Women in Black
Lynne Okun
Silkscreen, 1989
Beverly Hills, CA
3173
On this Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for the Jewish community, we traditionally reflect on the wrongdoings of the past year. And the past year has been excruciating and deadly on many fronts, and shows no signs of getting better, safer, or more peaceful. For CSPG’s Poster of the Week, we are focusing on the issue that is especially painful for the Jewish community and is tearing many families and communities apart. We want to offer some hope, some way of stopping the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the escalating war in the Middle East.
CSPG’s Poster of the Week is about Women in Black, an international network of women committed to peace with justice. It began in 1988, with a few women at a busy Jerusalem intersection standing in opposition to the violence of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Held at lunch hour every Friday, it soon grew to almost 40 weekly vigils of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian women. Dressed all in black, they held up hand shaped signs saying, "STOP THE OCCUPATION!"
The women, young and old, some with their children, received a lot of verbal abuse from passers-by on foot and in vehicles, both in sexualized terms (‘whores’) and for their politics (‘traitors’). Their policy was not to shout back but to maintain silence and dignity. Women in Black are now throughout Israel, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States. In London, every Saturday since October 14, 2023, Women in Black have been holding a vigil in calling for a ceasefire. In Tel Aviv, on June 8, 2024, there was a Peace Partnership March, with Israeli and Palestinian women.
One year ago this week, Hamas militants attacked Israeli military bases, kibbutzim, and a music festival. Hundreds were killed and 253 hostages were taken into Gaza. Additional Israelis were killed in the fighting as the Israeli military fought the Hamas attackers. The estimated death toll for October 7 is 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Since then, the Israeli military has waged an ongoing assault on Gaza, killing over 41,500, mostly women and children, and expanding the war into Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.
Since October 7, 2023, universities throughout the US have been prohibiting students and faculty from expressing views critical of the ongoing genocide, occupation, forced relocations, and limitations on humanitarian aid. They are prohibited—and threatened with expulsion or being fired—for saying things that many Israelis are saying. Criticism of Israel’s policies is increasingly—but erroneously—being equated with antisemitism.
As Israeli dissidents don’t receive the same attention and airtime as Israeli government officials, we are including extensive excerpts from DemocracyNow.org. Amy Goodman, journalist and investigative reporter, recently interviewed Israeli and Palestinian peace activists (October 7, 2024), and Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist, author, and columnist for Haaretz (October 4, 2024). Links to the full interviews are below, we recommend that you watch them.
GIDEON LEVY: “This thought that Israel can solve everything by force and that war is always the first answer for everything must change, because, otherwise, we will really find ourselves one day totally lonely in the world. Even the United States, which supports Israel still blindly and automatically — and I must emphasize on your show that the United States is a full partner for everything that Israel is doing in the last year, including the massacre in Gaza — even the United States will wake up one day. And then what?
“And then, you know there will be a moment that a regional war might become a factor, might become a reality. And then what, when Iran might come in? And with all those risks seem what? Unimportant? Unreal? And if Iran comes into the picture, what’s next? We will bomb Iran?
“This whole mindset of bombing and bombing for one year now, and only bombing, and refusing any kind of diplomacy — remember, there were deals to release the hostages. Israel said no. Ceasefire, Israel said no. Lebanon ceasefire, Israel says no. This will not guarantee the security of Israel, not to speak about the price the other side is paying. But even the security of Israel will not get better. We are now in a less good situation than one year ago. I can tell you that in Tel Aviv, we are more scared than we were one year ago.
“The U.S. is saying one thing and acting exactly to the opposite direction. Can you believe that a major superpower is telling Israel to stop the war and in the same time it is supplying it with weapons and bombs and ammunition? . . .
“So, this hypocrisy must come to its end. The United States is supporting the war, is supporting Israel. The bombs that were falling on the bunker of Nasrallah were American bombs. The bombs that fall on Gaza are American bombs. The children who were killed, 17,000 of them, in Gaza were killed by American ammunition. And America, the United States, cannot say that it is against killing children, because it is a partner."
Maoz Inon, Israeli peace activist, lost both of his parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, in the October 7th Hamas attack. His parents lived on a kibbutz, a farming collective just north of the Gaza border. They were 78 and 76 years old. He has spent much of the past year working side by side with Palestinian activists, advocating for a ceasefire, and an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Aziz Abu Sarah, Palestinian peace activist, lost his older brother after he was imprisoned by Israel when he was a young man. Abu Sarah reached out to Maoz Inon right after Inon’s parents were killed — ultimately traveling together, meeting with the Pope, and addressing congressmembers who refused to be in the joint session when Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress.
Maoz and Aziz are featured in the new documentary The Path Forward, that weaves together the voices of Palestinians and Israelis in their efforts for peace and reconciliation.
MOAZ INON: “Those who believe in war, they are naive, because they have been failing again and again and again.
“True security will only be achieved when the other side also enjoys security and stability. Morally, we cannot justify the killing of innocent people as part of the fight against terrorism. The harm to hundreds of innocent civilians is neither reasonable nor acceptable. These efforts should bring an end to the war in Gaza, return the hostages, end the occupation, and achieve a political-security agreement alongside reconciliation.
“We must move from thoughts, from prayers, from crossing our fingers for the Israelis and Palestinians to we must move to action, because everything I’ve seen coming happened, and even worse. And if we won’t start act now, we’re going to miss. We’re going to miss this year, which was the most bloodiest year in hundred years of conflict. But it can go — can be so much worse, and the numbers of casualties, the amount of suffering, of destruction can reach to a place we cannot imagine, like we could not imagine October 7th the day before.
“So, we must move to action, and we must do it now. And we must stop debating who’s right and who’s wrong, if I’m pro-Palestinian or pro-Israelis. If you want the conflict to end, you must support the peacemakers. You must force an immediate ceasefire. You must force a dialogue to release the hostages and Palestinian prisoners. And we must — the world must force a dialogue between Israel to Palestine to Lebanon and the region.
“We are at the footsteps not just of a regional war, of a global war, I’m afraid. But we can choose to hope … beyond this precipice to a better future. And we need to start dialogue, dialogue with our enemies, like the European nations, the founders of the EU, proved, between Italy and France, Germany and Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, only few years after the Second World War, where they were fighting among each other and killing 10 millions of each other. They realized that the only way to prevent the next war is making the enemies of the past into the partners of the future. This is humanity’s legacy. But I don’t know. Those who believe in war, they are naive, because they have been failing again and again and again. So we now must force our leaders, our politicians to give us concrete answers, what is what they are
envisioning for the future and how they’re going to take us there. It cannot be by bombs.
“It means the world to me [to work with Aziz Abu Sarah]. It means the world to me, because we are modeling, Aziz and I, but so many other Israelis and Palestinians, so many others — we are modeling a radical reconciliation. We are modeling a radical better future. And we see how it’s being spread.
“I’m not an American citizenship, so I cannot criticize your leaders. And it’s not about blue or red, Republican or Democrat. If the American people and Biden administration are such a good friend of Israel, how can they explain that Israel today is as weak as ever. We are as weak as ever. All our borders are breached. The society from the inside is falling apart. And the hostages are left to die in Gaza. So, if your actions are not effective, it’s not a reason to give up, and it’s definitely not a reason to keep doing the same thing. It’s a reason to change your action. And this what you must — President Biden, you must change your action. You must force a ceasefire.
“There are two people between the river to the sea. There will be no security and safety to one without the other. There will be no shared — no recognition and acknowledgment to one if not to the other. If there will be no equality and dignity to both people, there will be to none. So, that’s a must. This is something that, again — so, we are waiting. Maybe at the last three months of his [Biden’s] term, he will push for a U.N. council resolution to force the end of the occupation. So,
now is the time to do it.”
AMY GOODMAN: How many of the hostage families feel the way you do?
MAOZ INON: “More and more. And again, I can give you numbers of hostages’ families. I can give you numbers of bereaved families from October 7 that keep approaching us and telling me, ‘Maoz, we are standing with you. Maoz, you are right. You were right from the first time.’ Now the discourse is changing to understand and acknowledge that the only way to bring the hostages back is to stop the war. That’s the only way. And we will stop the war, and then they will be able — Hamas will be able to give them oxygen and water and food, and then to start a negotiation. But military pressure is killing them.”
AMY GOODMAN: What gives you the most hope as you stand after addressing this largest avenue in Tel Aviv on this first anniversary of the death of your parents?
MAOZ INON: “I think that we start shifting the discourse. And this is what’s needed, to shift the discourse from war to peace. And when I was — I was saying the same words, Amy, few days after my parents died, that we must stop the war, we must bring the hostages — that should be the first priority — and we must start a peace process. This is what I was saying from day one. But at the beginning, no one was willing to listen to me, in Israel and overseas. And now I have no time in my day and night to answer, to answer and get all those requests to speak, to be interviewed from Israelis and internationally. So we are shifting the discourse.
“And we are working very hard. We are working very hard. But I won so many brothers and sisters in the last year. That started with losing my parents. But I won so many brothers and sisters, Palestinian, Israelis, from the international community. And my brothers and sisters, they are not giving me hope; we are making hope together.
“I am not crying for my parents — I am crying for those who will lose their lives in this war . . . We are crying for the world to act now, before it will be too late . . . Those who believe that bombs will bring safety, they are naive. They are naive.”
AZIZ ABU SARAH: “People who believe that war is the only way, what scares them the most is people who are modeling a different future…Our route to freedom is a joint route.
“He (Moaz Inon) doesn’t want revenge, and he doesn’t want what’s happened to him to cause more people to suffer. And I said it took me eight years to come to that point. When my brother Tayseer died, he was 19 years old, and I was 10 years old. He was arrested on suspicion of throwing rocks. He was beaten up in prison by an Israeli soldier, which caused internal injuries. He died as a result of those injuries. It’s still painful. A few days after Maoz’s parents were killed, just I can’t imagine stepping out of your pain to think of somebody else’s pain, to think of what other people are going through. It takes so much of a humanity of someone to do that. So I wrote him that, and he sent me a message right away, saying, ‘Let’s talk.’
“Well, I want to just say something before I tell you what gives me hope, is Vivian was a dear friend who I’ve known for many, many years and was a mentor for me. And that image of Israelis and Palestinians marching together has not changed. That’s what gives me hope. [note: he is referring to Vivian Silver, Canadian Israeli peace activist, who would die on her kibbutz on October 7. Her son was also interviewed on DemocracyNow.org, demanding a ceasefire from the beginning, as Maoz and Aziz have.]
“I was in Jerusalem just three weeks ago, and we went marching in Al-Auja, in a Palestinian village in the West Bank that the water was diverted away from the village to a settlement. And Israelis arrived from Tel Aviv, Israelis arrived from Jerusalem, Israelis arrived from all over, joining Palestinians, and we marched together. And I saw something powerful, even though we were only a few hundred, the fear of those who opposed us — you know, the army and the police — even though we were extremely peaceful, compliant, we didn’t want to confront anyone, we marched with messages that says we refuse to be enemy, water rights for everyone, this kind of very universal language. And they were terrified. And in some ways, that gave me a little hope, because I can see how people who believe that war is the only way, what scares them the most is people like us. What scares them the most is people who are modeling
a different future, that we’re able to say, ‘Look, we don’t hate each other. We can work together.’ And so, it was no surprise that the police came and gave traffic tickets to everyone, pretty much, who arrived. It was no surprise that the military was trying to provoke us, because they were terrified that we are showing what the possibility is.
“So I do have hope, and my hope is not in leaders or politicians who claim to be leaders. My hope is about the people who are like us, my colleagues, Israelis and Palestinians, who are refusing to fall into ‘If I’m Palestinian, I must hate all Israelis or Jews,’ or ‘If I’m Israeli, I must hate all Palestinians,’ and realizing that we are on the same side, those of us who believe in equality and justice and peace. And those who don’t yet, our mission is to convince those who don’t yet to join us and realize that bombing somebody else, killing a civilian, killing a human being is never going to be the way to bring you safety and security and that our route to freedom is a joint route.”
Take Action: Support Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Jeff
Merkley (D-OR), who have filed multiple joint resolutions of disapproval (JRDs) that
together, would BLOCK $20 billion worth of weapons currently bound for the Israeli
government.
Stop the Occupation - Stop the War - Stop the Genocide
References:
Comments