Published: 6 May 2025
Last updated: 9 May 2025
More than 20 cities around the world held rallies in support of Israeli-Palestinian peace activists over the weekend, adding impetus to the People’s Peace Summit to be held in Jerusalem later this week. Sydney Friends of Standing Together was proud to host the Sydney Peace Action on Sunday.
This peace action event was unlike Jewish community rallies, which focus on support for Israel right or wrong with no mention of thousands of Palestinian child victims or the total devastation of Gaza. It was unlike the Free Palestine rallies, where anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiment prevails.
Our action focused on supporting the growing strength of the peace camp within Israel.Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel are uniting in co-resistance, in groups like Standing Together, as allies for the cause of Palestinian freedom and equality.
Sunday’s action was a shared event: Jews, Palestinians and others, holding different views and beliefs, expressing ideas differently, but with a common purpose to say: “enough, no more killing, no more violence, let’s work for peace.”
An intertwined future
With the horror unfolding daily before our eyes, with no end to violence and deep divisions - between Jews and Palestinians, Israelis and Palestinians, and between some Jews and others, why do I, why do we in Sydney Friends of Standing Together, firmly believe that peace is possible? Because we must.
Comments5
Paul Saperstein4 June at 01:53 am
Rachel, thank you for having the courage to post your comment on this website for the misguided. As my loving Baba used to say: “You can’t put your head on their shoulders.” Am Yisrael Chai.
Janet Kossy8 May at 03:19 am
Thank you for this article, Irene and TJI, and for the interesting video interviews. Rachel, I hope you don’t give up, but attend in person, and with an open heart and mind, events like this. Amongst the perspectives that differ from your own, and the opinions you disagree with, there will be stories and feelings that resonate with the human values we all share. Focusing on those may help you to feel more open to the compromises and recognition of the other that are always part of peacemaking.
Ramon Capel7 May at 08:17 am
Thank you for the article. Dear Raquel, I have to say that I am surprised by your comment, I am rather astonished. I disagree with your position, I think it is subjective and biased. But although not everyone can be required to be a historian and archaeologist, when you talk about history you have to be more rigorous and always question only one partial version. On this version all of Europe, America, should readjust and relocate far away. Should we have to rethink the right of ownership? It also leads me to think that education in Israel is perhaps not adjusting to reality and honesty but to necessity or finality.
Rachel Sussman6 May at 11:16 am
I started to eagerly reading this article with hope in my heart… I was hoping it will help revive what I always felt and believed in and to be honest grew up with… because growing up in Israel was growing up with the vision that one day it will happen, it can happen… songs of peace and hope were what we sang… sadly this hope died in me on 7/10, it felt like waking up from some delusion and it was a terrible feeling, for it left me with emptiness, no hope… I have been trying to revive hope and belief within me since 7/10 and when I saw this article, my heart flattered – can it be? Can we really revive the quest and work towards peace?… And so I eagerly began to read till I got to the part where activists insisted on seeing the day of Israel’s birth as ‘Nakba’ and their perception was justified by still others… And the hope died and I stopped reading… If there is hope for peace, Palestinians must face the truth: The Jewish people are indigenous to the land, they – the Palestinians- entered the picture thousands of years later, and this is historical fact, yes they came and settled with their visions and ambitions and right or wrong the inevitably created ties to the land and yes, these ties must be respected and given room but not on account of perceiving the rebirth of Israel as a ‘nakba’ because it is not… the only ‘nakba’ is of their doing – rejecting the offer to have part for their own State (as was given to them in 1947), wanting it all, denying the right of the Jewish people, taking responsibility for the choices they made and how it brought them to where they are…. I am really sorry, but to me, as long as peace activists still use the term ‘nakba’ with regard to Israel’s creation and existence and justify it, they have learned nothing, they do not really want peace, they do not really respect the Jewish right to their homeland (or at least part of their homeland), they do not really respect history, they really do not want to live side by side or share in peace… this makes me very sad but I will not fall for this charade again…