There are no victors in war, nor will there ever be’: The bereft reach out for peace

Live on a stage somewhere outside Tel Aviv and screened in 200 venues around the world, Michal Halev’s voice is run through with anguish as she tells of the loss of her only son, Laor Abramov, a music lover and budding DJ, killed in a bomb shelter at Re’im Junction on October 7.

‘‘For me, time has stopped,’’ she says. ‘‘I have remained there with him and don’t want to leave.’’

But Michal is not there to endorse an eye for an eye. ‘‘When I do occasionally succeed in raising my head from my personal grief and from the infinite chasm that used to be my heart, I find one purpose for which to live, which is to seek out what I can do to help our wounded humanity heal, so there will be no more mothers who are crushed by the killing, by loss, by violence … There are no victors in war, nor will there ever be. We have already lost.’’

Appearing on the same platform, but speaking via a video link because he is not allowed to travel, is Ahmed Alhellou, a Gazan living in Jericho, who says 60 of his family were either dead or missing in Gaza. Though angry, he too wants only to break the cycle. ‘‘We must stand strong against terrorism, against violence, against the harming of innocents and the bloodshed on both sides,’’ he says. ‘‘We must say no to war, no to destruction, no to extremism and fanaticism, no to terror, yes to coexistence, to us living in this blessed beautiful land in peace and security, in dignity and freedom.’’

Others are remembered and mourned: Abd Al-Rahman, who was killed walking down a street in Gaza to buy nappies and milk for his twoyear-old twins; Canadian-born Vivian Silver, a longtime peace activist in Israel who before the war helped transport ill Gazans to Israeli hospitals, and whose remains were found about a month after October 7 at Kibbutz Be’eri.

The common stage for the retelling of their stories is the 19th annual joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony, held in Israel and screened here in pin-drop silence, save a few sniffles, in a theatrette at Glen Eira Town Hall last Monday evening. Organisers say up to 300,000 people have participated in the live event online in previous years, and more than 1 million streamed last year’s staging in subsequent months.

The ceremony consists of storytelling 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 for it to end. In the eight months since October 7, their work has taken on greater poignancy.

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 Israeli right-wingers and led to threats against speakers from both sides.

‘‘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, 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 openhearted,’’ 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 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 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 … These people show us an alternative, a road map to posttraumatic 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. ‘‘Tonight we saw and heard a small but growing group of people who are prepared to fight for peace,’’ said Ric Benjamin, chair of the New Israel Fund. ‘‘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… May it be extinguished on my watch so that I don’t have to pass it on to my children.’’