PEACE LINES MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org peacelines@gmail.com

Yocheved Lifshitz

 

Newsletter n° 124

January 2024

 

THIRTY YEARS ON

 

Thirty years I have been involved in continuous action against warfare, and for constructive coexistence. Since the summer of 1993, from Sarajevo and Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, to the civil war in Algeria, and then Israel & Palestine. On my birthday, October 22, 2000, I was in Ramallah, a rare foreigner there during the explosion of the Second Intifada. Ten days after two waylaid Israeli reservists in a civilian vehicle, Yossef Avrahami, a toys salesman, and Vadim Nurzhitz, a truckdriver, were taken to a police station, which was stormed by a raging mob, who lynched them to death.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching

That very night, October 22, 2000, I was taken away by two young men in jeans and leather jackets to a no-man’s land outside the heart of the city, a desolate place with unfinished construction, and I had no choice but to follow my captors into an empty building with no doors, no windows. They suspected I could be a zionist spy. I was fortunate enough to pass the test, and they sent a young boy to buy pita and hummus for a shared meal. I spent the night with them on foam mattresses on the floor in this bare flat without windows, and in the morning they drove me back to town. I realized, looking at mounts of dirt and rubble on the way out, that my destiny would have ended there had I not passed the audition.

That’s the way it goes, at those latitudes. Until October 7, it was rather all quiet though. Take a look at the Lifshitzs, before 2023, in front of their little cottage in Nir Oz, South-East of Gaza. Yocheved is the woman you see, in the upper corner, after her release from the Gaza tunnels. Oded, her husband, 84, is still detained down there.

 

Or take Masoud’s family, in Gaza, in their little garden, where he loves to grow aromatic plants and light a little fire, with his children around. Now his family has been displaced, along with one million others they say, to the South-West of Gaza, to a barren space without drinking water from the taps, without shelter, without any proper food. Where infants have passed away, due to the lack of food. It’s cold, windy and rainy now there.

 

All these people were happy before October 7. Happy and quiet.

• Why do you feel you have to tell us of these people in particular ?

Because I happen to know Masoud. In Amos Oz’s words, he is « an agreeable man, reflective, soft-spoken, a receptive listener ». An English teacher at university level, like my father, he is a good teacher, clear-headed, open-minded, and patient. I went to his classes at the Islamic University in Gaza, right in front of the UNRWA headquarters – his students like him, all strive to progress under his guidance. Nineteenth-century and twentieth-century English literature, from Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells to Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, have few secrets for him. I admit I have a foible for English teachers. I see them as ambassadors of the universal mind – isn’t English the easiest language in the world ? Masoud also invited me in their Barcelona Park modern flat, and I felt comfortable there, quite at ease.

• What of the Lifshitz couple then ?

I have only been to Sderot, where I have friends that I care for, and to Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, with Vivian Silver and her group of Women Wage Peace, by the Fence. As you will remember, Vivian, born in 1949, was burnt alive in her home in kibbutz Be’eri, five kilometers South of Nahal Oz, fifteen North of Nir Oz, where the Lifshitz lived. Note that Oded Lifshitz, born in 1940, defended Bedouins ; he was a journalist witnessing what happened in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. With his wife Yocheved, they have four children. One of their grandsons, Daniel Lifshitz, a former goalkeeper, also is a peace activist, helping Palestinians from Gaza in need of medical transportation, driving them from the Erez Terminal to hospitals in Israel, where they could get the best proper care.

 

 

• Why focus more on Yocheved Lifshitz then, Oded’s wife, since she’s been released ?

 

Maybe because on the picture of her in hospital she reminds me so much of my mother, when she was hospitalized. And also because she came across Sinwar when she was detained in the Gaza tunnels, and she had the nerve to face him and speak her mind to him, without any fear.

« How can’t you be ashamed of yourself ? » she cried out. « To do such things to people who, for years, have upheld peace with you ? »

She says he remained silent, did not flinch. For he is not the flinching type.

2013 was the time I met him in Gaza, some twenty months after he had been relased in the Shalit deal, after spending twenty-two continuous years in Israeli jails. I met him not in a tunnel, but in a ministry, surrounded by people, ordinary people. He was fifty-one then. Intense and tense, a man of few words, with an overloaded agenda. I had the feeling of hugging a cold-hearted man, who would never smile, and who had no time to lose with me. He knew who I was and what I was about – our Experimental Bilingual Programme, approved by his government in 2006, to teach teenagers the codes of non-violent resistance and constructive coexistence, and that did not seem to match his priorities. I think I could tell the Lifshitz family why he was not ashamed of ordering the October 7 onslaught.

• Does that mean you consider terrorists as partners in dialogue ?

David Grossman, probably the most profoundly human analyst in Israel, wrote in January 2006, that « To think (or to write) about the enemy does not necessarily mean to justify him. » adding, for anyone « to write about the enemy means, primarily, to think about the enemy (…), even if he is absolutely convinced of his own justness and the enemy’s malice and cruelty. » and, to me, this is so essential. Besides, all those years, I had a work permit delivered by the Israeli COGAT – the Coordinator Of Government Activities in the Territories, and I would enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez Terminal, not sneaking through the Egyptian backdoor. Grossman defines an « Archimedean point », with his « ‘principle of Otherness’, whose deep-seated meaning, if you wish, is the rightful existence, the stories, pains, and hopes, of the Other.» « If we can only reach this Archimedean point, we can begin to dismantle the barriers and detonators that prevent us from solving the conflict. »

A pretty tall order, where we’re at, in  January 2024, but wars come and go, appear and disappear, like hurricanes or viruses. There have been six wars, or « operations » (2008/2009 – 2012 – 2014 – 2018 – 2021 – May 2023) between Israel and what we call « Hamas », since they seized power from their secular rivals in 2007, and this seventh war, started by Hamas on October 7, 2023, will pass too. Our concern is to properly anticipate the way this war may evolve and can end.

• How do you define your stand then ? What is your interest in this conflict ? Do you have family in Israel, or the Palestinian Territories ?

My first entry visa into Israel was February 1984. I don’t have any family there, on either side. In 1984 I had a visa to Egypt, and I crossed the Gaza Strip from North to South on my way to Rafah. I then stayed with a family of Palestinian teachers who have since emigrated to Canada. I had my first violent taste of how the people reacted to the Jund, the army, and the « Yehudi » – they would not say « Israelis », but « Jews, Yehudi » only. I later returned to Gaza, during the First Intifada (1987-1993), including to Jabalia, the place where this uprising had started. In many ways, I feel deeply at home in this land. More than I could say. My experience of the civil war in Algeria (1990-1998), my native land, has made me wary and weary beyond limits of any speech legitimizing bloodshed and bloodbaths. 150,000 lives lost in Algeria, how many wasted, amputated : Muslims against Muslims. In the name of what ?

 

I just do not believe in the ancient creed of endless wars, unavoidable conflicts. My point-of-view is that of a stretcher bearer, a nurse, a surgeon : we have far enough loads of pain to carry in ordinary times, with obesity, diabetes, cancers, and what not, to afford any extra burden.

• What else about your encounter with Yahya Sinwar ?

As he’d been released after spending most of his adult life in jail, I expected to feel a sense of recovered freedom in him, but it was not the case. Escorted as he was, maybe by his younger brother, he was not a free man. But then, who in upper power circles is a free man ? And how can you be a « free man » when you live in an enclave, with the exit gates locked, blocked and controlled by both neighbours, the Israelis and the Egyptians – as none of them wants to have anything to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a part. The Egyptians actually ban it, repress it, don’t they. Remember the Rabaa massacre in Egypt. August 14, 2013. A « zero-tolerance policy of dissent », according to Amnesty International. We always hear about Israel as the gatekeeper of Gazans in their « open-air prison » (in British PM Cameron’s words in 2010), but it is only fair to recall that this is a duo of gatekeepers, not just a solo.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/14/turning-point-what-happened-during-egypts-rabaa-massacre-10-years-ago

Looking for that Archimedean point, you come upon a recent inquiry into who exactly Yahya Sinwar is, documented by one of his interrogators when he was a prisoner in Israel, who insists he is « a very intelligent, charismatic person, with unusual leadership skills. »

https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/hyw00ksu00a    YNet News, January 6, 2024

You may wish to check into another inquest, the first interview ever given by Sinwar, well worth reading, by Francesca Borri, an Italian journalist working for La Repubblica :

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5364286,00.html   October 5, 2018

• What is your main concern, as of now, January 2024 ?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/world/middleeast/houthis-yemen-us-strikes-gaza.html

The lack of food for displaced Gazans, on top of the number of destroyed houses and buildings. Coupled with the growing insecurity for Jews, from Europe to the United States, unrelated as they are to the current war between Israelis and Gaza Palestinians, targeted for what they are, sending us back into the darker days of racial hatred.

This is not « just » a local problem, restricted to one limited portion of the globe. We see « Houthi » militias in Yemen, Iran-backed, attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea, in the name of solidarity with Gaza. Forcing some two thousand ships around Africa instead of using the Suez Canal. Back to Huntington, and his Clash of Civilizations? Michael Kobi, the man who interrogated both Ahmed Yassin – the spiritual founder of Hamas in Gaza – and Yahya Sinwar, in jail, concludes : « Hamas’s war against us is a religious war and they want to annihilate us because we’re Jews. Period. »

 

• Could he, Kobi, be prejudiced ?

It’s not just Kobi, but Dr Becker as well, who has his own angle, as a clinical criminologist and psychotherapist. “On the one hand, I don’t want to accuse an entire society, but on the other, beyond doubt, a society has developed in Gaza that is unrestrained and that sanctifies death and violence. » Adding, about Sinwar, « He’s a man with an extremist political and religious agenda that lead him do things that shock us, but that he regards as advancing his life-long cause. »

Concerning Michael Kobi, the man who dealt with both Yassin and Sinwar in Israeli jails, he states that they do go by the Hamas Covenant, and that the latter is widely taught in Gaza schools.

« Sinwar ensures that the covenant is taught in all schools in Gaza. »

As for Ahmed Yassin, during interrogations, « he wasn’t afraid to say that they would wipe us off the face of the earth – if not now, then in a decade’s time, and if not in a decade, then in a century. Ultimately, they would set up an Islamic state in the Middle East and after that, they’d make the whole world Islamic. »

• Revisiting Francesca Borri’s interview in May 2018, doesn’t it strike you, the sort of visionary warning that was emitted then by Sinwar: «I don't wish prison on anybody. But really anybody. Not even those who today—across that barbed wire—knock us down like bowling pins and laugh, and don't realize that they might end up in 25 years at the Hague. » It’s been a little over 5 years, not 25, and here we are, with South Africa making a case for genocide at the International Court of Justice in Haag.

Sadly, Mandela passed away ten years ago, and Archbishop Tutu departed in 2021. Their legacy seems to belong to the past century. The current South African stand has one merit though : it pushes one to find precedents as far as their present accusation goes.
History has recorded three genocides in the twentieth century :

The way Turks exterminated 77% of the Armenian population in 1915 – by their Grand Vizier’s own estimates. « The definitive solution to the Armenian Question » , in his own words, meant the massacre of one and a half million people, the deportation of the others, or their forced islamization.

The better known Holocaust led to the murder of six million Jews in German-occupied Europe, from 1941 to 1945 (cf map). Two thirds of European Jews were exterminated by the nazi system. One and a half million Jews were murdered in just a hundred days, from July to October 1942. «a rate approximately 83% higher than the commonly suggested figure for the Rwandan genocide ». (Wikipedia)

 

Taking us to Rwanda, in 1994, where two thirds of the Tutsis were massacred by the Hutus and their militias – close to eight hundred thousand slaughtered in a hundred days, from April to mid-July. In the same time, « rape was the rule, systematic, and was used as a weapon », according to the UN special Rapporteur Degni-Segui, in his 1996 report on Rwanda.

Sickening as these forays into the history of our common humankind are, they remind us that we skate on very thin ice, as far as « civilization » goes, from Turkey to Europe and Africa, not even going further into the bloodbath of three million Vietnamese killed by the US, the million and a half victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the seventies, the genocide of the Native Americans by the Europeans in the 19th century, with its toll of some five million victims,  and closer to us, in 2014, the enslavement and massacres of the Yazidi and Christians, by Daesh, the Islamic State, in Syria.

• What do you make of the Hague ruling then, on January 26 ?

The first impression is that what we call « the international community » has double standards. When the Russians practised carpet bombing, « indiscriminate bombing », in Aleppo, Syria, for instance, in 2015, and killed around 20,000 people to « eradicate terrorism » and the Islamic State, a few NGOs worldwide protested, but nobody seemed to care. When the Americans and their allies, in the same period, recaptured Mosul, Iraq’s second city, from the blood-stained hands of Daesh, the Islamic State insurgents, they left 40,000 killed behind them, fast forgotten.

The second impression is that we are facing a new kind of awareness about the horrors of war on a massive scale. As if they did not watch the effects of war from the Netherlands, but from the moon. The Hague justices did not choose to order Israel to stop its operation though, as they could have.

Their ruling was based on the heavy destruction of houses and buildings in Gaza, and the blood-curdling losses of the Palestinian population in a hundred days, but, again, it stopped short of condemning Israel. It actually gave it licence to pursue its operation, with the warning it was being watched closely.

• How do you analyze the Resolution that was passed by the Security Council of the United Nations, prior to the Hague ruling, on December 22, 2023 ?

Interestingly, it was passed with 13 votes, and two abstentions only (Russia and the US, the old world gendarmes competing for supremacy). None voted against. It is noteworthy to stress that the Security Council then was not composed only of its main core of five, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but also of small Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, tiny Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.  A fairly balanced equation, if any.

 

The document itself, Resolution 2720,  is composed of thirteen specific points, the majority of them concerned with the « protection of civilians and civil objects » and « humanitarian assistance » (1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11) ; three of them being about the nomination of a « Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator » and the safety of UN personnel (4, 5, 6, 13) ; one, to « demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages » (7) ; and one reiterating an « unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution » (12).

The Senior Coordinator has been appointed since, a Dutch citizen, Mrs Sigrid Kaag.

We wish her good luck.

Whether the Coordinator will have « the necessary personnel and equipment in Gaza » (6) remains to be seen. Truly hoping that this goodwill mission will not know the fate of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, August 2003, when a terror attack resulted in the death of 22 people, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, thus terminating any prospects for the role of the U.N. in Iraq.

• How come you don’t ask for an immediate cease-fire, the way peace organizations have done, since you are one of them ?

« It is an easy thing » to bleat with the sheep and howl with the wolves – even the heads of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad demand a cease-fire. Like an abstract proposition, out of the blue, going nowhere fast. Then « the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison & the soldier in the field », in William Blake’s words. As if one were some long gone Urizen, some celestial incarnation of reason and law, so high above, pretending to measure the terrestrial mess with perfect tools… or a would-be guru chanting for rain in the drought. « Stop war ! », « Time to stop the killing ! ». Etc. Even the Security Council of the United Nations and the Hague justices refrained from such vain incantations.

• What is your position then, as far as the cessation of war goes ?

It’s the conditions of possibility  of a « durable cessation of hostilities » – in U.N. parlance.

• Meaning ?

We need to check the exact chronology, from 2005 till now, from the evacuation of the Israeli settlers in Gaza till October 7, 2023, since the crux is Gaza. Double-check the Deaths preceding the (present) war again (above). 6,407 Palestinians killed, from January 1, 2008, to the summer of 2023 – along with 308 Israelis. Compute it with the number of rocket and mortar attacks at Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

Isn’t it high time for the Gaza strategists to revise their vision of the future, conceiving what a win-win scenario could be, instead of the same stuttering lose-lose ?

• Are you taking sides then, blaming one against the other ?

I’d rather address the core of the issue, if there is one to be found.

Amos Oz, one of the most precise observers of the past century, has always brilliantly maintained that the problem is of Right vs Right, a conflict Between Right and Right (To cure a fanatic, Princeton University Press, 2006). Unfortunately, he passed by the end of 2018.

Wouldn’t he say now that it has tragically switched to Wrong vs Wrong ?

Remembering Yocheved Lifshitz’s outcry, facing Yahya Sinwar, in the dark, damp tunnels : How can’t you be ashamed of yourself ? But also remembering the endless hours in the morning of October 7, when the unarmed inhabitants of the communities around Gaza were left unprotected, helpless before their aggressors.

• What do you make of the endless feeling ?

There was this TIME magazine cover, back in 1988, conveying the feeling. Israel, since its birth, has had to confront six main wars, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, plus the two Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005), with the whole series of Gaza wars and operations : 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2021, 2023-2024 …/…

As for the Gaza children born around 2000, all they have known is bombings, rockets and missiles, drones and Apache helicopters.

The whole devastating chorus of Defiance and Crackdown. Begging out loud for a switch in visions, a shift in strategies. The way it happened in Ireland and the Basque homeland.

 

• How can you compare Ireland, the Basque homeland, and Palestine ?

Simply enough. Take this picture. From a video released on October 20, 2011. It shows three leaders of the ETA announcing at a press conference that their group, defined as a terrorist organization by the European Union, « has decided the definitive cessation of its armed activity ».

At the end of the video, they raise their fists, as a last-minute reflex, and conclude :

« It is time to look at the future with hope. It is also time to act with responsibility and courage. »    To act with responsibility and courage.

It took ETA six years from that point on to fully demilitarize. In April 2017 it handed in its last weapons, and in 2018 it went as far as to apologise to its victims, a few days before it formally and finally declared its dissolution.

• Are you daydreaming of the dissolution of Hamas and Islamic Jihad ?

It could be convenient to elaborate a modest version of « I have a dream », bearing in mind that yesterday’s dreamers have become todays’ elected leaders, Martin Luther King having morphed into Barak Obama. In the course of forty years.

Any way you look at it, we’re not talking about a dream here. Terror has no future in modern, solid societies. Regardless of the alibis it covers itself with. The Irish first, in Europe, and then the Basque, have shown the way. Have they reached their stated goals ? Not that we know of. Does that mean they have failed ? Undoubtedly, they have failed to convince people of their righteousness, of the adequacy of the means they resorted to.

In this uncompromising light, the choice for their operatives, as they’re also called, is twofold : either the Irish way, dump arms deliberately, by and by, of their own volition, or the Algerian way, a forceful eradication by military means. In Algeria, the civil war imposed by terror groups lasted ten years, and cost the nation its second profound scar in the span of forty years. In the end, terror as a « political » strategy disappeared. The Algerians, after choosing eradication of terror,  have more or less forgotten their Black Decade (1992-2002).

Call it Gandhi’s victory post mortem. Give it two generations, and you go the American way, get Obama, whether he was your candidate or not – or you go the Algerian way, and you get Bouteflika (with his plan then for a national reconciliation) and a violent end to all terror attacks.

• What of the Islamic context then ?

No Muslim state is willing to fund terror groups in 2024 – with two notable exceptions, Iran and Qatar. Look at it long enough, and find out that, paradoxically, the radical insurgents, from Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, to Palestine, have been working, actually, for the arms industry. Somehow, objectively speaking, Bin Laden and Zawahari, al Baghdadi, have been commercial agents for Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Deif and Sinwar are good for Israel Military Industries (IMI) and Rafael (the National Armaments Development Authority) – and for all the companies involved in building walls and barriers, with their exponential load of sensors and surveillance devices.

• Is this part of a Wrong vs Wrong theory ?

What is dead wrong for people, for human beings, is so profitable for others – others with a vision of personal profit galore plus progress. Take the case of Smart Shooter, a small startup which has developed into a self-sustaining enterprise. Its CEO states clearly, « This is the finest hour of the defense industries », and it « would also be nice to be purchased for a billion dollars ».

2023 ? It’s been « the best year ever in Israel’s history », as far as exports go of weapons systems, with the war in Ukraine and now the war in Gaza. Registering unprecedented peaks in orders from all over the world – the US, the UK, Germany, India, the Netherlands… Reminding us that Israel ranks number nine among the world’s largest arms exporters, with a record of 831 million (Trend Indicator Value). In between Poland (452) and Spain (950). Still far behind the UK (1,504), Germany (1,510), Italy (1,825), and China (2,017). Lagging behind the three giants : Russia (2,820), small France (3,021), and the usual winner, the US, so high above the pack of competitors (14,515).

This is no confidential information – the latest Top Ten (2022) can be found at SIPRI’s (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) and with Wikipedia. The Smart Shooter CEO’s world vision can be read from Ynet News, December 23, 2023, and she does have a point or two about minimizing the risk for soldiers on the field, deterring instead of killing, and « ensuring that innocent civilians remain unharmed ».

https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hkpuon4pp?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=internal

• What is the rationale of the Nobel Call you support, « For the Release of Hostages and a Durable Cessation of Hostilities » ?

We’ve heard of a « suicidal drive » by Deif & the Sinwar brothers, the military quintette in Gaza. Their original plan for October 7 must have been brilliant (to breach through the border in some twenty points, neutralize all cameras and sensors with explosive drones, launch attackers in paragliders over the Wall) – admittedly well conceived and executed, taking the enemy by surprise, but the follow-up was a disaster, for lack of well-disciplined troops, and letting just about any potential criminal rush through the breaches. More than this, the unforgivable part was, from the start, giving the order to kill as many people, civilians included, as they could, and kidnap the rest in numbers, men, women, infants, of all ages.

The rationale of this Nobel Call is in the same spirit as the Nobel Call for Algeria, in 1998.

We are human beings – wherever. I MI SMO LJUDI was the password in Middle Bosnia. I mi smo : We are… Ljudi : Human beings.

We are the members of the same human species – come what may.

Little wonder that we oppose bargaining with hostages’ freedom and lives, the way it is being done between Gaza and wherever the political leaders reside, in Qatar or Turkey. The simple idea of treating human beings as pawns, bargaining chips, is horrendous, is it not.

Hence our demand for an end to all attack and sequestration tunnels in Gaza.

• Don’t you know of the polls in the West Bank showing a surge in popularity for Hamas and its allies ?

Call it a rash instant reaction, mixing denial of the facts and emotional vainglory at the short-lived technological victory. In the past century, they could have got away with it. Not anymore. Anybody with access to irrefutable info has had to realize that the scope of the 10/7 onslaught and its atrocities make its perpetrators and commanders universal outlaws.

Add to it that the military quintette seized power from the political echelon, and did not inform them until the last instant, in the early hours of October 7. Had they limited themselves to a « clean » military op, with only soldiers captured, it would have meant an amazing victory. This will not remain the only case in which a deviant military wing overpowered the political establishment, to be later discarded and eliminated.

Again, when you manage to rise above the damning circumstances, you realize that no Muslim leaders, emirs, authorities, condone October 7 – except in Tehran, to a degree.

• Now, when all’s said and done, isn’t there a growing urge, inside out, to get it over with?

Quite the opposite. You should stop viewing this « old blood feud » the way Kafka portrayed it in 1917, as just a local, alien mess between Schakale und Araber, Jackals and Arabs. It is more of a universal divide between a Spartan democracy (with some Athenian tendencies) and a Persian tyranny (in the Greek sense of the word). If you will, a conflict within us all, between two ways to govern – oneself and others. Take the way the Gazan war chiefs decided to attack their neighbours, burn, loot, seize hostages and bring captive females back as trophees : the way Greeks made war, thirty-two centuries ago – remember the siege of Troy and its ransacking (1184 B.C.). Except that this is the 21st century in the common calendar, and this is not just a war between nations as ways of life.

You have other actors in the shades : the major weapon manufacturers, whose fortune depends on warmongering – the Russians at Almaz (98% of the total Almaz revenue from weapons) ; the British, with BAE Systems (95%) ; the Americans with Lockheed (89%), RTX Corp. (87%) and Northrop (86%) ; and some smaller players, the Italians with Leonardo (72%), the French and the Chinese, with Thales, and China Electronics Technology Group (46%). Arms have to be manufactured on a massive scale, for massive profit, and have to be tested, used, sacrificed, for the following generations of military products.

The (in)famous lie about Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, as spread by the highest authorities, in the US and the UK, was a necessary ploy and alibi to get the whole financial market rolling, back in 2003. The real Weapons of Mass Destruction were around the bend, waiting to be used. With their toll of 300,000 human beings massacred, including 200,000 civilians.

Thence, rather than howling with the usual packs of wolves, or bleating with Panurge’s sheep, maybe we’d better just start thinking things over, from their concrete, non ideological, chains of causes and effects. Thinking outside the boxes of caducous software.

In Martin Luther King’s words, « there is little hope for us until we become tough-minded  enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. »

In our words, in Algeria, (Nobel Call for Algeria, 1998), as in Israel and Gaza today : « Let the will to live prevail, free and fearless ! » No political or religious speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman.

What was true in Algeria in the nineties remains true in Israel and Palestine in 2024. A demilitarized Palestinian state already exists in the West Bank. Let it prevail. The Gaza Strip is part and parcel of Palestine. « There is the way of nonviolent resistance. »     ( MLK ) 

 

 

 

PEACE LINES MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org peacelines@gmail.com

Newsletter n° 122

December 23, 2023

 

To all our friends in the Nobel community, worldwide, One year ago, on December 21, 2021, our main source of inspiration, as far as non-violent resistance goes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, passed away. Always the first on a Nobel Call for peace and common sense, against terror. Let this not deter us or diminish us. In this hour of horror we remember that the smallest lights shine brighter in the deepest darkness. Let this call be one of them.

 

 

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

Because we are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips,

Because we are horrified by the carnages and pogroms of October 7 in the name of « armed resistance »,

We express our ultimate and universal condemnation concerning all acts of bloody savagery allegedly for the sake of a « war of liberation ». No political or religous speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman, the kidnapping of elderly people in their home.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

Gaza civilians also are hostages in this horrendous chaos.

For a durable cessation of hostilities, we support a permanent end to all attack tunnels and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

 

When partisan minds speak of « resisting occupation with all means and methods » as a « sacred right »*, we strongly object that kidnapping elderly civilians in their home is by no means part of a liberation struggle. Neither is the parading of young women seized as trophies.

 

• Article 25 of Hamas Charter (2017)

Why we look forward to a total demilitarization in Gaza : after a 40-year terror campaign that left over 800 killed, half of them civilians, « ETA has decided to declare an end to its historical cycle and its role. ETA has completely dissolved all its structures. » It abandoned its armed campaign in 2011. Their ultimate statement is that, although « this decision does not bring an end to the conflict between the Basque homeland and Spain and France », the full dissolution was enacted in 2018, and included apologizing to its victims and their families.

« Let’s not repeat our mistakes.

  Let’s not let our problems fester.

  Doing so would only give rise to new problems. »

Likewise, 2007 was the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning first launched in September 1997. The IRA then pledged to use « exclusively peaceful means ». « All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms… to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible. » The IRA conclusion was :

« We are conscious that many people suffered in the conflict.

There is a compelling imperative on all sides to build a just and lasting peace. »

There is no other way in Gaza and the whole of Palestine.

 

When Hamas won the 2006 elections, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel declared in Davos that Hamas should be accepted, as long as it renounced its goal of destroying Israel. « Forgiveness will be, » he added, « the next step, but first they must renounce the policy and ideology of destroying a neighbor state. » He concluded with the « hope the international community will prevail and tell Hamas to change ». We may be another year, or ten years, from a just and lasting peace, but there is no alternative to demilitarization, as it happened in Ireland and the Basque homeland, if we don’t want to witness the horrendous cycle of October 7 and the bombings that ensue. There must be a human way out of this abhorent insanity.

 

 

January 16, 2024. The day after Martin Luther King Day. Deafening silence worldwide.

I worked until midnight yesterday, to address a hundred Nobel laureates (101 precisely), 80% in the US. 

The first wave of messages was at 5 pm, before noon on the East Coast. They received the last mails some time around 6 pm their time. There has been no echo yet. Sixteen hours later.

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

Because we are human beings, and human beings are not bargaining chips,

Because we are horrified by the carnages and pogroms of October 7 in the name of « armed resistance »,

We express our ultimate and universal condemnation concerning all acts of bloody savagery allegedly for the sake of a « war of liberation ». No political or religous speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman, the kidnapping of elderly people in their home.

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

Gaza civilians also are hostages in this horrendous chaos.

For a durable cessation of hostilities, we support a permanent end to all attack tunnels and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

Thinking of Dr King’s widow, and the warm-hearted support she sent us, for Bosnia, in 1995. She passed away in 2006.

What would she say now ? Probably that our stand is not emotional enough, the way it was for Bosnia. Anyway, out of the thirteen Peace laureates who launched our first Call, most of them are dead by now (Coretta Scott King, Betty Williams, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Pdts Gorbachev, de Klerk, Arafat, PM Rabin). Mairead Maguire has been unwell lately, keeps silent. The Dalai Lama, in his 89th year, is always harder to reach, more retired. Perez-Esquivel, in his 93rd year. The main lighthouses are all gone. And we are in the thick of battle.

It feels like we haven’t reached the bottom of the pit quite yet. 23,000 Gazans have been killed. 14,000 of them, civilians. The median age in Gaza being 19, it means teenagers, infants, have been massacred by shells and missiles, in the thousands.

When the Russians, in Syria, targeted the Islamic State, in 2014-2015, through “indiscriminate bombing”, “carpet bombing”, according to Amnesty International and others NGOs, the toll was close to 20,000, and it all was fast classified, forgotten.

Likewise, when the Americans crushed Daesh, the Islamic State, in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, the human toll was 40,000 killed, most of them civilians, and nobody seemed to care. The Islamic State had-to-be terminated.

Regardless of “collateral damage”. In Ukraine, ten thousand civilians have been killed since February 2022, but Ukraine has been degraded to a backburner status in the media after a year, and it feels like we’re in between wars always, wondering what the next one will be.

“Why are we here if no one’s listening ?”  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67958260

The best inquiry into the fate of the young, unarmed lookouts who were on duty along the Gaza fence, in Nahal Oz mainly, and who were massacred by the Hamas commandos in the early morning of October 7, has been published by the BBC, echoed by YNet News.

 ‘Why are we here if no one’s listening?’ October 7 warnings went unheard      YNet News, January 15, 2024

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjfpvxxta

 

These are the faces of the observers who were sent to watch over the border, at their screens, killed on October 7.

I took pictures of this young soldier in the vicinity of Nahal Oz. So tense to start with (what would the hierarchy say if his photo was used one way or the other ?), but then he relaxed some when we spoke about the dog who was his only company, in the middle of nowhere. I have seldom seen such solitude and sadness on a young man’s face.

Was he, aged 19, all the protection that was granted to the residents of the Gaza Envelope ? How could he not think of the fate of Sargeant Shalit, who was abducted when he was 19, and kept incommunicado in the Gaza underground for over five years ? Maybe they were digging right now, getting closer, meter after meter. And there was nobody else standing by.

We need to make it clear here : the “weak side”, in this precise context, is not just what most bystanders think it is. Despite its formidable army, despite the American backup, despite the 300 F15s, F16s in their bases, despite the 100 helicopters ready to roam the skies, despite all the missiles stored, despite the costly Iron Dome, and the remarkably inefficient Iron Barrier (some of it underground), the people of Israel, isolated as they are, forsaken as they are on the ground – as could be seen on October 7, are as weak as their Palestinian neighbours, and in some ways weaker.

The Ummah – or Ummat al-Islam – boasts 1.8 billion Muslims.

Jews are only 7,2 million in Israel, and 8,5 million outside.

To the burning point : Where were the Apaches anyway, in the morning of October 7 ? Where were the F15s ?

January 17, 2024. Steering away from ideologies and prejudices.

In this whole context, we are not partisans. Never have been. Neither on one side nor on the other.

In astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s words, we develop our points-of-view, perspectives, “from the moon” – possibly this Archemedean point David Grossman has long been looking for.

As many of us are colour-blind, regarding humanity, we strive to be bias-blind. Looking for the truth, exactitude.

Much of the criticism against Israel revolves around the stereotype of “colonialism”. 

On this particular matter, there is an interesting interview of Professor Ruth Ginio, who specialized in General History. YNet News, January 17, 2024

The connection between Israel and colonialism is a topic of debate

“The West often fails to grasp the complexity of the situation we are dealing with, and these are challenges that it doesn’t even recognize or know how to unravel.”

“Ultimately, no matter what we call it, there is a problem and a situation that cannot persist indefinitely.”

 

 January 20, 2024. Deep inside the tunnel insanity.

This is an attack tunnel, dug from Lebanon into the North of Israel, by Hezbollah engineers and militias.

“On 17 December 2018, United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) acknowledged the existence of four tunnels near the Israel–Lebanon border and confirmed that two of them cross the Blue Line in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which helped end the 2006 Lebanon War.”

“Operation Northern Shield” – 4 such tunnels were discovered between December 2018 and January 2019.

Updating the info to January 2024 :

https://www.timesofisrael.com/expert-hezbollah-has-built-a-vast-tunnel-network-far-more-sophisticated-than-hamass

Tunnel system in south Lebanon runs hundreds of kms, up to the border and even into Israel

Questions from a distant, bias-free observer :

– What kind of country decides to dig attack tunnels into its neighbour’s territory ?

– Is there another country on Earth exposed to such attack tunnels, North and South ?

 

January 21, 2024. “a permanent end to all attack tunnels”

Attack tunnels, detention/sequestration tunnels recently discovered by the Israeli army in Khan Yunis.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-finds-tunnel-in-khan-younis-where-20-hostages-were-held-in-inhumane-conditions

Is it extravagant to demand a permanent end to all such substructures, meaning a demilitarization of the Gaza Strip ?

Would it be outlandish to propose the Costa Rican model, a country of five million people, without an army ?

Learn from Costa Rica, tiny and stuck as it is between Nicaragua and Panama.

Long n°1 at the Happy Planet Index, from 2009 till 2019. https://happyplanetindex.org/hpi/

It abolished its military forces in 1948, as an article in  its Constitution (1949), and has devoted the previous military budget to education, culture, and health care services.

It is happy with a small public force for law enforcement, equipped with small arms.

Contrary to its neighbour Nicaragua, it has known neither war nor civil war since 1948.

 

January, 22, 2024. Have we forgotten the forsaken hostages ?

A message from Masoud in Gaza. It starts with “Yes, we share the same motto, which is pacifism. All wars are wrong”.

He suffers from malnutrition and a viral infection. He said they survive with less than 200 grams of food per day.

As a humanitarian n.g.o. we sent him a third of our reserves, and it has enabled him to buy flour and eggs, for ten.

More than this, I tell him about my soul friend, a true, active pacifist, Vivian Silver, who was burnt alive in her home in Be’eri, on October 7. I can’t let go. I can’t “forget”.

Vivian’s last message on WhatsApp, trapped in her shelter, hearing the attackers in her home, was a pledge : “I promise i’ll keep a big knife in my shelter if I survive”. This was a devoted, constant pacifist’s last will. A promise she could not keep. It took more than a month to identify her charred remains from her DNA.

It fills one with revulsion and disbelief, when you realize “they” had specific orders to kidnap or murder all kinds of civilians in Israel, regardless of their age, gender, condition, attitude. Knowing that most inhabitants of the border kibbutzim were left-wing voters, peaceful people, who tried to build bridges with their neighbours, come what may, despite rockets and mortars constantly aimed at them.

Chaim Peri, 80 years old, Yoram Metzger, 80 too, Amiram Cooper 84, have been kept incommunicado in Gaza tunnels for 108 nights and days now.

How on earth can we endorse a policy of hostage taking, of human beings, fragile as they are, used as bargaining chips ?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-releases-new-propaganda-video-showing-3-elderly-israeli-hostages

No news or echoes of Chaim, Yoram and Amiram, from kibbutz Nir Oz, for over a month now.

After reading Hamas’ 16-page document about October 7, “Our Narrative…”, there is mostly binary propaganda in it, and a number of outright lies and patent denials : [“As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza”; “the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.” ;”The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement.” etc.  Did the men who conceived this document believe in their rethorics ? They probably do, but people in Gaza are starting to distance themselves from the usual power speeches. 

With no sign of war ending, Gazans increasingly disenchanted with Hamas – Khalil Sayegh, Al Monitor, January 20, 2024



https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/01/no-sign-war-ending-gazans-increasingly-disenchanted-hamas#ixzz8PYjNpQBW

Truth has its own voices, from the deepest sources of pain, and it can’t be mistaken easily. 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-782750

Freed hostage recounts torture of women in Gaza’s terror tunnels – Washington Post

From another source, a testimony to resilience and benevolence – Adi’s message to all [Adi Kikozashvili is praying for her brother’s return from the Gaza underground – he was kidnapped at the Re’im rave party on October 7] :

“Please spread unconditional love and reduce the amount of gratuitous hatred,” Kikozashvili implored the crowd. “Pay attention to the friend sitting next to you in class, look people in the eye, see what is good in them, support one another, hug one another.”

 January 23, 2024. “No military operation can be totally under control.” 

“I tell you Jesus Christ himself can’t keep one of these things under control.” Robert McNamara, architect of the Vietnam war, then aged 75. February 11, 1991. Reacting to the American involvement in Iraq, during the second American intervention (ended in December 1991) . An older man’s wisdom :

“It’s not just events moving out of control. (…) because of misinformation and misperceptions, there are misjudgments as to where a nation’s interests lie and what can be accomplished. (…) — you cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation. Events were really out of the control of either party, though both the Russians and we were trying to maintain control [at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962].”

 This is what I would oppose to an Irish former PM, who has declared “It is time to stop the killing”.

Indeed. It was high time to stop the killing in the night of October 6 to October 7, when just a handful of men (five of them) took the blood-curdling decision to start a war – which they knew was bound to trigger a high number of casualties. It was still time then. When the Israeli military leaders were fast asleep, or looking the other way.

After the onslaught of October 7, and its frightful toll of 1,200 civilians slaughtered in a few hours – including 360 festivalgoers – and 240 kidnapped, how on earth could you keep this awful thing under control ?

To the Irish republicans, I would ask how long it took them to come to the conclusion that bombs and guns were not the way to reach the goal they had established ?

Did they not forego their ambition of a reunited Ireland – if that was precisely the reason behind the fighting ?

“No military operation can be totally under control” : “IDF sees highest day of casualties since October 7” – 21 killed.

 

January 26, 2024. What a difference Time makes, in terms of understanding.

Some twenty years after the facts, the “architect of the Vietnam war” was asked what his evaluation was of his strategy.

Q. At the time you left government [1968], the U.S. was in the midst of one of the greatest bombing campaigns in the history of warfare, and today the U.S. has launched one even greater. You thought the bombing would work at the time?

A. No, I didn’t think it would work at the time.

Q. Why undertake it then? 

A. Because we had to try to prove it wouldn’t work, number one, and other people thought it would work.

Q. What other people?

A. A majority of the senior military commanders, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the President.

Q. Were you opposed to it from the beginning?

 A. It wasn’t that I was opposed to it; I didn’t think it would work from the beginning.

 You read it again, and again : it was not that he was, as main architect of the war in the sixties, opposed to massive bombing campaigns, it’s that he didn’t think it would work, from the beginning. [Do we need to recall that three million Vietnamese died from these campaigns, from napalm, cluster bombs and all, out of a population of 47 million then. Three million human beings were killed, because those who decided upon their holocaust “had to try to prove it wouldn’t work”, “and other people thought it would work…”]  What kind of perverted rationale was that, to start with ?

Take it back to 1961, 1962, the US vs Vietnam. A generalized view of such conflicts :

“…the consequences of military action are unpredictable. I learned this as Secretary time after time after time: we did certain things we thought would lead to certain results, and the results were different.”

The problem was clearly the extent of misjudgment and misinformation, the distance between the USA and Vietnam being over 8,000 miles.

Likewise, concerning the islamists’ onslaught of October 7, the catch was misinformation and misjudgment, that enabled the border breaches and massacres, kidnappings, to happen, on such a traumatizing scale. The distance, though, here is in hundreds of yards, a few kilometers barely between the sides.

Making it so clear that, in 2023-2024,  the Gaza problem is the attack tunnels.

If any measure of peace is to be attained, for Israelis as well as for Gazans, these tunnels have to be dismantled. Permanently dismantled.

Had the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon) been efficient – the way the UNPROFOR was in Bosnia – we might have dreamt of some kind of a UN Interim Force along the Gaza borders. Sadly, history never has had that in store.

Leading us to the ruling the International Court of Justice (one of the six organs of the United Nations) in Haag is scheduled to emit today. Sadly again, what is the relevance of any such ruling, illustrating a judiciary power devoid of any executive power ?

You think of a country, any country, with teams of judges in courts, but no police forces to enforce the laws : a caricature.
Even the most peaceful, innocent, country of all, Costa Rica, has law enforcement forces.

 Ami Ayalon. Born in 1945. Former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, and once commander-in-chief of the Navy. When he was 24 he took part in an assault on a fortified Egyptian island, in 1969. Wounded four times, he kept fighting until his mission was accomplished and the island was under control.

His philosophy today : “For lack of political objectives, war becomes an end in itself, instead of being the means to reach a goal. When war becomes its own end, it morphs into endless war.”

Always the question of ends and means. Just always.

You don’t have to be Gandhi to realize that the achievement of your end mostly depends upon the means used.

2 pm ICJ does not demand end to fighting; orders Israel to take all measures to prevent genocide

A courageous and rational ruling, if anything : you just don’t order a series of typhoons to stop, like apprentice wizards would join in Rain Chants, against a monsoon, or a flood. Any other statement would have ridiculed the court.

“No rain, no rain !” – maybe that seemed to work for a little while in Woodstock, 1969, but the days of Woodstock are far gone.

“No war, no war !” We are dealing with quite another manmade set of appalling catastrophes.

Facing concrete chains of causes and effects, starting on October 7 at dawn.

Anyone arguing about “context”: forget the old, out-of-date software of the fifties in the past century, pointing to “colonialism” (19th century) and the such, switch to what we find from Tehran to Kabul, from Beyruth to Raqqa, Mosul… – Paris in 2015, Nice in July 2016, Brussels in March 2016, for that matter.

Open the pages of the Sinai Insurgency (2011-2023), led by local bedouin tribesmen and a dozen jihadi groups (including Al Qaeda in Sinai Peninsula), opposing some twelve thousand guerillas to 40 Egyptian battalions. With a toll of 10,000 killed (among them the 224 passengers of a Russian civilian jet targeted by the “Islamic State’s Sinai Province” in October 2015). In April 2017, ISIS called for attacks on all Egyptian Christians, and organized the Palm Sunday bombings, in Tanta and Alexandria – seat of the Coptic papacy.

In “the end”, 2023, Egyptian President Al-Sisi could claim the “end of terrorism”, having succeeded in eliminating most of them.

What happened to the survivors ? They went to Gaza of course. Gaza, where they had established rooted connections for a dozen years : transfers of weapons, ammunition, money, and fighters. Pretty much the way the Basque gunmen and armed militants of ETA had organized themselves between Spain and France.

 

January 27, 2024. Was Haag just a pantomime ? 

“We need someone from outside to enlighten us about our mistakes”  Ami Ayalon

In Haag, the January 26 ruling was adopted by 15 justices out of 17, representing

the USA, Russia, China, Japan, India, Brazil, France, Germany, Uganda, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia... in the name of the United Nations. Humankind, that is.

You can’t just dismiss them all as “out of touch” or “irrelevant”.

Israeli Justice Aharon barak is one of the seventeen.

Barak voted in favor of two measures included in the decision: requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip,” and ordering “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

 We obviously stand by, and praise these two measures.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/justice-barak-icj-ruling-based-on-scant-evidence-ugandan-judge-legal-case-a-desperate-bid

The Court could have ordered an immediate and unilateral ceasefire, meaning that it believed a genocide was actually taking place. It could have issued an order for Israel to reduce or stop its offensive operations.

The fact that it chose not to do so confirms us in our analysis and stand, as exposed in the Nobel Call for the Release of Hostages and for a Durable Cessation of Hostilities.

 

January 28, 2024. Be the Change you Wish to See in the World. (Gandhi)

 At midnight yesterday, 494 persons had visited our virtual home, shared in almost 600 pages.

At seven a.m. today, they are 280. 303 at 8 a.m.  Welcome, friends, searchers, seekers ! Most welcome ! Indeed.

At midnight, we counted 842.

n.b.: the Gandhi quote does not mean we would kneel down and offer our throats to would-be cutthroats.

But what could Gandhi have said on October 7 ?

On January 30, 1948, he was murdered by a young Hindu fanatic, who was sentenced to death on November 8, 1949, and hanged a week later. India had been declared independent by mid-August 1947. By the same token, it was partitioned along religious lines, and Pakistan was created, accepted as a state by the United Nations on September 30, 1947. Following the partition, there remained around 330 million people in India, 30 million Muslims had emigrated to “West” Pakistan, another 30 million to “East” Pakistan (Bangla Desh). It is estimated that one million people died from partition violence. Gandhi’s cruellest failure.

January 29, 2024. Justice Barak’s stand, in Haag. Aharon Barak, born 1n 1936 in Kaunas, Lithuania.

“Genocide is more than just a word to me, this is the most serious accusation possible“

“Only 5% of Lithuanian Jews survived. 

“In the most difficult moments in the ghetto, we preserved our humanity. The Nazis succeeded in murdering many of our people, but they failed to take away our humanity.” 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-783929

 

January 30, 2024. Looking for the Bibas family.

The Bibas family lived in Nir Oz, a quiet life, unconcerned with the world’s turmoils, after Shiri Bibas’s parents had emigrated from Argentina. Margit, 60, and Yosi, 67, were murdered in cold blood in their Nir Oz home on October 7.

Their son-in-law Yarden was also assassinated. Their daughter and grandsons then were kidnapped into Gaza.

180 inhabitants out of the 400 who lived in Nir Oz were either slaughtered or kidnapped.

We are tragically aware of the fate of thousands of families in Gaza who have suffered the worst hell through fire and steel. Human losses do not cancel each other.

Kfir Bibas was 9 months old when he was kidnapped with his mom and elder brother, aged 4. We don’t know anything about them.

What do you call people who breach through borders to kidnap babies, infants, and helpless old people ?

We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages detained in Gaza. Prisoners of war can be exchanged. Abducted civilians are not prisoners of war.

NOBEL CALL FOR THE RELEASE OF HOSTAGES AND FOR A DURABLE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

January 31, 2024. Why are we not on the platform of the NGOs begging for an immediate cease-fire?

You think twice, and you realize just everybody wants the same, i.e. an end to chaos and devastation. Even the terrorists and their leaders, who started this awful, Goddamned war. Even the heads of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza plead for it, demand it. It is obvious that the thousands of Israeli reservists who are wading in Gaza’s soaked sands, and venturing into its deadly underground, had rather go back home, and take care of their normal jobs, their families.

What is really relevant is, still, the conditions of possibility of what we strive for.

Our stand is clear on the matter, and has been formulated in our Newsletter 125 :

“The first condition of possibility for peace is the release of all the hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2024 – as human beings are no bargaining chips. The other condition is the permanent end to all attack and sequestration tunnels in Gaza. The same way the Irish and Basque terrorists finally dumped their arms – in 1994 for the IRA, 2011 for the ETA -, or the way the Algerian terrorists were defeated in 1998-1999, the Palestinian terrorists must disarm. The essential struggle for freedom and justice can only unfold, and prevail, through non-violent means.”

 https://twitter.com/i/status/1731750802799145416   :   a 40-second video about the means used on October 7.

 

You walk around Nir Oz – these pictures were taken five months after the attack – and you’re stunned.	This is not what the (Israeli) media showed us (only small scraps of reality). Why did they downplay it ?
In Nir Oz time stopped on October 7, 2024, at 7:30	8 hours of murder & mayhem. No army to defend.

Nir Hasson, Haaretz, February 13, 2025

Jacob Magid, The Times of Israel, February 12, 2025