KILV Blog

​Yesterday was May 6. Yom HaShoah here in Israel. Perhaps it is fitting that my day should have been so full of stories. Stories are how we make meaning against the inevitability of time and tide’s cruel passings. It dwells in the same place as memory. And, both kept me wakeful in the short night.

I had so much swimming through my head as waves crashed outside my window.
Yesterday afternoon we began the formal part of our mission. We learned from Maoz Inon, and Israeli man in his forties who created a community investment model in the Palestinian town of Nazareth. He and his wife travelled after their time in the IDF and met indigenous people from around the world.

But, by the time he was thirty he had never met an Arab. The oddness of this omission turned into a vision for what he went on to build. Nazareth had been a ghost town, and he worked with Palestinian partners to revive its sense of place through boutique hostels and guest houses. He had a notion that he could bring people together through tourism.

Now, in the wake of his parents’ Oct. 7 murder by Hamas, he turned his parents’ lives’ work and teachings about

• having dreams,

• clarifying your values,

• building a coalition,

• building a roadmap, and

• executing your vision

 
toward not just his business and community investment. For Inon, their deaths marked a shift in his path forward—like so many in our fractured and harried world, Inon had already begun to look for ways to live meaningfully. After Oct. 7, he turned his dreaming toward the most meaningful dream there is for him: pursuing peace. He believes and works toward a shared Israeli and Palestinian future based on reconciliation, security, safety, and peace. He reminded us that this moment is an opportunity. The sides of this divide will keep arguing and pointing fingers. Palestinians and Israeli Jews can point fingers about who did what to whom forever. But, he believes, it is time to build a future together.

Since Oct 7, Inon has begun to “walk the path of peace”. He has begun to appreciate the need to know the “other”’s  pain, sorrow, dreams, narratives, and aspirations. We must invest in one another for peace. We must know one another.

Along this path he walks, Inon has met many others also walking the path of peace, including Palestinians. He shared with us a teaching he learned from a Palestinian on this path named Hamzeh.

Hamzeh told him:
You can forgive the past, you can forgive the present, but you cannot forgive the future.
His response?: Amazingly, Inon forgives Hamas for his parents’ Oct. 7 murder. He forgives Netanyahu and the government for his parents’ Oct. 7 murder. He finds meaning in sacrificing life for the purpose of peace. The battle now is how to make peace, and to build a future. We must dream it, talk about it, find partners, and amplify this voice. Astoundingly, he believes that he and the growing camp of voices who are partnering in this work have a strategic plan for a negotiated peace in the next six years.

A staff member on our trip, Nadav Tamir, was the one who first mentioned to us that this is a time of crisis, but also an opportunity. And, Inon reminded us that every safe border Israel has was achieved through diplomacy. Negotiations, says Inon, must happen, because it is the only real way forward. This is a chance. Peace with Egypt, peace with Jordan, peace with Qatar—none were achieved through force, but only through diplomatic relations. Only when leaders turned conflict into words of commitment did conflict ever sustainably dissipate.

It is hard to capture the charisma and power of Inon’s remarks, but you can perhaps get a better sense of what he has to share by watching his TED Talk here: Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon: A Palestinian and an Israeli, face to face | TED Talk.

When he left us, he made his way to meet the German ambassador. Next month, he will be meeting with the Pope. He is sharing this path the world over.

It was a powerful honor to learn from one of the world’s visionaries. I am reminded of the connection between visions and prophecy.

There is hope.

Later in the afternoon we visited Hostage Square and the Hostage Families Forum.

The square is an open patioed space just outside the Tel Aviv Art Museum. It is filled with posters, signs, and powerful art installations set in vigil for the hostages. I was speechless as I walked through and exhibit that was a replica of a Hamas tunnel through which the viewer was invited to walk. It was installed with posters of hostages and the sound of bombs piped in. It was terrifying and heartbreaking.

It was at Hostage Square that I tried to begin memorizing their names.

We walked from the square over to a building that houses the Kibbutz movement’s organizational offices. It was in this building that a civil organization blossomed within two days of Oct. 7. These spaces are now home to families of hostages—those released, those deceased, and those who await freedom from captivity.

We heard from Gilad Shoham, the father of Tal Shoham, a father in his thirties who is the centerpiece of his family’s life. Both of Gilad’s grandchildren were taken hostage and have since been released. But, without their father, their healing cannot fully cohere. They arrived home in extreme mental unwellness. For Purim, his nine year-old grandson, Naveh, wanted to dress up as a terrorist. His four year-old granddaughter saw rapes, murders, and burnings. They need their dad home.
 
Shoham told us that the Red Cross has been useless to them. The hostage families have met with the Red Cross many times, urging and lobbying for their participation and intervention. They claim that Hamas will not allow it. Yet, the Red Cross is quick to see to the needs of Palestinian prisoners. Unfettered in his remarks he asserted that the Red Cross reticence comes down to not wanting to help Jews.
 
We also heard from Tamar, whose family members were in their Kibbutz shelter when the terrorists came. The shelters were built for bombings, so they had no locks on the doors. Doors were “locked” by an individual on the inside holding it closed with their hand. Itay, a large and imposing man, the father of Lior and Gali held the door closed with all his considerable might. Gali is just thirteen, but she knew, as the smoke began to overtake her brother Lior’s consciousness that they had to get out of there.  When the Arabic outside died away, and all seemed quiet, she climbed out of the burning building. Gali was shocked into stillness as she watched a terrorist shoot her dog, Mocha. A terrorist grabbed her, put her on a motorcycle and took her to Gaza. She was there with two other hostages, in an apartment, for 54 days. She had no knowledge of her family. When she was finally released, her family had to tell her that Lior had died that day in the shelter. Itay, who had been shot, was too weak to carry his son’s passed-out body out of the shelter window.

When the Red Cross escorted the first released hostages across the border into Israel, Gali was the first one off the van, smiling from ear to ear. As the months have passed, reality has settled in, and the horror and shock of all she has endured has begun to take its toll.

When we read the paper or listen to the news we see the posturing and “cards to play” in the geopolitics of the region. Can we leverage the fighting to get the hostages? But, Shoham reminded us of a deep knowing here in Israel: People are not bargaining chips. War or no war, the government has a duty to rescue their citizens. And they are failing to meet this duty.