Key Points
- Two peace advocates - a Palestinian and an Israeli - are visiting Australia
- They will be holding public appearances in Sydney and Melbourne
- Both call for mutual acknowledgement of the other side's pain
Samer Sinijlawi is a Palestinian Political activist, member of the Fattah Opposition and chair of the Jerusalem Development Fund; Dr Gershon Baskin is an Israeli Peace activist who played a key role in the release of Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity.
Both peace activists will tour Australia this week as guests of the New Israel Fund. They’ll speak at events in Melbourne and Sydney.
TRANSCRIPT
Samer Sinijlawi: We come to tell those who are running either under the title of pro-Palestinian or under the title of pro-Israeli, to tell them that sometimes, you know, there is something in common. That it's better to invest the efforts in something that can help both Israelis and Palestinians, that maybe you should a little bit understand in-depth what's happening there.
So we would like these communities to listen to us carefully, to understand that. It's not necessary that it's either us or them. It's not necessary that we are enemies to each other. Maybe we are the solution to each other. Maybe if we look deeper, we will find that there is common ground even in these difficult days. Maybe instead of raising slogans that have nothing to do with reality like from the river to the sea, what is from the river to the sea? Does anybody really believe that? All the Palestinians are trying to get rid of the Jews and throw them to the sea? Or that all the Israelis and Jewish people are really planning to relocate the Palestinians and deport them somewhere else? This is not true.
Maybe it's time to get up and stand under slogans that really benefit both Israelis and Palestinians. A slogan, for example, like: Stop the war, release the hostages, which is the majority of Israelis and Palestinians are believing into it and they want to see it today.
Gershon Baskin: Our message is really a reflection that in importing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Australia is insanity. It doesn't help Israel. It doesn't help the Palestinians. It hurts the Muslim community, the Palestinian community, it hurts the Jewish community.
As Samer said, if you want to help Israel or if you want to help Palestine, find a way of doing it constructively. We believe that the best way of doing it is by finding a way of working together, of talking together about a new future, because in reality the only way that from the river to the sea, the people living there will be able to live in peace and dignity and security is if there's peace between Israel and Palestine, and the best way of reaching that is a two-state solution. That's our message.
And our message is not a naive message, It's a message of reality that the biggest trauma that the Jewish people have been through since the Holocaust, of October 7th, and the biggest trauma in the lives of the Palestinian people, everything that's happened since October 7th, has to be the last war between Israel and Palestine.
That's our message, and it's important for us to give that message abroad because that's the message that we give at home to Israelis and to Palestinians, and we want this message to be mirrored both in Israel and in Palestine and around the world.
Motti Gadish: I'd like to ask you what is the change that is needed to make it a reality, what you're talking about?
Samer Sinijlawi: Changing the narrative. Changing the leadership. Because currently millions of Palestinians are hostages in the bunkers of two regimes that are causing harm more than causing benefit.
Palestinians would like to see a new leadership With a hope and a construction leadership, leadership that can provide hope and, and construction, and maybe I think some Israelis feel that they are also hostages in a bunker for a leader that also has taken them in, in a direction that really does not represent the best interests. So, changing leadership is the most important step now.
Gershon Baskin: The majority of Israelis want Netanyahu to bear responsibility for what happened on October 7th, for bringing about the financing of Hamas, for bringing together the most radical extreme religious fanatic coalition in the history of Israel, and failing to address the needs of the Israeli public, uh, to heal itself from the, from what's happened over the last 19 months; requires us to bring the hostages home.
Not only the hostages being sacrificed by the Netanyahu government, the Israeli society and the better welfare of the state of Israel are being sacrificed by Netanyahu in order to keep his coalition alive, and this is very, very dramatic. We need changes of leadership in Israel and we need changes of leadership in Palestine.
