Letter from the Holy Land

In a new regular quarterly update, the Rev Muriel Pearson reports on the importance of a key event at the end of April.

AT exactly 8pm a siren sounded and everyone in the Tel Aviv park stopped jogging, dog walking and playing basketball for a minute’s silence.

This is the beginning of Israel’s Memorial Day, when every Israeli life lost during the conflict over the past 75 years is remembered. Stewart Gillan and I were on our way to a different sort of memorial where, controversially, Palestinian losses are remembered too.

Organised by Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Family Forum, the event, attended by 15,000, gave a platform to bereaved Israeli and Palestinian family members. A Palestinian mother described how in 2000 a stray bullet in Nablus on the West Bank killed her son Alaa, and how she was filled with rage and hate.

“In the first days after the tragedy,” she said, “I had a strong desire for revenge, that is to do something to heal myself, but I didn’t know what to do.” Reluctantly, she agreed to meet with other bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families. She came to understand that ‘their pain is similar to mine and the will to take revenge changed to the understanding that it is better to seek peace, not to continue violence.’

An Israeli brother described in graphic detail the bus bombing that killed his beloved sister in 1994. He said: “It is easy and natural to hate, and to be angry, and to want revenge, and to feed the fire of conflict again and again. I choose to try to break the chain of revenge and hatred.” As he spoke about his ‘soul mate’ he was heckled from outside the event by a small, vocal group of extreme Zionists shouting insults and accusing Israelis attending the gathering of treachery.

One musical contribution sang about how the dove of peace has faded and the olive branch has withered in its beak.

There were contributions from academics and thinkers calling for human rights for all and for a celebration of diversity. ‘’Shalom and salaam are similar but not the same,” said one. “Recognition of difference as well as shared humanity is needed to shape real peace.”

But here’s the rub. Israelis are brought up to honour their own dead and ignore the far greater Palestinian losses, or label all Palestinians terrorists.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, some Palestinians see events like this as ‘normalising’ the Israeli Occupation and refuse to engage.

And so this simple ceremony of story telling and sharing is controversial. Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle Family Forum had to go to the Supreme Court to overturn a ban on the attendance of 150 Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories.

The loudest applause from the crowd was for Mohammed Beiruti, of ‘A Land for All’ which advocates for two states in one homeland. He told both Palestinians and Israelis that the only way to lasting peace was to find a way to share.

Rarely do Israelis meet Palestinians face to face. Rarely do Palestinians meet Israelis who seek friendship and common ground. Every year the crowd attending ‘Sharing Sorrow, Bringing Hope’, grows but it is a very thin thread among the strands of those who see only the suffering of their people and do not recognise the humanity of the ‘other’.

We were guided to the site of the event by a very nice Israeli woman who told us she demonstrates for democracy every week but also told us she was born in the year of Yom Kippur: a child of the storm. She believes Palestinians want all Israelis (almost 10 million people) gone. She would not attend an event like this.

The Memorial Ceremony was moving, challenging, hopeful but has left me sad. Those folks raised prophetic voices but are crying in the wilderness. The folk song Where have all the flowers gone? comes to mind. When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?  

Combatants for Peace: www.cfpeace.org/ 

Parents Circle: www.theparentscircle.org/ en/pcff-home-page-en/

The Rev Muriel Pearson is Associate Minister at Jerusalem and Tiberias: St Andrew’s.