Listen to Israeli survivors: they don't want revange
"In a eulogy for her brother Hayim, an anti-occupation activist who was murdered in Kibbutz Holit, Noi Katsman called on her country “not to use our deaths and our pain to cause the death and pain of other people or other families. I demand that we stop the circle of pain, and understand that the only way [forward] is freedom and equal rights. Peace, brotherhood, and security for all human beings.”
"Ziv Stahl, executive director of the human rights organization Yesh Din, and a survivor of the hellfire in Kfar Aza, also came out strongly against Israel’s assault on Gaza in an article in Haaretz. “I have no need for revenge, nothing will return those who are gone,” she wrote. “Indiscriminate bombing in Gaza and the killing of civilians uninvolved with these horrible crimes are no solution.”
"Yotam Kipnis, whose father was murdered in the Hamas attack, said in his eulogy: “Do not write my father’s name on a [military] shell. He wouldn’t have wanted that. Don’t say, ‘God will avenge his blood.’ Say, ‘May his memory be for a blessing.’”
"Michal Halev, the mother of Laor Abramov, who was murdered by Hamas, cried out in a video posted to Facebook: “I am begging the world: stop all the wars, stop killing people, stop killing babies. War is not the answer. War is not how you fix things. This country, Israel, is going through horror … And I know the mothers in Gaza are going through horror … In my name, I want no vengeance.”
"Maoz Inon, whose parents were murdered on Oct. 7, wrote in Al Jazeera: “My parents were people of peace … Revenge is not going to bring my parents back to life. It is not going to bring back other Israelis and Palestinians killed either. It is going to do the opposite … We must break the cycle.”
"When Yonatan Ziegen, the son of Vivian Silver, was asked by a journalist what his mother — who is thought to have been kidnapped — would think about what Israel is doing in Gaza now, he replied: “She would be mortified. Because you can’t cure dead babies with more dead babies. We need peace. That’s what she was working for all her life … Pain is pain.”
"In a video that has since gone viral, a 19-year-old survivor of the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri offered a soul-stirring monologue about the government’s abandonment of the residents of the south, in which she pleaded for: “Returning the hostages. Peace. Decency and fairness … Maybe some of you will find it hard to hear these words. It’s hard for me to speak. But with what I went through in Be’eri, you owe it to me.”
This is part of https://972mag.com's excellent, compassionate, and critical coverage of the war and the occupation. If you can, support 972mag's work, we need it.
@raph The framing is odd in there...
Qualitatively:
First and foremost, I find "retaliation" motive is inflated to obscure the elephant in the region.
Hamas and co spell it out, in their charters, that they want to wipe out each and every of 10M Israelis (and then continue to go conquer the rest of the world, but let's not digress). The Jews had their bloody lesson in the past century, that when somebody tells they want to kill you - you'd better believe them and act accordingly.
Retribution or not, they can't afford not having this war now. If somebody wants to save Gazans they should go and tell Gaza militants to surrender.
Quantitatively:
Um.. so, a few people came out to tell they don't want revenge. What about the remaining thousands who lost their friends and relatives?
