“They died for peace”

Political assassinations, imminent retaliation, an increasingly inevitable conflagration: the headlines coming out of the Middle East these days are enough to plunge even the most optimistic into deep despair. But sometimes, amid this sea of ​​darkness, a brief burst of light emerges.

That’s what I thought to myself on Wednesday after reading a BBC article in which we learned that the last person reported missing in the attacks of October 7, 2023, had just been officially declared dead by the Israeli authorities.

That day, Bilha Inon was killed alongside her husband, Yakovi. The couple’s house, both in their 70s, was pulverized by a Hamas rocket. The man’s body was found in the rubble, but not the woman’s. Not even a trace of DNA.

One sentence struck me in the BBC article. It was a quote from the couple’s son, Maoz Inon: “They didn’t die for this war. They died for peace,” he said of his parents.

Died for peace? But what peace was he talking about, exactly? His parents perished in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas attack triggered a devastating Israeli response on the Gaza Strip. Ten months later, the world fears an escalation that could engulf the entire region.

Peace, we have never been so far away…

I reached Maoz Inon at his home in Israel. I wanted to know how he, who has been touched to the heart by this conflict, manages not to give in to resentment and, above all, to despair.

Maoz Inon is convinced that by 2030, peace will reign from the river to the sea.

Utopian? Maybe. But admit that it feels good to hear this type of speech, once in a while, through the uninterrupted flow of bad news.

Maoz Inon greeted the Israeli authorities’ announcement about his mother with a shrug. He had known since October 7 that she had died along with his father, in their village of Netiv HaAsara, 400 meters from the Gaza Strip border.

That morning, Yakovi Inon told him on the phone that he and Bilha had taken refuge in the safe room of their house. Maoz could hear the muffled sound of sirens and gunshots. When he called his father back five minutes later, there was no answer. It was over.

Despite his immense pain, Maoz Inon did not seek revenge. Instead, he swore to himself that his parents’ deaths would not be in vain.

The tourist entrepreneur has become a full-time peace activist. Along with Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian whose brother was killed in Gaza, he has been travelling the world for ten months to spread the message: this war must be the last.

The two men have given lectures in Vancouver, Washington, Geneva, Brussels and elsewhere. They met with Pope Francis in Verona, Italy. “There is no justification for what happened on October 7,” Maoz admits, “and there is no justification for what Israel is doing now in Gaza.”

There are people who, after losing a loved one in tragedy, throw themselves wholeheartedly into a cause. Grieving parents campaign to lower speed limits, others call for tighter gun control…

Maoz Inon, for his part, campaigns for peace in the Middle East. Nothing less.

It may seem insane. But, deep down, it is the war that is meaningless. It is these thousands of lives taken. This dehumanization. These words from a minister of the Israeli far-right, for whom starving two million people in Gaza would be, after all, “justified and moral.”

And then there are the deserted villages on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border; the battalions of rescue workers deployed in Tel Aviv, just in case; the underground hospital ready to take in hundreds of wounded in Haifa; the millions of civilians preparing for the worst, while the world holds its breath…

This is all complete nonsense.

Of course, everyone repeats that neither Israel nor its enemies want escalation. Yet, they are approaching it, inexorably.

Of course, diplomats are working hard behind the scenes to defuse tensions. But the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has complicated their work considerably. He was tasked with negotiating a ceasefire with Israel. He was killed by a drone in Tehran.

The Jewish state now finds itself facing Yehya Sinwar, considered the mastermind of the October 7 attacks. Suddenly, a ceasefire seems even more unlikely…

No, really, to sink hopes for peace, there is no better way. It is as if Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to provoke an escalation — perhaps for political survival, to postpone the moment when he will have to answer for his lamentable failure to prevent the attacks of October 7.

Maoz Inon acknowledges that “the gap between us is wider and more painful than ever.” But he adds this obvious fact: it is not with a total war that the conflict in the Middle East will be resolved. With a total war, Israel and its allies will only succeed in creating a monster — and in becoming one, too.