Putting together the peaces

The ceremony consists of story-telling and singing in Hebrew and Arabic. It is jointly hosted by Combatants for Peace and the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families forum, the two foremost of maybe a dozen grassroots organisations made up of people who have lost loved ones on both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict and toil together almost sight unseen for it to end. In the eight months since October 7, their work has taken on greater poignancy than ever.

The bereavement ceremony is not universally well received. It falls on the same night as Israel’s Memorial Day, remembering fallen soldiers and terror victims, and in the same week as Israel’s Independence Day and the Palestinians’ Nakba Day, remembering all that has befallen them since the dispossession of 1948.

The ceremony has previously attracted virulent protests from right-wingers in Israel and led to threats against speakers from both sides. Last year’s event drew 15,000 people in Tel Aviv, but amid this year’s heightened tensions, it was conducted as an online event with a small live audience. Jewish and Arab Israelis appeared on stage, but because of isolating travel restrictions, the voices of the Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza were heard via video or proxies.

“For many Palestinians, who live their entire life under military occupation, identifying with the grief and loss of Israelis can be dangerous, especially against the background of the war in Gaza,” says co-host Guy Elhanan. “This ceremony also evokes strong feelings of anger among Israelis. Many speakers face threats and insults.”

The Melbourne showing was facilitated by the New Israel Fund, which has been supporting Jewish and Arab-led social justice and human rights causes in Israel for 40 years. For security reasons, the venue was not widely publicised.

In the audience in Tel Aviv was Esther Takac, a Melbourne-based trauma psychologist, author and filmmaker, who on regular work trips to Israel before the pandemic was struck by the common humanity in a hospital. When the children of ultra-orthodox and secular Jews and a Palestinian lay ill side-by-side, an everyday happening, it was not race or religion that determined who rushed to get the sick bucket when it was needed by another.

Takac had been to previous bereavement ceremonies. “I was so moved by the courage of these people whose hearts had been broken and yet were so open-hearted,” she said.

Synthesising her experiences and drawing on her own funds, Takac has made a film about Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered unendurable losses, but have chosen not to seek vengeance, but to campaign jointly for peace.

Two are Israeli Rami Elhanan and Palestinian Bassam Aramin, who each lost daughters in the violence. While in an Israel jail, Aramin studied Hitler and the Holocaust, aiming to exact revenge when he was released. But Watching Schindler’s List in jail moved him to non-violent resistance and eventually to co-found the Combatants for Peace with Elhanan’s son Elik.

Since, Aramin and Elhanan have gained a degree of fame as they have travelled the world to preach their joint message that unless there is one day peace, there can be only mutual destruction.

The other principals are two women, Palestinian Bushra Awad, whose son was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, and Jewish Israeli Meytal Ofer, whose father was hacked to death by Hamas. They are now friends and peace activists together.

“I set out to make a film from the heart, about transforming pain into compassion,” Takac says. “It humanises the other so that it is hard to ignore their pain as fellow human beings. (But) I know the film will be controversial and provocative for some.”

The film is called The Narrow Bridge. An abridged version was aired on Compass on the ABC in March. Takac is updating it to incorporate October 7 and its aftermath.

“The trauma right now in Israel and Gaza is immense,” she says. “I’ve seen how terrible pain changes you, but sometimes after pain you may find strengths you never had before. We’ve all heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. These people show us an alternative, a road map to post-traumatic growth.”

Peace and justice have appeared to be almost at hand before in the Middle East and proved illusory, most memorably at the time of the Oslo accords in 1993. Now as the deadliest war yet is waged, peace seems more remote than ever. For those at the Melbourne ceremony, that was more reason to fight, not less.

“Everyone seems to be fighting for one side or the other,” said Ric Benjamin, chair of the New Israel Fund. “Tonight we saw and heard a small but growing group of people who are prepared to fight for peace. Has a popular movement ever started any other way?”

On the Tel Aviv dais, Yonatan Zeigan, son of the murdered activist Vivian Silver, dwells on how she did not see her ideals realised in her lifetime, and nor might he in his, but it won’t be for a lack of trying. “Against my will, the torch has been passed on to me,” he says. “I bear it humbly but also with determination and commitment. May it be extinguished on my watch so that I don’t have to pass it on to my children.”