This Monday, October 7th, will mark the one-year anniversary of the surprise Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered the Israel Defense Force’s military campaign in Gaza that has taken the lives of an estimated 42,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are civilians, and further ignited a regional war with Lebanon that is still taking on a perilous shape.
With the dark plumes of war sweeping across the region, it is hard to find any daylight for dialogue where people dare to reach out across the divide and talk about peace.
But there are small efforts that are worth highlighting, and that can offer profiles of courage. One of them is The Parents Circle – Families Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian program that brings together 700 bereaved families who are bound together by losing their children through decades of violence. They choose a dialogue of reconciliation over a culture of revenge through what they call “listening from the heart.”
I first began reporting on the Parents Circle back in 1999 when I was the Boston Globe’s Middle East Bureau Chief. Back then, it was a different time when it seemed like there was still a chance for the 1994 Oslo Accord to succeed with its road map toward a two-state solution and its goal of finding an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, that peace agreement has been shredded with all sides bearing responsibility for it lying in tatters.
In a full circle moment, I had a chance last week to reunite with the Parents Circle and moderate a discussion with two mothers – one Palestinian and one Israeli – who lost their sons in 2002 at the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising. The gathering at Suffolk University’s Ford Hall was sponsored by the American Friends of the Parents Circle in partnership with the GBH Forum Network. The need for these two bereaved mothers to share their stories, their respectful dialogue with each other and their willingness to listen offers one sliver of hopeful light at a time when it feels like the darkness is gathering.
Sitting on stage with me was Layla Al-Sheikh, a Palestinian mother of five who is from the biblical town of Bethlehem in the West Bank. She lost her six-month old son, Qussay, when Israeli forces deployed tear gas that severely impacted his lungs. While trying to rush her son to the hospital, she was delayed at a checkpoint for more than five hours and her son died due to a lack of timely treatment.
About working with Israeli parents, she explained, “I felt that we share the same pain, we share the same tears, even if we had different circumstances. But we’re still human and (there’s) nothing worse than losing a child. No one could understand that pain unless someone (is) in the same situation.”
Sitting next to her on stage was Robi Damelin, an Israeli mother who lost her 24-year-old son, David. He was a member of the peace movement when he was doing his mandatory service as an Israeli soldier and he was killed by a Palestinian sniper. Damelin, now the director of international relations for the Parents’ Circle, turned the focus to the 250 Israelis taken hostage during the October 7th Hamas attack, and the 100 who are still being held. Negotiations for freeing Israeli hostages in exchange for releasing Palestinian prisoners seem to have faltered. Damelin insisted she would support negotiations for the killer of her son being freed if it would mean an Israeli hostage could come home.
With words that resonated even more powerfully as the October 7th anniversary falls squarely in the middle of the Jewish High Holy Days, traditionally a time of reflection, atonement and a renewal of faith, she said of her son’s killer, “I think they should free him if that will bring one hostage back. Because for me, the sanctity of human life is much more important than the man sitting in jail.”
One sign of the polarized times and the extremism of the right-wing elements of the Israeli cabinet under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Parents Circle was banned from Israeli public schools in August of 2023 by the Education Ministry, after two decades of productive and much-needed dialogue which benefitted an estimated 200,000 students.
In explaining the decision, the Israeli official in charge of educational programs, Lilach Apalton, wrote, “Any comparison between the bereavement of the families of IDF fallen soldiers and victims of terror acts with those killed as a result of the IDF’s defensive acts is unacceptable and is highly detrimental to the memory of the fallen and their families’ feelings,” adding that “concepts and sayings at the core of the organization’s ideological concept are contrary to the principles of the state education law.” The Parents Circle and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition against the ban in September 2023, just weeks before the October 7 attack unfolded and the country was plunged back into war. The appeal has gone nowhere. Meanwhile, the number of bereaved parents has only grown exponentially as conflict in the Middle East rages anew.
As fate would have it, the October 7th anniversary will land squarely in the middle of the Jewish High Holy Days, sometimes referred to as “The Days of Awe.”The religious holidays began this Thursday with Rosh H’Shanah, the Jewish New Year, and will culminate 10 days later with the observance of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
The date of October 7th will go down in history as a day etched into the memory of the Holy Land much the way September 11th still resonates in America nearly a quarter century after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
After Hamas attacked on October 7th and the IDF unleashed its massive retaliatory campaign aimed at destroying Hamas, Palestinians are still struggling to dig out from the rubble and still seeing waves of Israeli airstrikes in both Gaza and more recently in the West Bank. Eighteen Palestinians were killed on Thursday, including a family of four that was reportedly sitting at a cafe, after an Israeli airstrike on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank.
Israel has also stepped up its attacks on the Iranian-backed forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon that has for more than a generation fought Israel along their border and that since October 7th has repeatedly sent missiles into northern Israel. To the United States and Israel, Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization but in Lebanon, it is regarded as a resistance movement against Israel and its alliance with the United States.
Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s spiritual and political leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and targeted much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership through a series of undercover operations. Lebanese health ministry officials estimate 2,000 Lebanese have also been killed, including over 150 women and children. The Israeli airstrikes followed up by a ground invasion that has drawn Iran more directly into the conflict, and there is a feeling that the region is teetering on the edge of a wider regional war amid fears that U.S. troops could be drawn into the simmering conflict.
For the two women from the Parents Circle who lost their sons, their words echoed across all the years and showed not only exceptional courage and compassion but the kind of practical plea for dialogue that will be needed to stop the war from escalating further. The Palestinian mother, Al-Sheikh, who said she was keenly aware that the Israeli-Palestinian divide has caused sharp divisions on college campuses in particular, closed the gathering at Suffolk University by speaking directly to students and faculty alike:
“If you want advice, please don’t be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, be pro-peace. This is the thing that we need. And if you fight together about this, that will never help us in any way. But if you call for peace, this is what we need.”
Founder and editor-in-chief of GroundTruth, Sennott served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for many years with The Boston Globe and was on assignment there for PBS Frontline and The Atlantic magazine. He has authored two books on the region and more recently has offered ‘teach-ins’ on the history of Israel-Palestine on several campuses including Boston College where he has been a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Liberal Arts for the last three years.
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Our Report for America and Report for the World corps members have written over 200 stories related to the conflict, from the protests on campuses across the United States and the plight of refugees to the impact on trade and diplomacy in multiple regions. Editor Alana Campbell curated a storymap with highlights from their coverage over the last year, focusing on stories directly related to the conflict, responses and protests. Take a few minutes to explore their work.
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