Oct 7 has not shaken bereaved fathers’ peace mission

When The Jewish Independent brought Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramim to Australia earlier this year, we could not have known how much more poignant their call for peace would become.

The self-declared brothers have dedicated theirs lives to peacebuilding after the deaths of Rami's daughter Smadar, who was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, and Bassam's daughter Abir, who was killed by an Israeli soldier.

After the recent Hamas attack and with war in Gaza now raging, Kooyong MP Monique Ryan shared how touched she was by her encounter with the two brave peacemakers, one Israeli, one Jewish.

Rising to speak before federal parliament, she said: “Earlier this year I met with Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan when they came to Melbourne. These two inspirational men have both lost children to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One is Muslim, one is Jewish. Together, united by grief, they were travelling the world advocating for peace. They said: “We cannot keep living like this … we cannot continue killing each other and fighting each other.”

At a time when there are countless stories from people on what remains of the Israeli left questioning their beliefs about peace, the first question I asked Rami when I interviewed him for The Jewish Independent in the wake of October 7 was whether the events of that day made him reassess his thinking about the possibility of co-existence. “Not for a single second,” he answered, “If anything, it even strengthened my belief that we must find a way to share this land, or we will continue to share graveyards.”

I asked Bassam the same question. He gave the same answer without hesitation.