A part of me wants to embrace Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day wholeheartedly… After all, the narrative of Jewish freedom through self-defense has a basis in reality. After all, my family has dear ones who have fallen in uniform.
And yes, I do feel the “never again” toward killing and pillaging made possible by statelessness… and the “never again” toward attack from all sides.
But what about the Palestinians? Being stripped, killed, and encircled applies to them in another way. While not equating, I can certainly compare where it’s due.
And so, given my unease about how the two holidays may be used wrongly or without proper nuance, I felt drawn by the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony by Combatants for Peace.
The event was a powerful assortment of speech, music, and video. It was uplifting to be part of an audience of thousands in Israel who chose to attend a memorial ceremony grieving and wishing peace for both “sides.”
“Sides” is a funny word to use, as the ceremony traveled untold miles in weaving us together. Truly, hats off to the brave people who participated in the program. They chose to attach their name and face to the “enemy” even while many in their own community would never forgive them for it.
Hats off to those who had the vision to connect all of us in the Holy Land. First, we saw footage from Beit Jala of two young men, Israeli and Palestinian. The Israeli man’s presence there seemed to shout, Yes, we Israelis can come here! It’s not as scary as you think! And the Palestinian man seemed to exclaim, We exist right here! Through this video beamed into Tel Aviv from the West Bank, I am looking at you all straight in the eye to tell you of my desire for peace.
Then later, footage from Gaza — of men, women, and children one after another wishing peace for both themselves and Israelis. It was something indescribable, a power that just sweeps one up, to see these people who still live in the human and infrastructural destruction wrought only last July. We killed hundreds of your innocents and set your community back decades, but you can still send us an unadulterated call for peace?
In these times of deep polarization, it is incredible that these eight or so individuals beamed themselves into Tel Aviv from Gaza like that. I don’t care if the people in this footage were cherry-picked or found only after countless pleas to film. They exist nonetheless. They’re right there in Gaza.
To avoid another war, we must continually replicate the ceremony’s technique: to focus on good people on the other side and never let go. Humanize them and never yield…
The next morning, the sirens called for Israel to grind to a halt. I overlooked a street in Tel Aviv from a balcony. I saw someone standing still on another balcony. A waitress and guests, stopped mid-order. A braked car, with the driver stepped out. A young guy under a tree, my age.
When the sirens finally ended, an old man who was standing still took a little while longer to emerge from his thoughts. He was likely many leagues deep, through the wars of ’48, ’67, ’73… on and on. And perhaps mourning, too, the rubble and dead of Gaza 2014.
The Medford Pact 