Voices for Peace

Yonatan Zeigen’s mother, Vivian Silver, had dedicated her life to the fight for equal rights between Arabs and Jews in Israel. Living in a Kibbutz right on the border with Gaza, she was fierce in her cross border work, fighting for a “shared society, peace building, and gender equality,” says Zeigen. That Kibbutz is where she passed away on October 7th.

Since then, Zeigen has taken up his mother's fight. He is now part of the Parents Circle Family Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization for people who have lost family members due to the conflict. "This kind of burden I feel like I have to carry, because if we want our children not to have to carry this burden, we have to work hard now," he says. "It was natural for me to join the Parents Circle, because the work there is Palestinians and Jews together acknowledging the fact that the pain is universal, and that when we acknowledge each other's pain, we say that it is not acceptable to keep on paying these prices."

"Anybody know why my mother gave me an onion to carry in my backpack?" Aziz Abu Sarah asks the audience. "Because an onion helps you not suffocate from tear gas." Growing up in East Jerusalem during the First Intifada, this was normal life. When he was ten years old, his brother died after being imprisoned by Israeli police on suspicion of throwing rocks.

Abu Sarah says hatred and vengeance ate at him until he sat in a Hebrew classroom one day and had his first interaction with an Israeli who was not a soldier or a settler. “Every time I chose to hate, I was being a slave to the person who killed my brother," he says. "To me anger is like a nuclear power. It either leads to destruction or it leads to light and electricity." His experience in that classroom transformed his desire for revenge into a pursuit of reconciliation. "I realized that what divides us isn't being an Israeli and a Palestinian. If we're going to divide ourselves in any way, it should be those of us who believe in justice and equality and peace, and those who don't." 

Now, Abu Sarah leads Mejdi Tours, a socially conscious travel company that provides dual-narrative tours of Israel and Palestine, aiming to transcend the headlines and model civil dialogue and disagreement. He has also served as a chairman for the Parents Circle.

Robi Damelin has been a peace activist since the day the army knocked on her door to tell her her son had been killed. “When the army came to tell me that David had been killed by a Palestinian sniper, one of the first things that I said is, 'You can't kill anybody in the name of my child.'” She knew she wanted to prevent other mothers from feeling that grief, and soon became involved with the Parents Circle.

“I looked into the eyes of the Palestinian mothers, and I realized that we share the same pain," she says. "We could be the most incredible force, if we stood on the stage and spoke together for reconciliation, for nonviolence, for ending the occupation, then surely, that would be an example for others.”

When Damelin found the sniper who had killed her son, she decided not to prosecute him, but instead to write him and his parents a letter. She has been trying to meet with him ever since.