Letters From a Young Contrarian

We have come from Jerusalem, the ancient and eternal capital of the Jewish people. We have come from an anguished and grieving land. We have come from a people, a home, a family, that has not known a single year - not a single month – in which mothers have not wept for their sons. We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities, so that our children and our children’s children will no longer have to experience the painful cost of war, violence, and terror.

We have come to secure their lives, and to ease the sorrow and the painful memories of the past - to hope and pray for peace.

Let me say to you, the Palestinians: We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians - we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.

We have no desire for revenge. We harbour no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you - in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you: Let us pray that a day will come when we will say, enough, farewell to arms.

We wish to turn over a new chapter in the sad book of our lives together - a chapter of mutual recognition, of good neighbourliness  of mutual respect, of understanding. We hope to embark on a new era in the history of the Middle East.

Yitzhak Rabin, who by the Hebrew calendar was assassinated seventeen years ago this Sunday past. In his remarks on the occasion of the signing of the Oslo Accords, September 13, 1993, Rabin spoke to the importance of peace not merely because it is necessary but because it is just. On Saturday evening, some 20,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv in his memory, to protest against violence and social division and for the preservation of democratic values. His spirit endures. The struggle goes on…