In a secret location due to right-wing attacks in previous years, bereaved families recognized each other’s grief and called for a shared future.
Here’s to hope for better times ahead, for everyone.
Death is the only thing that unites the human race. We will all die, someday. It’s beautiful to see shared grief. The pain of endless decades, over a half century, of occupation. The pain of innocent Israelis killed by their own country over 20 years. Because the Hannibal directive isn’t the only time Israel kills it’s own people. There is so much grief that it’s saddening to see an event like this and see people measuring grief. If you lost your mother and I lost my mother and father, would I not still weep over your mother? Don’t let pain divide us further. The innocent people of both countries who don’t want violence are victims. Those who desire violence, deserve to die by the sword.
the only ones in this conflict losing a future (and their lives) here are palestinians though.
I have so much admiration for everyone involved in this. The stories of loss are unbearable.
But what is really, clearly unbearable, for Zionists, is to see that it’s possible to be scared and angry and still recognize the humanity in everyone, and seek peace over vengence.
It’s no wonder Zionists hate this event so much. Can you imagine seeing others demonstrate the courage and moral integrity you’ve abandoned? And knowing that it’s proof that contrary to your constant claims, you have no entitlement to your cruelty: you’re just a hateful, selfish monster?
It’s an incredible display of the power of unbreakable hope. May we all find peace and success soon, soon, soon.
what a joke
I dont care about israeli loses in “conflict”. I dont give a fuck about their mourning, they are occupiers and they get only a fraction of what they deserve
I could quote to you parts of the article that explain why this kind of attitude is ridiculous and disconnected from the reality of Palestinians and Israelis that organize with personal danger against the apartheid and occupation but I’d end up copying the entire article. Go read it before playing the edgelord.
Palestinian here. FUCK that shit.
Israelis are occupying our land and genociding us in the open. These attempts to paint them as equal victims only perpetuate the genocide and colonization of Palestine.
Anything less than allowing us our legal right of return and giving us reparations is just letting them get away with their decades of crimes because some of us dared to fight back.
We call Palestinians engaging in these events collaborators, or generously we could use the Zionist/American favorable term “useful idiots.”
Imagine a woman being publicly beat by her husband for decades and finally decides enough is enough and gouges his eye, and then holds an event to mourn both her scars/wounds and his eye. Would you be celebrating it, or would you say “hold up, something isn’t right here”?
You could also read the article you shame people and declare they haven’t read:
On the other hand, some pro-Palestinian voices have suggested that the ceremony advances a liberal Zionist narrative of false equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian suffering.
There is a difference between you making those judgement calls within your own community and us from outside picking and choosing good and bad Palestinians. The commenter I responded to above has no standing to condemn the people that pour their energy in organizing this event.
In fact from where I’m standing I’m seeing the genocidal Israeli right getting pissed off by this and trying to violently shut it down, so they must be doing something right. Such as:
The ceremony offered bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families a rare space to jointly mourn loved ones lost to the conflict, and to raise their voices in calling for an end to war and Israeli occupation.
And there is a distinction between goals, strategy and tactics. The right of return and reparations are goals. These kinds of initiatives are tactics. And you can meaningfully debate with other Palestinians their efficacy or on diversity of tactics but I don’t think the jury is out on that debate, such that would compel outsiders to declare something like this a meaningless joke.
Yes, they’re tactics. Tactics to create a false equivalency of suffering between the occupied and the occupier.
These groups don’t call for ending occupation as those words mean, they mean leaving the West Bank. If Israel exists as a Jewish supremacist ethno-religous state on stolen Palestian land, the occupation isn’t over. If they dismantle all their checkpoints, if they tear down the wall on Palestinian territory, if they remove their soldiers and stop shooting out children for sport, they’re still occupying our land, our only access to the ocean, our oil, our fresh water sources, our fertile lands, our grandparents’ graveyards, and our homes to which we still have keys. The “two state solution” is a liberal Zionist tool used to make the colonization of Palestine palatable for western audiences.
Ending occupation means a free Palestine from the river to the sea, and these groups aim to twist the meaning of words to make forcing us into a small land with no military and choking us economically so we continue to leave in search of better life. They want to end “occupation” so they can focus on colonization.
Of course the more extreme don’t like that plan, they want to exterminate Palestinians and get it over with as quickly as possible. That’s where their opposition comes from, not from a principal disagreement on the existence of a Jewish only state on colonized land, they all agree on that part.
And you can meaningfully debate with other Palestinians their efficacy or on diversity of tactics but I don’t think the jury is out on that debate
You know, we aren’t just sitting around debating these issues a few times a year when Israel is in the news. We spent decades thinking about this, and we have a very mature body of literature on the topic. Ghada Karmi, Ali Abunimah, Yousef Munayyer, Mouin Rabbani, Hani Faris, Edward Said, and Ghassan Kanafani are just a few Palestinian intellectuals/authors you could read to better understand this very much settled debate.
The existence of collaborators and propagandized Palestinians who aren’t well read on their own history (as a product of the ongoing colonization) doesn’t mean the “jury is out on the debate”, they aren’t part of the debate.
such that would compel outsiders to declare something like this a meaningless joke.
Yet you feel compelled as an outsider to speak with such authority and conviction.
I’m not going to enter into a discussion about the righteousness or the feasibility or political usefuless of this or that solution as my opinion on the matter ultimately doesn’t matter.
I will only point to this key phrase of what you wrote:
The existence of collaborators and propagandized Palestinians who aren’t well read on their own history (as a product of the ongoing colonization) doesn’t mean the “jury is out on the debate”, they aren’t part of the debate.
Because this what it boils down to, right? Palestinians are not a monolith, even if you, a Palestinian, cast out of the story some (a few?) other Palestinians as irrelevant to recreate a kind of monolith that you can call “a very mature body of literature” (and whoever is outside that is “not part of the debate”, i.e., outside the monolith).
And here’s the thing. You can do that. I can’t. You have a “we” to refer to. I don’t. I only have a “you” (the plural you, vous, εσεις). So, I don’t have the standing to take this step and label Palestinians who don’t share your political vision as “collaborators” and “propagandized” even if yours is the majority opinion. Small example: the Barghouthis are calling for releasing Marwan Barghouthi as a step to revive the two state solution. Am I to start going around like an asshole calling Marwan fucking Barghouthi a propagandized collaborator? You can, without being an asshole. I can’t. Same with the people whose event the other commenter called a joke. You can call them a joke. The other commenter can’t.
So, I am also not going to start going around like a western asshole shitting on people on the ground who risk their safety, going against the genocidal Israeli right on a project of shared grief like this. In the exact same way that I don’t go around blanketly condemning groups that take on armed struggle to exercise the Palestian people’s legal right to armed resistance to occupation under international law.
And for the same reason, I’m going to call the other commenter out, just like I would (and have) call out someone for blanketly denouncing Palestinian armed resistance.
Yet you feel compelled as an outsider to speak with such authority and conviction.
I don’t claim authority. I do claim the conviction of my own ideas and a measure of consistency in their application.
