In August 1976, a woman was walking with her three young children on a street in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Something that looked like an accident but was probably a terrorist attack killed the children and later led their mother to suicide. The spontaneous response was the women’s peace movement, which may have laid the ground for what years later resulted in the Good Friday Accord that brought peace to the realm.
Last summer, three Israeli teenagers were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The movement “Women Wage Peace” came into being even before their bodies were found.
The leading figures in Northern Ireland were the aunt of the victims, Mairead Corrigan and her friend Betty Williams. The outstanding personality in “Women Wage Peace” has been one of the mothers of the murdered teenagers, Rachel Frenkel. She even sought to bring comfort to the family of the Arab boy who was murdered by Jewish terrorists in apparent retaliation.
Avirama Golan, writing in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz last year, suggested that “the movement’s name implies that a society that defines itself mostly through war has no choice but to fight just as ruthlessly for peace.” She wrote that “only women, speaking by virtue of their status as mothers, could penetrate the barrier of anxiety and militaristic-nationalistic mobilization that washed over most of the Jewish public.”
Members of “Women Wage Peace” stand at street corners urging passers-by to sign petitions and to support their efforts. My daughter-in-law, Sarah Bernstein, the mother of my Israeli grandchildren – two already army veterans, the third serving now – is among them. Some who stop to talk to her in the street respond favourably. Others are indifferent, skeptical and even hostile but, thank God, not violent.
It was worse in Northern Ireland. In addition to being subject to disbelief, the women were accused of serving the cause of the British occupiers, and on at least one occasion, stones were thrown at them when they marched. Yet they didn’t give up, and their leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The argument against their Israeli counterparts is, as it was in Northern Ireland, that only powerful politicians and seasoned diplomats can make peace. Street demonstrations are at best therapy for the organizers and sometimes, alas, also opportunities for troublemakers with agendas of their own.
It’s also argued that women aren’t necessarily better at making peace than men. Though two of the most recognized proponents of peace standing for the Knesset in next month’s general election in Israel are Tzipi Livni, who has a distinguished record of negotiating with Palestinians, and Zahava Galon, the leader of Meretz, a party committed to ceding territories and making peace with the Palestinians, there are female candidates who hold different, even anti-peace, views.
The aim is to involve both women and men in the struggle for peace. In the words of the “Women Wage Peace” handout: “The last round of violence has made it clear to all that we must break out of the spiral. Whether left or right-wing, religious or secular, Arab or Jewish, we want to live in a society characterized by normality, prosperity and human rights.”
Though many Jews around the world share these hopes, most seem to support Israeli political parties that haven’t placed peace prominently on their election platforms. A list of wealthy Jews abroad who’ve made financial contributions, published in an Israeli paper recently, suggests that neither Livni nor Galon, but rather hardliners, are the main recipients.
Of course, everybody talks peace, irrespective of party affiliation, but only some are prepared to take the risks of trying to make it. They refrain from blaming the other side for intransigence and war-mongering.
It wasn’t very different in Northern Ireland, yet in the end, the seeming naiveté of ordinary women and not the ostensible sophistication of seasoned politicians carried the day. The same must happen in Israel. The alternatives are too grim to contemplate.