Grieving Israeli-Palestinian families hold joint memorial, seen by 200,000

In a quiet courtyard near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, grieving Palestinian and Israeli families and their supporters gathered on Tuesday night, Israel’s memorial day, to demand reconciliation and an end to the conflict.

“We are entangled and drowned in a cycle of violence and pain and fear. Some of us cannot see that there is a way out of the bloody cycle. I believe it is possible: through mutual recognition, through understanding, through equal rights, “said Tamar Pikes, who lost both her father and her brother in Israel’s wars with its Arab neighbors.

Organizers said the joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial service was watched by more than 200,000 people, breaking last year’s virtual attendance record. Due to coronavirus restrictions, about 200 gathered in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, while another 60 gathered near Bethlehem. The ceremony is controversial on Israel’s memorial day.

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The event was hosted by left-wing poet and actor Yossi Tzabari in Tel Aviv, while Palestinian artist Ra’ida Adon moderated the West Bank event near Bethlehem.

The grieving mother, Leila al-Sheikh,’s son Qusai died in 2002 when tear gas from an Israeli container filled her house. She tried to take the six-month-old to a hospital for urgent care, but was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint.

‘[The Israeli soldiers] prevented us from going under the pretext that there would be no exceptions to humanitarian matters, ”laments Al-Sheikh. “I feel Qusai’s breathing begin to accelerate.”

By the time they were allowed to leave – four hours later, Al-Sheikh said – it was too late. When Qusai reached a hospital in Hebron, he was dead.

‘That cold ignited a raging fire that consumed everything inside me. “I hated it for 16 years and refused to see any Israelis,” Al-Sheikh said.

But later al-Sheikh changed when he met grieving Israelis from across the Green Line. “I felt the sincerity of those who strive for a better future, not only for their own children, but also for all,” she told the crowd, describing the meeting as “a relief.”

The left-wing activist group Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle – Families Forum, a grassroots organization of grieving Israelis and Palestinians, have been organizing the annual ceremony on the Israeli Memorial Day since 2006. About 10,000 supporters gathered in Tel Aviv in 2019, the last time the ceremony was held in person.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was held almost entirely online last year. But with many in Israel now vaccinated, small groups in Tel Aviv and Ramallah were able to gather to hold the ceremony in person.

The ceremony has been very controversial since its inception, especially among the Israeli public, while critics have accused it of legitimizing terrorism and equating Israel’s fallen soldiers with those who attacked them.

Supporters say it is an attempt by those who have lost the most in the conflict to give meaning to the deaths of their loved ones by turning away from violence.

In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Tel Aviv event and ordered permits to strike dozens of West Bank Palestinians who planned to attend, citing security measures. The Supreme Court overturned the decision, arguing that it was not lawful for legal reasons to prevent the participants’ access.

This year, billboard company CTV refused to run flyers advertising the ceremony.

“They gave us a prize, we agreed and we were ready to publish the ads – but then they decided to withdraw for commercial reasons,” said Tuli Flint, a former combat soldier and peace activist.

The company told the organizers of the ceremony to remove some of the slogans of the ad, such as’ end the [Israeli] occupation ”and“ enough fighting. ”

“We have asked the organization to remove some of these more challenging statements, which come up on Memorial Day,” CTV CEO Ilon Rossman told Haaretz.

Rossman further said that CTV is afraid of losing money due to the commitment to the ceremony. After a legal battle, CTV agreed to print the ads on billboards without any changes.

“I’m just saying there’s a controversy, and that’s why we thought it would not be good for advertising for commercial reasons,” the executive said in the aftermath. “We as a trading body believed that the company could cause financial damage.”

In Tel Aviv, film director Gili Meisler tells how his brother Giora, a young Israeli soldier, was killed during the Yom Kippur War in Sinai. Giora’s death, Meisler said, led him to join extreme right-wing youth movements in an attempt to take revenge on Arabs.

The strong feeling that accompanied me was that hatred and revenge and the absolute trust in my justice kept my bond with Giora. “I believed that giving up revenge was like a new loss and a betrayal,” Meisler said.

In an implicit nod to critics of the ceremony on the Israeli side, Meisler rejected allegations that he betrayed his brother’s legacy by participating in the joint Israeli-Palestinian ceremony.

“We seek the welfare of the state as we understand it, and the advantage of the state is to say clearly: Enough hostility, and welcome dialogue and hope,” Meisler said.

The ceremony is also controversial on the Palestinian side, said Rana Salman, executive director of Combatants for Peace.

‘There are some people who see it as normalizing with Israelites. “Others see it mostly as an Israeli day, not as a Palestinian day,” Salman said. “There are people who support violence, and of course we support a violent path.”

To prevent confrontations in both Israeli and Palestinian territories, the exact location of the ceremony was kept private and was not opened to the general public.

“For example, we do not want to see a group of people come and disrupt it,” Salman said.

But some local Palestinians did attend the memorial service, regardless. According to Flint, the Palestinian awareness of the event began last year when the coronavirus ceremony was online.

‘I saw the pain of families, Jews and Arabs. I hope these ceremonies can be a kind of bridge that can take us to a safer place, ‘said Hamza, a Bethlehem resident.