in the Dead Sea and we can all work with, and for, each other. We can do it. Open your eyes, your minds and hearts. Think about who you give the power to and make them do as you demand not the other way around. Please. Sent via GuardianWitness By
Rob Tess Cohen 20 July 2014, 23:00 ashamed appalled disgusted as an ex south african israeli- who would have believed that south africa holds more hope and promise for the next generation than israel. change and reconciliation are possible but it appears that as long as inhumane attitudes based on fear, greed, fanaticism and macho power struggles rule- despair and helpless anger will prevail. The rockets to Israel are a farce - the bombing of innocent children is not acceptable. Sent via GuardianWitness By
karenaw 16 July 2014, 10:15 Jewish and Arab coexistence I live 5 minutes from the kidnap site in Gush Etzion and have always thought that Jews and Arabs have been living in peaceful coexistence for most of the time up till now. We drive on the same roads (with almost no "incidents"), we shop at the same discount (Jewish owned) super market, eat at the same Gush Etzion cafe and walk the same well trodden paths. I might be naive in thinking that most of us - both Jews and Arabs - want the same peace and quiet. If only.... Sent via GuardianWitness By
Michal Waller 8 July 2014, 13:02 We need courageous leaders on both sides This situation is never going away. We are all here to stay for generations. Can we keep this up? Both sides leaders must stand up and say enough is enough and have two nations for two peoples. I am a left leaning Israeli who is seen my the right as a traitor and worse than any Hamas terrorist. Israel will continue to exist as is our right now the Hamas have to come to terms wit this and both of us have to reach out and get in touch. No other way. I feel pity and sorrow for all of us here. Sent via GuardianWitness By
Bazza 28 July 2014, 21:49 Thousands of people in Israel have been taking part in anti-war demonstrations, Yuyu Ilany shared this photo of Israeli and Palestinian protesters in Jaffa. anti war demo in Jaffa Last Saturday evening, minutes after the Ramdan Iftar dinner, an anti war demonstration the Jaffa's Clock-tower square , Israel. Palestinians and Jews from Jaffa and Tel Aviv share a demo against the war in Gaza. During the demo 2 air alarms go off: 2 missile attacks on Tel Aviv Jaffa. We decide to continue the demonstration. What is happening in Gaza is atrocious (for lack of a better word. We must protest against it. There is little else we can do. Sent via GuardianWitness By
Yuyu Ilany 17 July 2014, 14:36 Yonatan Shefa, from Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, wrote this moving personal testimony. Feelings from the front Editor's note: The following text was was submitted to GuardianWitness by Yariv Mohar, Spokesperson, Rabbis for Human Rights and was written by Yonatan Shefa, Assistant Director, Occupied Territories Department, Rabbis for Human Rights. CB The following does not necessarily reflect the official position of the organization. In the face of the current violence, I feel useless, powerless, naïve, a little lost. But I’m not naïve. For the past several years I’ve been working throughout Israel and the West Bank on rights, justice and peace issues for Rabbis for Human Rights. I’m not naïve, it’s just that I know we are capable of more, of being better than we are now. I know that we are, I just don’t know what to do in order to help move us from where we are now to what we could be. Each step, every possible effort seems futile, insignificant in the face of the monstrous brutality we appear capable of. While I may be gazing towards the far horizon of our truest potential, it’s also true that if I turn 180 degrees and look the other way, I will see children being burned alive in my backyard. What do we do? What do I do in the face of this? Mohammed Abu Khdeir was murdered, pretty much literally, in my backyard. It was actually upon returning from a walk in the same forest the other evening that I learned where he had been found. So much hatred, so much darkness, so much enmity, rage and blind hostility came so close to home. What do I do? I have been in this country, now, for about five years, and I have spent most of this time striving to bring people together, Israelis and Palestinians, to encounter one another, to see each other, to listen and to share. It is, at times, magical work. Each time I stand with a pair of people who have never once in their lives had a conversation with someone from the “other” side, each time I bear witness to those first words, to that first shuddering destabilization of the scaffolding of fear, prejudice, preconception...I can literally feel lives shifting in their orbit. What was all mind, story, label, narrative, considered to be that, other, them...suddenly becomes flesh and blood, a name, you. But in the face of this dark act, perpetrated by members of my own people, carried out in my home, such small births of new lives seem just that—small, tiny, insignificant, drowned in a ocean of darkness, less than a drop in the sea of hatred. So what do I do? Keep on meeting, one-by-one? Keep on gathering, group-by-group? I spoke with my sister last night, just moments before the rockets arrived—just moments before I walked into that same forest and the sirens began to wail, before I saw the flare of the missiles in their attempts to intercept, and before I heard the three vast thuds as the rockets hit their marks, before the earth trembled beneath me. She had called to see how we were doing. She feels differently than I do—about Israel, the conflict, and what might be reasonable for Israel to do under these circumstances. I told her that, just hours before her call, I had been to visit the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, to pay my respects, but more importantly to be a warm, openly Jewish body demonstrating, in the face of fear, that this is not who we are. I told her about the visit, and about what had been said against the Israeli government by a member of the Abu Khdeir family. “Are you totally against the Israeli government?” She asked. What ensued was a refreshingly open, honest, constructive conversation. No, I am not against the Israeli government. Although I have a graduate degree in government, over the years I have become less and less political. I am not against the government; I am simply not looking to it to solve this crisis, to heal these wounds. “Well what would do you think they should do in the face of this?” she asked. “Should they just let go of security concerns and try to make peace at any cost?” Of course not. The security, safety and wellbeing of its citizens should be the first and primary responsibility of any government. But I see no reason why, in addition to ensuring and maintaining such security, the Israeli government could not be taking much bolder, clearer steps towards building peace. I see no non-political reasons that they could not be dedicating massive resources towards promoting, teaching and fostering coexistence. Why, other than the fear of political reprisals, they could not boldly say, ‘this is what we are doing: we are giving over a massive allocation of funds towards projects that will all be oriented towards learning how we can live together peacefully and well. We will be teaching coexistence in schools—Jews will learn Arabic, and Arabs will learn Hebrew. We will bring people together in any way that makes sense. We will support and promote joint-economic ventures; we will promote media that show people a new way is possible. We will do everything within our power to shift our society, and the society of our neighbors and cousins, to demonstrate that peaceful co-existence is possible and that, above and beyond all, that is what we want, that is what we stand for.’ There is no structural reason that this could not happen. The only reason is fear and resistance, resistance which is itself ultimately rooted in fear. There is no reason that, instead of borders and the release of prisoners, the pre-conditions for resuming peace talks can’t be the massive and dedicated education of and experimentation with co-existence. We don’t know how to live together. But the only way we are going to truly bring to a halt the disastrous acts of the minority of people who want hate and fear, who want to drive the other out to the sea, on either side, is to deprive them of oxygen. Their oxygen is the often explicit but more broadly the tacit, indirect support of their communities, schools, families, governments; their oxygen is the context in which they thrive and act. To deprive them of oxygen, we must make it infeasible for their views to sway and encourage. To deprive them of resources, people and energy, more and more of us must know, in our blood and in our bones, that we can actually do this, that we can actually live together without hating each other, and without doing our best to harm one another and deprive the other of basic needs and rights. This, the government is not doing. Neither government. The governments of Israel and Palestine are not depriving these toxic minorities of their oxygen. So I am not against the government, but I see no reason to be for it either. I am, again, simply not looking to the government for hope. Right now, if I was to look to anyone for hope, it would be the people, on both sides. It would be to the hundreds of Israelis who have poured in on buses to Shu’afat to pay their condolences to the Abu Khdeir family. It would be to the parents all across Palestine who felt horror and sadness for the loss of the Jewish parents of Eyal, Naftali and Gilad. It would be to the people who know, in their hearts, that this is not the way, that enough is enough; who know that the killing, and the fear and enmity that underlay it, must stop. It is to those of us who know that we must stop teaching our children to hate, so that, despite their differences, God willing in our backyards we will no longer turn to see children burning children, but laughing and at play. Sent via GuardianWitness By
CarolineBannock 13 July 2014, 15:41 In Palestine, a social photography project, Usti has been creating a quiet celebration of Palestinian people. Usti is a group of Palestinian and international volunteers, who’ve been photographing Palestinians, and asking them to think about something that makes them happy. They have gradually been covering a wall in Ramallah with the 400 images. Photography Mural Project for The People Of Palestine Editors note: This is image has been uploaded on behalf of the social photography project in Palestine, Usti CB Usti is a social photography project, that captures the most beautiful part of Palestine, its People. Asking: What makes you happy? snap. #weRpalestine Sent via GuardianWitness By
CarolineBannock 26 July 2014, 14:32 One of the group wrote: One gentleman said this is the first time a project like this happens that highlights hope not misery, life not death and beauty not violence. Collecting 400 pictures was extremely difficult because generally people here are not open to taking pictures by random strangers but in the past three days of making the mural, we’ve witnessed lineups of people wanting to take their picture for the next mural. I mentioned to the project leader that seeing these happy faces was deeply affecting. She responded: They are beautiful, and now that you’ve seen their smiles and their innocence it makes you responsible. We are all responsible; it’s human nature. You can see all the contributions – or add your own – in both the Israel and the Palestine assignments on GuardianWitness. |