Our Wednesday News Analysis | 'Swimming Against the Tide, but Swimming': More Israelis and Palestinians Now Choose to Grieve Together

People attend a screening of the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony in Jaffa last year. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

"You have to ask yourself, in those moments, what they would have wanted?

Would they have wanted us to avenge them?

I sometimes play it back, wondering.
What I do know is that they would have wanted their children to be safe,
and they would have wanted their children to live, and they would have wanted their children to have a better life."

The ways to do that are varied. "It can be protection. It can be about finding ways to fight fundamentalists like Hamas.

It can be humanizing Palestinians and building bridges," Troen says.

The last two and a half years have brought for Israelis and Palestinians an unending spiral of war and violence. In the best case, the public debate is dominated by recognition of one side's pain at the expense of the other's, and in the worst by factionalism and calls for revenge.

But amid all this misery, a new trend has emerged: More and more people from both sides are joining organizations and activities that bring Palestinians and Israelis together – and recognize the other side's humanity.

The 850-member Parents Circle – Families Forum, an organization of Israelis and Palestinians who lost family to the conflict, has been active for about 30 years. "In our grief and pain, we act together to change the reality, to stop the cycle of bloodshed and prevent other families from becoming like ours," says Ayelet Harel, the Israeli co-executive director of the group.

Ahead of Monday's Memorial Day eve, the Families Forum counts 150 new members since October 7, 2023 – two-thirds of them Israeli, one-third Palestinian. Harel says that this is exceptional; family members usually take time to process their grief before diverting it to activism. Since the war in Gaza began, "we saw that people were joining very quickly after their loss – not everybody, but we saw that quite a few families reached out and joined."

Harel lost her brother in the 1982 Lebanon war, but she didn't join the forum until 2009. "People feel like they need to join – they understand that they can't remain indifferent, and that they need to do something in the face of the terrible deterioration we're seeing," she says...

Read more: 'Swimming Against the Tide, but Swimming': More Israelis and Palestinians Now Choose to Grieve Together

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NEGOTIATIONS THAT ENABLE ISRAEL’S LAND-GRABS

Source: Al-Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/4/24/negotiations-that-enable-israels-land-grabs

By Diana Buttu
Published April 24, 2026

From Oslo onwards, talks have unfolded alongside illegal settlement expansion, turning diplomacy into a process that manages, rather than ends, occupation.

Israeli settlers gather at a water spring in the Israeli-occupied West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja on April 22, 2026, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank village of Ras Ein al-Auja [Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Getty Images]

… the foundation of the international legal system as we know it is that states cannot steal land – they cannot invade the territory of another.

This foundational rule exists for a reason: for if states can steal land, it simply fuels more wars.
With Israel pushing into several countries and denying freedom, the question that remains is
whether Israel operates above the system of law and order that was put into place after the Second World War or
whether the rules, as we have been led to believe, are simply not applicable.

Lebanon has already fallen into the same trap that Palestinians fell into in the 1990s ...

Back in the early 2000s, I was part of the Palestinian team supposedly negotiating an end to Israel’s military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land. The idea was as perverse then as it is now: that those living under military rule have to “negotiate” for their freedom and that the owners of the land have to “negotiate” for Israel to return their land to them.

At the time, we Palestinians were told by many heads of state – including those from the US and Europe – there was no other way and that negotiations were the only path to achieving our freedom. Of course, that is simply not true, for virtually no state has gained its freedom and independence by negotiating with its oppressors.

As the negotiations took place, Israel used the opportunity to build and expand its illegal settlements, doubling the number of Israeli settlers within seven years of the Oslo negotiations. In other words, under the guise of “negotiating”, Israel stole more land. These same world leaders who pushed negotiations, and those who succeeded them, kept feeding us the line (lie) that all of Israel’s land theft would be undone with successful negotiations.

Of course, they did not lay out a Plan B, despite the illegality of land theft being the cornerstone of international law. For its part, Israel kept speaking of wanting “peace” and the desire for “negotiations”, all while eating up more Palestinian land...

Read more: Negotiations that enable Israel’s land-grabs

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AMERICAN EVANGELICALS MUST CONFRONT ISRAEL’S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY

Source: Turkiye Today
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/opinion/american-evangelicals-must-confront-israels-war-on-christianity-3218677?s=4

By Ahmad Hashemi
Published April 24, 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump is seen praying with faith leaders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C, accessed on April 13, 2026. (Photo via White House)

For too long, Israel has benefited from Christian evangelicals, seeing it as "useful idiots" for its expansionist causes.

However, there are clear signs that the era of America’s "unconditional support" is coming to an end.

A new generation of Americans is turning on Israel.

Data confirm a significant generational divide in American attitudes toward Israel, with younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials) showing much lower levels of support than older Americans.

As another indication of this change, in a historic April 2026 vote, 40 U.S. Senate Democrats voted to block key weapon sales to Israel.

These sentiments in the U.S. public need to evolve into policy.

For decades, the political alliance between American Evangelical Zionists and the State of Israel has been treated as a theological and geopolitical fortress.

Built on a shared vision of the Holy Land, this bond has channeled billions of American taxpayer dollars and vast amounts of advanced weaponry into the Israeli military.

However, a series of disturbing events—culminating in a viral video of an Israeli soldier's vandalism of a Jesus statue in Southern Lebanon—demands a painful, long-overdue reckoning.

If the American Christian conscience is to remain intact, it can no longer turn a blind eye to the systematic destruction of the world’s oldest Christian communities in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.

Israel must be held accountable for the desecration of churches, and the church-going American "patriots" who fund this destruction must ask themselves why they are subsidizing the erasure of their own faith’s heritage...

Read more: American Evangelicals must confront Israel’s war on Christianity