Two years ago on October 7, 2023, the day when Hamas crossed the Gaza border and in Israel killed nearly 1200 people and took 251 hostages. Among them was Moran Stella Yanai, a 40 -year -old artist from Beersheba, who returned home after 54 days of captivity.
About six months after the release, Moran was at the University of California, Los Angeles, to participate in a debate on the Israelo-Palestinian conflict. With her were Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of one of the founders of Hamas (today one of his fiercest critical), and Aidan Doyle, a pro-palestine student at UCLA. The public was divided, and the environment tense.
Moran spoke slowly, without drama, trying to capture the student’s gaze. “I’m an artist. I served in the army for over twenty years. I have an Arab necklace, Indian tattoos, Pharaoh’s symbols on my fingers, and in a hand, I tattooed the Hebrew lyrics ‘ח’ – that represents life. Because I believe in coexistence.” He explained that he had grown between Jews and Arabs in southern Israel that his suppliers for the jewelery he created were Egyptians and Arabs, that his best friend was Jewish and married to an Arabic. “Many of my friends believe in coexistence. I live in Beersheba, a city where many Jews and Arabs live side by side. That’s how my life lived,” he said.
And he repeated his experience of coexisting with people of other religions, origins, colors. He herself, she revealed, was a Moroccan and Egyptian Jew. Then the voice changed Tom, almost embargoed. “They told me, inside Gaza, that they didn’t know about the new festival. They didn’t know there were 3000 people there. They told me they wanted to go to Beersheba, to Telavive, to Haifa, and to kill all who could.” He paused. “Maybe they don’t believe me. I saw bodies everywhere. Bodies of friends. So much violence.” The student never looked in her eyes.
In this edition of the DN, journalist Susana Salvador calls her article about the October 7 massacre “Trauma and Hope. Two years after the Hamas attack, he speaks again of hope.” He recalls that Israelite negotiators and representatives of the terrorist group governing Gaza are discussing Donald Trump’s 20 points plan, “the best opportunity for the end of the conflict.” According to a poll, 66% of Israelites defend the end of the war, 13 more points than a year ago. In Gaza, according to Hamas, where nearly 70,000 people victims of Israelite bombings have already died, it is unknown how many peace want. Not how many times have they appealed to their leaders to deliver the hostages what would say the end of the war.
Therefore, is it to be questioned if this agreement signed, will there be a coexistence? In Israel, he rules a wide-wide coalition that rests on religious and settlers who claim occupation as a divine mandate. In Gaza, Hamas, sustained by Iran, makes the destruction of Israel its political program. Between both, there is no room for moderation or for dialogue. The word sounds until it is hollow.
Even in the event of at least formal removal of Hamas of Power in Gaza, there is a whole population taught to hate Israel, motivated even more by war. Hamas rules as a militia and not as a state: commands for obedience, eliminates those who contradict him and sacrifice his own people to the logic of permanent war.
In Jerusalem, the mirror of this radicalization is the current Israeli government, where ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich bring religious extremism and ethnic nationalism into power. Ben-Gvir, which called “terrorists” to the detained activists of Flotilha, heir to the Kahanist movement, who defended the expulsion of the Arabs of Israel, displayed, in the 90s, the emblem of the Yitzhak Rabin car and promised to “reach him”, weeks before the murder of the Prime Minister by a Jewish extremist. Smotrich, finance minister, openly advocates the expansion of illegal colonates and has already asked a Palestinian village to be “off the map”. Both were sanctioned by Western governments for inciting violence against Palestinians.
They are enemies who feed on each other and need each other to justify their own power. They will never accept the coexistence of their peoples.
Even when Israel had more moderate leaders, the path of peace was always sabotaged by the extremists. Oslo’s process was undermined by Palestinian attacks and ended the murder of Rabin. Since then, each attempt has agreed failed. Now, he speaks again of a ceasefire and a reconstruction plan, but it is hard to believe that any role signed to resist reality on the ground.
This conflict has spread to the world. Also in Western democracies, the space of coexistence seems to be disappearing. The pro-Palestinian manifestations on European streets, including Lisbon, gather who ask for a ceasefire and who demands the end of Israel. They are the same gears, no different marches. The radicalism that transforms the humanitarian cause into a flag of confrontation.
In recent days, an anonymous poster began to circulate on social networks to convene demonstrations for October 7, in Braga and Porto, under the motto “We want your anger.” The poster, with phrases in Arabic and Portuguese – “We no longer need your sympathy” – uses anger as a watchword, turning the feeling into a political fuel. The alastra polarization. It grows in parliaments, networks and conversations. Moderation became suspicious; Commitment, a weakness.
Two years after the massacre, Moran Stella Yanai continues to talk about fear, captivity, about humanity. He recently said in Telavive: “No one should return to darkness. It’s not a matter of strategy or ideology. It’s a matter of humanity.”
Coexistence did not die in 2023. It was dying with each attack, every armed settler, each humiliation and each refusal to recognize the other. Coexist is a principle of civilization. Without him, what is left is the same as today in Gaza and Israel: violence, fear, revenge and a future that depends now, not only than Israelites, the only democracy in the region, will be able to do in the next elections, but also, as experienced journalist Henrique Cymerman said in an interview with DN, of the international community to help de -extinguishing Palestine and restructure all education.
“It is necessary to educate for peace,” he stressed, saying that in Palestine, especially in Gaza, he saw the mathematics books, where the problems they give to children are “if I try to kill 15 Jews and I can’t kill 3 of them, how many I managed to kill?” This is how it is taught in Gaza.
Perhaps Abraham’s agreement will be able to unite the two peoples, who are cousins after all. Perhaps one day, so much suffering brings divine peace back to Arabs and Jews. At this point, only Abraham will get this miracle.