Helen Benedict
With the first anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel approaching, the death toll in Gaza climbing to more than 41,500, and Israel inflicting ever more extreme violence on the West Bank and now on Lebanon as well, something very different happened recently in a poky classroom at Columbia University. Two young men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of whom had lost people they deeply loved to the conflict, came to speak not about fear and anger, revenge or oppression, but about reconciliation, friendship, and peace.
One of them was Arab Aramin, a 30-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem whose little sister, Abir, had been shot and killed in front of her school by an Israeli soldier. She was 10 years old.
The other was Yonatan Zeigen, a 36-year-old Israeli who grew up on the Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border, where his mother, the renowned peace activist Vivian Silver was killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Both men are fathers, both thin and lightly bearded, and both are members of the Parents Circle, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of 750 bereaved people working together to end the cycle of revenge that has so scarred their lives. They and other members of the group were touring New York City and the Boston area to introduce the Parents Circle and its philosophy to Americans.
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