The Israelis and Palestinians Speaking of Reconciliation Amid Rising Calls for Revenge (Dina Kraft, February 24, 2025)
Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English.
On Friday morning I woke up along with the rest of the country to the gruesome news that it was not Shiri Bibas’ body that had just arrived to Israel from Gaza along with the bodies of her two red-headed young sons and their peace activist neighbor, Oded Lifshitz, but that of an unidentified woman from Gaza. It was yet another nauseating plot twist in the ongoing trauma of the October 7 attack and its aftermath, one in which the Bibas’ family’s kidnapping and plight had become the most high-profile symbol.
On my calendar that morning was to go hear peace activists Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah. Inon is an Israeli whose parents were burned to death the morning of October 7 on their moshav Netiv Asara, and Abu Sarah, a Palestinian whose brother was killed from injuries sustained after being held in Israeli prison, and they were headlining at an event entitled “It’s Time”. It’s tagline: “It’s time to stop the war, to bring the hostages home, and to make peace.”
I momentarily hesitated, feeling overwhelmed by the heaviness and fresh horror of the moment. I had gone to sleep with the news of not just image of the Bibas family members and Lifshitz returning in coffins swirling in my mind, but the late-breaking story that several empty busses – it turned out to be five in total – had exploded at a bus depot at a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. It was a botched mass terror attempt. For Israelis it was an instant flashback to the Second Intifada era of suicide bombings.
I felt a familiar feeling creep up -- this sense that every time Israelis and Palestinians step an inch closer to some kind of respite from the storm of this war – it is again snatched away. The current uncertainty is whether or not the ceasefire deal that despite its fragility has being holding and halting the bloodshed, and ending the agony for some hostages and their loved ones as well as that of Palestinian detainees held after a mass sweep of arrests following post-October 7 in Gaza who, were also being released. (Among the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being released there have also been those convicted of killing or planning attacks against Israeli civilians).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing “revenge” Friday for the false return of Shiri Bibas’ body (her actual remains were returned later in the day), and stalling the handover of the next group of Palestinian prisoners, and an Israeli public seething over the family’s fate as well as the spectacle of the most recent Hamas ceremony and the near-miss of the bus attacks the Israeli public is boiling with rage.
Social media pages posts and tweets brim with calls to “Never forgive, never forget” (the same slogan Israeli prison authority officials printed in Hebrew on the sweatshirts they made Palestinians prisoners wear last week as they were releasesed), Kahanist-style language has been mainstreamed including rousing enthusiasm for “Trumpsfer” (slang for Trump’s “suggestion” to empty Gaza of Gazans) alongside calls for Shiri Bibas’ and boys’ “blood to be avenged.” (Notably the Bibas family themselves rejected calls for revenge, speaking out instead for the ceasefire to hold so that the remaining 63 hostages can be returned, over 20 of whom are presumed to be alive).
Against this backdrop, the words of Inon and Abu Sarah made the case for peace and argued they represent a larger piece of the Israeli-Palestinian public than polls or social media anger suggest. They dismissed those who might call them naive, calling war the solution that despite its ongoing deployment since the history of Israel’s creation has, although it’s played a key role in protecting Israelis, has ultimately yet to prove itself as anything but a harbinger of more doom.
Echoing their Ted Talk from last spring that became one of the most watched of 2024, they described how they are working to help forge a joint Israeli-Palestinian coalition fixed on reconciliation and peace, not more war. “Hope is action,” said Inon. “We have to work together so that another future can be possible – one based on clear principles including reconciliation and security for everyone.”
Abu Sarah, like Inon, works in tourism, leading the dual narrative travel company company, Mejdi. He says it’s not by chance that both he and Inon come from that world – it’s “a place of dreams, of getting out of your comfort zone, of seeking something different.”
They called on those gathered to join them in The People’s Peace Summit, a two-day event scheduled for May in Jerusalem.
The words and vision were uplifting, but it was the music performed by a Jewish-Palestinian music ensemble that was perhaps the most potent balm on the hearts of those listening, hungry for an alternative to the drumbeat of war.
The pianist thundered through minor chord improvisations invoking intense longings before breaking into the melody of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”.
Three days later I was on Kibbutz Be’eri, reporting a story on efforts to rebuild the kibbutz, a ground zero of October 7. The remains of many of the homes that were torched during Hamas’ massacre in which 96 people were killed and 26 taken hostage, have been knocked down, leaving muddy plots behind, awaiting what might come next.
Rebuilding efforts are underway, some businesses have reopened including its well-known printing factory a beloved bakery, Lalush, and a dairy shop. About 100 residents, most of them older members, have moved back although the hope is that families with children will return in the next two years. Some are already picking out the tiles and doors for their new homes being built in a new neighborhood of the kibbutz.
The refrain I heard repeatedly is that everyone is aching to return home to the sense of community, to the pastoral views, but what they say, will determine everything, is if people feel safe -- if there is a feeling of security, a pathway to lasting peace with the Palestinians strong enough to break the memories of the trauma.
In 2018, the last time I had been to Beeri, that time for a story on Israeli peace activists reaching out to people in Gaza, I interviewed a resident named Tami Suchman, one of the most vocal advocates on the kibbutz for peace, along with her neighbor Vivian Silver. Both women were murdered October 7.
That day, when we met in a clothing shop she helped run that no longer exists – it was burned down by Hamas, Suchman told me words that still resonate today: “I don’t see anyone working on the diplomatic front … Even if there is war it will not solve anything. Everyone knows that without negotiated deals there are no solutions.”