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PEACE LINESMESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org |  |
Newsletter 136
March 31, 2025
Letter to all the Nobel laureates who supported the 2021 « Peace Dividend Campaign » and all who think of an alternative to war
« Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. »
« If we assume that life is worth living and that a human being has a right to survival, then we must find an alternative to war. » MLK
In the beginning of hope, there was Oslo. September 1993. Signed by Israel (Rabin) and the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (Arafat).
It only took three weeks after Oslo, for Hamas (founded in 1987) to send a booby-trapped car to Beit El (settlement close to Ramallah). 29 wounded. And then, another one, two days later, to Afula (Israeli town North of Jenin). 8 killed. A week later, a bomb in a bus in Hadera, on the coast. 5 killed.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronologie_du_terrorisme_palestinien
Take it back to the 1988 Hamas Covenant. Articles 13 & 15.
« It is necessary to instil the spirit of jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters. » https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp
The revised 2017 Hamas Charter only reinforced the stand, defining Palestine as a strictly « Arab Islamic land ». Articles 3, 4, 21, 25.
Oslo ? « the Movement rejects these agreements and all that flows. »
« Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right (…) At the heart of these lies armed resistance. » « Hamas rejects any attempt to undermine the resistance and its arms. »
https://archive.org/stream/hamas-charter-2017/Hamas%20Charter%20%282017%29_djvu.txt
In the beginning of illusions lost was October 7, 2023. The kidnapping of over two hundred civilians from Israel.
Dozens of whom died in captivity.
On Route 232 to Re’im
These were some three thousand kids, most in their twenties, who had gathered for a three-day open-air psychedelic music festival dedicated to « friends, love and infinite freedom ». Five kilometers from Gaza. Two companies of a Hamas battalion proceeded to slaughter all the attendees they could see, raping included. They left 364 bodies on the killing field, and dragged 40 to captivity in Gaza – among them Noa Argamani, Shani Louk, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Shem Tov.
Making it the worst pogrom, massacre of civilians ever.
Darkly reminiscent of the BaTaClan concert hall massacre, in Paris, in November 2015, when 90 concert-goers out of 1,500 were slaughtered, and scores wounded by gunfire, in much the same manner – this time at the instigation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (a.k.a. Daesh).
Eerie stillness of the killing field.
« But climb on your tears & be silent,
Like a rose on its ladder of thorns. »
Return to Re’im always, and to Liraz’s Memorial, to question destinies.
On the Road to Nir Oz
Today, there are only three survivors of the October 7 onslaught who remain in Nir Oz, a rural community of around 400 people until October 6. 386 were present in the morning of October 7. They were overwhelmed by some 500 assailants, who murdered 41 residents, and kidnapped 76 of them into Gaza – to this day, five are still detained there, along with the bodies of nine captives.
There was no army to defend them – troops only came around 3pm, after the last attacker had left.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/massive-failure-first-troops-reached-kibbutz-nir-oz-40-minutes-after-last-terrorists-left/ Nir Oz, the forsaken community
In Nir Oz now, there are a few volunteers who have come to empty the devastated homes (213 out of 220), fix what can be fixed, and help harvest potatoes and avocadoes. Most refugees have been installed in high-rise towers some sixty kilometers North via Route 232. Among them, Ran Pauker, whose motto is « You have to look forward, not backward ». Ran, an agronomist, who did transform the desert into a blooming oasis, from 4 trees when he came to 750 drought-resistant plants, and 65 species of eucalyptus, from South America, Baja California, and South Africa.
Ran, the Man who Planted Trees, with his friends, among them two Gaza Palestinians, whom he still talks to when they can, as their relation has not changed.
« If I can have good Arab friends, why can’t the others ? » asks Ran.
You should listen to Ran speaking of his Gaza friends, Nasser, who came to Nir Oz when he was seventeen, in the seventies, with a truck and his kids, to plant pine trees together, and his younger brother, Salah, who « knows Israeli politics better than I », and visited in his home a lot. You should see the simple, natural warmth in his eyes, in his voice then.
« My hope », says Ran, « is to return to Gaza as friends, to drink coffee together ».
A fat chance ? « Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza », which started years ago through an alliance between the Arava Institute (in Kibbutz Ketura, North of Eilat) and a nonprofit Palestinian n.g.o., Damour for Community Development (run by two ministers in the former cabinet of PM Salam Fayyad), hasn’t stopped operating.
12,000 displaced persons are currently living in their « sustainable refugee camps », with kitchens, educational areas, electricity generators and water-treatment systems.
On Channel 13, this year, Ran was interviewed, with the other Nir Oz dean, Nathan Bahat, and a third survivor, asked about their thoughts. Immediately, the three of them insisted : « to make peace ». As the interviewer was gaping, they added « Only peace will bring us security » – and if peace is not on the horizon for the time being, it must be a long, lasting ceasefire.
« How to make peace ? » « I don’t think we can make peace now, but start with a cease-fire, and then we’ll continue, as they did in Europe after 1945 ; the new children of the cease-fire will be able to make peace, the next generation, twenty years from now ».
Not that it’s been easy for him. Out of four families of neighbours, two have been devastated, from kidnappings and killings, his own brother was killed. « Not easy, » broods Ran, « but I can’t change what happened.»
Looking back, towards what the root causes of so much bloodshed could be, he says, « in 1967, after the Six Day War and our conquest of Palestinian territories, we went to Gaza with my wife, I told her : « We have lost the war… because our noses went up… We forgot to give others ownership, self-rule…». What of Hamas and the like ? « A small worm in an apple makes the apple rot… We have our terrorists, they have theirs, more than us… ».
We then think of numbers. How many hard-core terrorists could they have ? Twenty thousand ? That would be roughly 01% of the people. Reminding me of this acquaintance in Maale Adumim, the settlement East of Jerusalem, who maintained that 97% of the settlers in the West Bank were non-violent. But then, 3% of 600,000 people represent close to 20,000 riotous, armed men.
Looking forward, he says that what is needed is a Middle East five-star Marshall, « the Organizer of Victory » for Churchill, « a genius, who helped them [Germans] recover… The problem is : How to help them [Palestinians] recover ? Not to let them down… ». « Do we have a Marshall ? No. »
The Nir Oz Gardener’s warning, as of mid-March 2025 : « Killing makes our living harder. No military will succeed to give us security. The military cannot give us security. IF WE DO NOT STOP THIS WAR IT IS A CATASTROPHE. »
In Nir Oz the last visit was to the friends we could not bring back and embrace.
Haim Peri, Yoram Metzger, Oded Lifshitz.
At the gate, three black flags were posted.
There is a plan to rebuild Nir Oz.
Without chopping a single tree.
Gadi Mozes, one of the released hostages, has vowed « to buckle down, roll up sleeves, stand up, work shoulder to shoulder ». « Let’s get to work ! »
The Educational Bookshop, in Jerusalem
In any tentacular or labyrinthic city, New York, Algiers, Paris, Berlin, Cairo, Copenhagen, London, Thessaloniki, you need havens, nooks and crannies, to retreat and restore your mind from the frantic pulse of the madding crowds. It could be a public garden, a museum cafeteria, an ancient chapel or church, an old mosque, a library or a bookshop, a particular restaurant… Jerusalem is no exception.
Whether it is the Garden Tomb, Al Aqsa, the Anan Ben David synagogue, the Greek Catholic Patriarchate, the Chapel of the Condemnation, or its four main bookshops, Ludwig Mayer’s behind the Great Post Office, Steimatzky on Jaffa Road, Sharbain’s and the Educational Bookshop on Salah al-Din Street. Out of these four latter sanctuaries, one only is dedicated to the well-being of its users, with its coffee and cookies counter, and its mezzanine wifi space.
How come then that it is precisely the one that was raided by the police, on February 11, 2025 ?
You can read about it in The Times of Israel, Books are Dangerous ? The Raid on the Educational Bookshop. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/books-are-dangerous-the-raid-on-the-educational-bookshop/
Like the author, Hillel Schenker, I have long been a regular there, and could not possibly see what «disturbance of public order », let alone « incitement to terror » was to be found on the shelves.
Against all odds, the Educational Bookshop was raided again, on March 11, and here are some of the books that were seized or thrown to the ground, and into garbage bags. Rumi’s Love Poems, Khalil Gibran’s Jesus, Amos Oz’s Dear Zealots, the occasional Chomsky and Pappe. I then thought, had I bought it off the shelf, would it have saved the owners from trouble ? I had already read it. Who’s so afraid of Chomsky and Pappe anyway ?
My own choice, on my last visit : Amos Oz, for sure ; The 51 Day War, by Max Blumenthal, about the 2014 Gaza war – that stopped me from resuming my educational work there ; Rumi’s Love Poems (Jalal al-Din Rumi ; a highly seditious Persian poet of the thirteenth century, who left us such thoughts as « Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion ») ; and that famously dangerous British bard of the sixteenth century, William Shakespeare – his King Richard III, King Henry V. Later on to be followed by Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher born in the sixth century before our era – Tao Te Ching. All of them in the beautiful, gilt-edged, handy, Macmillan Collector’s Library, since the Muna family offers us this fine revolving showcase of masterpieces.
What is happening in Jerusalem, these days, in 2025 ? « East Jerusalem », admittedly. What do they know about it in « West Jerusalem » ?
Have they protested, demonstrated against it ? What if it had been Ludwig Mayer’s targeted (the first bookshop in Palestine, founded in 1909) ?
I met Ahmad Muna on March 6
He told me « the file » was still open. Little did we think they would be raided again five days later. What had it been like the first time ? Not nice, said he. They spent forty-eight hours in jail, the first half in solitary confinement, no food, no windows, electricty off and on repeatedly. Just a concrete bunk, with the thinnest of foam mattresses, and no pillow of course.
« Have they touched a book in the last forty years ? » laughed Ahmad.
In the media, or even their site, they often portray their bookshop as specializing on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. True as it is, they are not the only ones in town, but there are few like them who also propose such standards as Cervantes, Daniel Defoe, Dickens, Dostoievsky, James Joyce, Victor Hugo, Conan Doyle, Gaston Leroux, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Colette, Dylan Thomas…
Dangerous ?
I confess. Books are expensive after a while, and need space to accommodate. Plus, they’re heavy ! And, there’s more to it :
« For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life…
… as good almost kill a man as kill a good book…
he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself…
Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. (…)
We should be wary therefore what persecutions we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom… »
John Milton (Areopagitica, 1649) …/… Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, 1953) …/… Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004)
« You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. » Criminalize the trade of books, with the implicit end of destroying a culture, of starving, paralyzing people’s minds…
As of this writing, March 27, 2025, it is not just people’s minds that are being starved.
« Gaza : No aid has reached war-torn enclave for more than three weeks »
UN News,March 26, 2025. Did we know there was such a thing as United Nations News, beyond CNN, CBS, BBC, and the such – all the mainstream media channels that frame and format the stories ?
Read it again : No aid has reached war-torn enclave for more than three weeks – since early March.
No aid : no food trucks, no supplies of medicine, nothing. No water, no electricity, we’re told.
Coincidentally, the last message we received from friends displaced who had returned « home » in Gaza City, a university teacher’s family, was on February 25. Nothing since.
It read, « Yes please send us some support to continue living… The University is completeley destroyed. Very few birds or cats, lots of rats. »
© UNICEF/Eyad El Baba Devastation in Gaza after “new waves” of intense Israeli bombardment reported by the UN aid coordination office, OCHA. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1161531
Did we lose our train of thoughts there ?
The UNICEF, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.
Have we forgotten the Children’s Emergency Fund ? The Children’s Emergency ?
« According to UNICEF, more than 14,500 children have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war: that’s more than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars worldwide. 25,000 children have been injured: Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. 17,000 children have been separated from their parents as a result of the conflict, or find themselves unaccompanied following the death of their parents. Over a million children have been displaced. These are terrible figures. The war has destroyed almost all essential infrastructure. »
declared the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations, to the Security Council, in New York, on January 23, 2025
https://onu.delegfrance.org/the-conflict-in-gaza-has-been-particularly-deadly-for-palestinian-children
How could we forget fifteen thousand children killed, by now ? Why should we obliterate them ?
Because they are « Palestinians », « Arabs » ? Made invisible before they were massacred ?
At last, a message from Gaza City, on March 29, after one month’s blackout :
« Not enough food due to the last escalation. We are eating very much less, and same food, rice or red lentils. No net in my area. There is shelling now. I am using an esim on the roof. Will go down soon. »
We struggle and we strive for sense and sanity. For understanding. The news we get, we scrap them from all over the place, from Jerusalem, Beirut, from Saudi Al Arabiya, from Egypt, Jordan, England…
https://messageriesdelapaix.org/index.php/2025/02/14/media-march-2025/
Given that the Western media will only inform you from a Western angle, considering various Western interests first. Little wonder that a U.S. President could think of finally razing all of the Gaza Strip, buy the rubble, and build a « Riviera of the Middle East » instead. The two million two hundred thousand people of Gaza do not exist in this light, do they.
Back to the days of totalitarian propagandists, as exposed by Aldous Huxley in his 1946 Foreword to Brave New World. « Great is the truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view is silence about truth. » « By simply not mentioning certain subjects (…) they have influenced opinion much more effectively… » And back to the days of 1947-1948, when the Goldstein Manifesto was conceived by Orwell, as the cornerstone of his famous 1984 fireship – The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Still the same day, when war has become so continuous that it has, somehow, ceased to exist – at least in the conscience of its inured spectators. One media nail will drive out the other.
Hence our increasing resort to deeper, different levels of inquiry.
Opening other channels, primarily rooted into this forlorn artefact, humanity.
Cut speechifying short. Take the letter published in The Times of Israel and Ynet News on March 21 :
‘Israel choosing endless war’ : 40 freed hostages demand end to fighting, return to talks **
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sjhfxbjnyl
44 former hostages demand Gaza ceasefire to free remaining captives
Looking for that « direct beeline into our soul », as evoked by Nobel Roald Hoffmann in his essay Why Buy That Theory ?
Today, there are sixteen Nobel laureates worldwide, echoing the freed hostages’s demand :
from the U.S., from Iran, Yemen and England, from India, from France, Norway and the Netherlands, and from New York (which is not quite the U.S.)… This is not quite enough yet, is it.
A 147-word clarion call, The Jerusalem – Nablus Call to end the war
For the sake of humankind
Are we not the same blood groups ?
End all fighting now.
Let them all go home,
All the forsaken survivors,
The hostages, the displaced.
Let the fighters lay down their arms,
let them all recover from the deadly din of war.
The only final victory is to break the endless cycle of retaliations.
We are all in counted time, on a limited stretch of land. Let us make the best of it, both in separation and togetherness.
In support of the European border commitment at the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, we call all parties to remedy the condition of severely suffering civilians.
For a true cessation of hostilities, we call for a permanent end to all attack tunnels,
and empowering the lasting reconstruction of Gaza within a peaceful, demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.
In Bertrand Russell’s and Einstein’s words : « We appeal as human beings to human beings : Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. » (The Russell-Einstein Manifesto)
n.b. This is not « just about Gaza » – there is as much danger, growing, for humanity, from Jenin to Nablus. This is not about Us vs Them. This is, whether you really like it or not, about Us All.
This Newsletter started with two pictures, one of the Liraz Asulin Memorial, on Route 232, from Sderot to Be’eri and the Re’im killing field. Liraz, 37, was murdered by gunmen from Gaza, along with 363 other revelers, who were desperately fleeing the Nova music festival, on the morning of October 7, 2023.
The other one, of Mahmoud Sanaqrah’s mother, who lost her third son in the morning of February 27, 2025, in Balata, Nablus. He was 25, still in bed, defenceless, when an army platoon broke into his family’s home, and shot him dead, before taking his body away with them.
There is no symmetry between these two tragedies. They still are the two complementary faces of what has to be stopped.
** Extracts from the freed hostages’ letter – as can be found in The Times of Israel (March 21, 2025) :
“This letter was written in blood and tears. It was drafted by our friends and families whose loved ones were killed and murdered in captivity and who are crying out: ‘Stop the fighting. Return to the negotiating table and fully complete an agreement that will return all of the hostages, even at the cost of ending the war,” the letter implored. “The military pressure is endangering them and there is nothing more urgent than returning all hostages.”
“We all support [stopping the fighting],” the letter continued. “Those who returned from captivity and endured the horrors in their flesh, the families of the hostages still in Gaza and paralyzed with terror, those who received their loved ones back into an embrace, and those who were forced to bury their loved ones, knowing they could have been saved.”
The letter also said that the fighting kills living hostages and vanishes dead ones. “This isn’t a slogan, it’s reality. Forty-one hostages paid with their lives, we, their family members, paid. They could have returned for an embrace and rehabilitation, but they won’t return.”
The letter criticized the government for “choosing an endless war over saving and returning the hostages, and by doing that sacrificing them. This is a criminal policy — you do not have a mandate to sacrifice 59 hostages.”
As victims of the October 7 Hamas onslaught, the signees wrote that they are raising “a red flag and warn: a return to fighting will cost more hostages their lives’’
The letter ended with a call “to stop the fighting and return immediately to the negotiating table to reach a complete agreement for their return: all the hostages in exchange for the end of the war and finding a solution for the day after. If you don’t do that, the blood of the next hostage and the fate of all of the hostages will be on your hands.”
Signatories include former hostages Gadi Mozes, Keith Siegel, Ofer Calderon, Eliya Cohen, Liri Elbag, Sagi Dekel-Chen, Agam Berger, Karina Ariev, Ohad Ben Ami, Raz Ben Ami, Arbel Yehud, Ada Sagi, Shani Goren, Nili Margalit, Gabriela Leimberg, Yaffa Adar, Ditza Heiman, Ofir Engel, Amit Soussana, Keren Munder, Ruti Munder, Liam Or, Adina Moshe, Hannah Perry, Raaya Rotem, Liat Beinin Atzili, Noga Weiss, Shiri Weiss, Margalit Mozes, Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, Sharon Alony Cunio, Danielle Aloni, Ilana Gritzewsky, Karina Engelbert, Noralin Babadilla, Meirav Tal, Jimmy Pacheco, Amit Shani, Agam Goldstein, Sahar Calderon, Erez Calderon, Shoshan Haran, Fernando Marman, Ofelia Roitman, Clara Marman and Raz Ben Ami.
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