The Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial ceremony, now in its 19th year, organized Combatants for Peace (CfP) and by the Parents Circle — Families Forum, a grassroots organization of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians will be held tonight, Sunday May 12,
The assembly, which its organizers say is the largest peace event organized jointly by Israelis and Palestinians drawn increasingly larger crowds over the years, both in person and online. Last year more than 20,000 attended the ceremony at Tel Aviv’s Ganei Yehoshua Park, and 200,000 watched it online from around the world, according to organizers.
“It’s an eye-opener for many to know that even though the deadly war is ongoing, there is a group of people who see each other as equal human beings. The loss and the grief are equal for everyone,” said Eszter Korányi, the Israeli co-director of the movement. “We want to showcase an example that it’s possible to cooperate and even to meet in this very painful place of loss from the two different sides of the conflict.”
According Palestinian co-director, Rana Salman, “We have been stuck in this same cycle of violence for many years, and every time we lose loved ones from both sides, this is an opportunity to say out loud on stage to the world that we want this to end and we need to find a solution. Because something so tragic happened, [the conflict] is back on the table and people are discussing it.”
In 2023, after entry permits to Israel were initially withheld, the High Court of Justice ordered far-right Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to allow some 150 Palestinians invited to the joint ceremony to enter the country from the West Bank. This year, the ceremony can only be attended online. In previous years, it would be held in person, and relatives of victims of the conflict, both Israeli and Palestinian, would take the stage to give speeches about their lost loved ones and the need for peace, interspersed with musical performances by artists from both communities. There will be many screening events of the ceremony happening in both private homes and public spaces, in Jerusalem the event will be held at Hadash branch at 8:30 pm.
On May 15th for CfP’s fourth Joint Palestinian-Israeli Nakba Remembrance Ceremony to commemorate the displacement and erasure of hundreds of Palestinian communities, which started in 1948 and continues to the present. “Together, we recall the pain of the Palestinian community in the year 1948 when more than 700,000 Palestinians became refugees. Families were expelled from their homes, their villages and cities destroyed. The Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony expresses our belief that peace and reconciliation involves a sincere and honest reckoning with history,” CfP said. The Nakba Memorial is CfP’s sister event to the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony. As shared by CfP activists, “The two ceremonies aim to liberate us from the mental cage of the current situation. We are locked in and imprisoned by a drawn-out limbo of oppression and violence which seems to have always been here and seems will never end. We aim to present this reality of bereavement and dispossession not as a natural and inevitable fact, but as a result of human choices. Seeing these choices for what they are and then choosing differently will allow us to break out of the present and shape a better future.”
Tomorrow, Yesh Gvul, who was founded in 1982 with the outbreak of the First Lebanon War, as a refusal movement of Israeli soldiers in the reserves force, organized an annual torch-lighting event on the movement’s Alternative Independence Day ceremony in front of the Prime Minister office in Jerusalem.
Each year since 1998, the movement holds the beacon-lighting event at the start of Israel’s Independence Day, to celebrate the struggle for a just, egalitarian, and moral nation. Lighting the torches are human rights activists, involved in efforts against the unnecessary oppression and war in the occupied Palestinian territories and Gaza, people who mobilize to help working people, and those seeking peace with our neighbors.
This year’s annual March of Return on Israel’s Independence Day, organized by Arab-Palestinians in Israel to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the state, will be held next Tuesday at Shefa-Amr in the Galilee. The march, which has been held for 23 consecutive years, is aimed at highlighting the internationally recognized right of Palestinians who remain refugees or internally displaced to return to their homes and villages in Israel, a right which is upheld in United Nations Resolution 194.
Amid police prohibition to holding the Nakba ceremony at Tel Aviv University it will be held on next Wednesday. As in every year for the past 12 years, Hadash Students at Tel Aviv University, alongside the Arab student groups, are organizing a ceremony to commemorate the Nakba – the mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.
Today, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) petitioned the High Court of Justice, on behalf of the Hadash Students at Tel Aviv University, after the police did not respond to their request to hold the rally marking Nakba Day on May 15 at the entrance to the university.
According ACRI, “Our petition emphasizes that the protection of freedom of expression must be protected even when those who demand its implementation are not members of the majority group, as well as when the opinions and messages expressed do not fall within the boundaries of the public consensus and are liable to provoke opposition and even violence. Otherwise, only the opinions agreed upon by the majority of the public will be heard, and freedom of expression will be disposed of. We additionally stressed the obligation to allow freedom of expression and protest even in difficult times and in the charged atmosphere of war.”
The petition claims that since the outbreak of the war, the police have been using a “method” of delays in responding to requests from organizers of controversial demonstrations and public events until the last minute, only to reject the request very close to the appointed date. This conduct indicates an attempt to prevent demonstrations and rallies without the police having to openly admit that it refuses to issue a permit, without having to explain its decision, and often thwarts the possibility of subjecting its decision to judicial review. It was also argued that the refusal of the police in this case parallels the systematic suppression of demonstrations, and even small protest, which in turn silences the point of view of the Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31824
