Hamas Murdered My Parents. Six Months Later, Israel’s War of Revenge Threatens Us All
Bilha and Yakovi Inon photographed eating lunch at their home in April 2023, just six months before they were killed there, burned to death inside, when their village, Moshav Netiv Ha’asara, was attacked by Hamas on October 7.
Maoz Inon writes in Haaretz 7 April 2024
We knew, even as we ourselves were still digesting the shock of our own loss and the massacre itself, that there would soon be media attention and we wanted to have a united message. Together we decided our message would be this: “no revenge”.
In hundreds of interviews and public appearances that is the plea my siblings and I have made.
But six months have now passed – to the day – since October 7, and Israel and Palestine are trapped in a war of revenge that is ruining both sides.
It’s not just my perception revenge is playing a major role in this war, the aChord Center for Social Psychology for Social Change at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem asked in a survey last week that very question at my request.
The response? Seventy-one percent of Jewish Israelis polled believe that “revenge for October 7” is one of the reasons for the war in Gaza.
The results of the war have been devastating to the people in Gaza but also to the people in Israel. Noga Friedman, whose partner was killed in a battle outside Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, spoke last week at a protest in Jerusalem and told the crowds,” “We mustn’t take pride in the moral collapse that celebrates blood, blood and more blood, in a cycle of vengeance that has no end.”
I hope decision makers worldwide will listen to why Noga Friedman, my siblings and I and many other believe the same.