The genocide of the Palestinian people and the constant murder of innocent lives, including innocent babies, continues as the rest of the world looks on and does nothing.
The United States, with its massive wealth and military, has apparently paid off Iran now with reportedly $billions of dollars, ensuring, at least for now, that Iran and Hezbollah will not follow through on their threats and intervene for the Palestinian people.
And yet, the vast majority of the world, including those who reside in Israel and Palestine, is calling for a ceasefire and peace.
One of these groups advocating for peace and a ceasefire is Women Wage Peace, a group of both Palestinian Muslim women and Israeli Jewish women, who are pleading for a ceasefire. This includes some of the family members of those Israelis who were savagely murdered by the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th.
“We are just drowning in our own violence and blood. Israel won’t cure our dead babies by killing more babies.”
‘Killing babies won’t bring our babies back’: Kin of Israeli Hamas victims
Despite their grief, relatives of the victims of Hamas’s attack are among those arguing against revenge on Gaza.
Before Hamas’s unprecedented incursion into Israeli territory on October 7, Kibbutz Be’eri was a cherished corner of paradise.
Located in the northwestern Negev desert, its avocado groves and cotton, wheat and barley fields were shared among the close-knit group of residents…
Its 1,100 inhabitants had grown accustomed to the sounds of the air defence system occasionally intercepting incoming rockets from the nearby Gaza Strip, but visitors were often startled by the glaring reminder of a decades-long conflict that otherwise went on largely unseen.
Ariella Giniger visited her friend Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old, Canadian-born peace activist, two weeks before the surprise attack killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, including about 100 Be’eri residents.
During an early morning walk in the wilderness, they came across the fence running 41km (25 miles) northwards along the perimeter of the enclave. “I was a little nervous looking at Gaza,” Giniger, 70, told Al Jazeera. “I said, ‘Let’s go back, so that we’re in time for yoga’, and we had a beautiful breakfast.”
On October 4, days before the manicured landscape became a scene of death and devastation, Silver, a founding member of the Israeli-Palestinian Women Wage Peace (WWP) movement, marched from Jerusalem alongside Israeli and Palestinian women advocating for a peaceful, women-led solution to the conflict.
The march was the culmination of years of work, and they gathered around a symbolic negotiation table as they reached the shores of the Dead Sea. “We called for an agreement as opposed to a ‘settlement’ or an ‘arrangement’,” Giniger, an active member of the WWP, said.
“We thought any mother in the world would want that.”
Ariella Giniger and Vivian Silver attend the peace march on October 4, 2023 [Courtesy of Ariella Giniger]
Three days later, on the day now commonly referred to as Black Saturday, Hamas fighters tore through the fence that had kept two worlds largely separate. They targeted border areas in Israel, many of which happened to be historical leftist strongholds where residents identify as proponents of peace.
Silver, who moved to Israel from Winnipeg in 1973 to engage in peace work, was confirmed this week to be among the victims. Her remains were identified in Kibbutz Be’eri, dashing hopes that she might have been captured and taken to Gaza with about 240 other people.
Some bereaved Israelis are determined not to let their losses be used to justify taking revenge on the people of Gaza, even as any prospects for peace seem more outlandish than ever. “We are just drowning in our own violence and blood,” Yonatan Zeigen, Silver’s 35-year-old son, told Al Jazeera.
“Israel won’t cure our dead babies by killing more babies.”
Silver was one among several victims known to regularly volunteer to drive sick Palestinians from the Gaza border to hospitals in Israel for treatment. Before June 2007 when Hamas took control of the enclave and Israel imposed a blockade, she would visit Palestinian communities in a bid to forge dialogue.
“My mother believed in human encounters. She did a lot to get people from both sides together to humanise each other and to see that, in the end, we all want peaceful lives,” Zeigen said.
“The concept of resistance cannot be eradicated with force but with peace. So the question now is, is there an option for peace?” (Full article.)
Most of the world opposes Netanyahu’s genocide against the Palestinians, and the senseless murdering of innocent people, especially babies and children.
The United States is Israel’s staunchest supporter, and yet a recent poll showed that 68% of the American people do NOT support Netanyahu, and want a ceasefire. (Source.)
