Parents Circle-Families Forum: Bereaved families of Palestine, Israel champion peace
The ongoing conflict and violence in the Gaza strip has led to a feeling of hopelessness across the world. The death of over 11,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis comes amid blood curdling calls for violence from both sides, and a shocking apathy from the world's leadership to bring it to an end.
Yet, there are voices on both sides of the conflict who want to advocate for peace. "Parents Circle-Families Forum" (PCFF) is one such organisation, and their origin and what they do is a remarkable story.
In 1994, Arik Frankenthal, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, was killed by Hamas. Arik's father, Yitzhak Frankenthal, came together with other grieving families to found PCFF in 1995.
One of the first people to join him was Roni Hirshenzon, who first lost a son to a suicide bombing attack in 1995. Hirshenzon then lost another son who killed himself after a friend was shot dead during the Second Intifada in 2000.
By 1998, Israeli members of PCFF had established contact with Palestinian families who had lost loved ones. Following a pause during the fighting in 2000, PCFF has incorporated families in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem into their membership.
Since then, PCFF has grown to over 600 families, and its activities have largely been focused on creating dialogue encounters, where an audience listens to the personal stories of one Palestinian and one Israeli, who look to deliver a message of reconciliation and peace.
PCFF members have all gone through devastating trials of grief, but instead of revenge, they have sought the path of peace. For example, Layla Alsheikh is a Palestinian member of PCFF who lost her six-month old son in 2002 after an Israeli soldier prevented her from taking him to the hospital after he fell ill. She joined PCFF in 2016, and has since appeared in various dialogues in the media alongside family members of Israelis who have lost their lives in the decades long conflict.
In April 2023, speaking to an audience of American Jews alongside an Israeli mother who had also lost her son, Alsheikh said, "Hearing the Palestinian stories, it was so normal for me because most of these kinds of stories I hear on the news or even some of them I know myself. But when the Israelis started to talk about their personal stories and how they lost their beloved ones, that was something that amazed me because that was the first time I looked at them as human like me. And for the first time I felt that we shared the same pain, we shared the same tears, even if we had different circumstances. Pain is bad, loss is loss, it doesn't matter if you are Muslims or Jews or whatever."
Similar stories exist all across the region, like Bassim Aramin, a Palestinian man who lost his daughter in 2007 when an Israeli soldier fired a rubber bullet at her outside her school.
Robi Damelin is the Israeli mother who accompanied Alsheikh during her talk.
She lost her son David when he was killed by a sniper while standing at a checkpoint. Her twist of fate was the fact that her son David was actually a reluctant conscript. According to a blog of Robi Damelin on the website of PCFF, David was even among a group of Israeli army officers who did not want to serve in occupied territories, and held demonstrations to that end. But he still went as he couldn't "let my soldiers down and if I don't go someone else will and will do terrible things," and died as a result.
All of these individuals who have lost their family members are part of PCFF, and their vision is that for lasting peace in the region, there must be reconciliation between the two groups of people. Their campaigns and projects have sought to humanise each side of the conflict to the other group, when politicians and governments on either side have chosen hatred, demonisation and more conflict.
In August, the Israeli education ministry banned PCFF from conducting activities in schools as it violated a new rule issued by Israel's current right-wing government that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) cannot be disparaged in schools.
During the ongoing conflict, members of the organisation have continued holding dialogues between the communities and appearing in the media with their message of peace.
As the world looks on in horror at what has befallen the innocent souls in Gaza, we can only hope that the message is heard.