The testimony and message of an Israeli woman

DEA is an Italian-Israeli citizen who has just fled Israel with her family. She has lived in Israel for twenty years. She wanted to give us her testimony and her appeal.

Here are some passages:

My name is Dea, I am an artist and a passionate activist for human rights and peace.

I have been active for years in various movements that promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, including the women’s movement Women Wage Peace.

In the nearly twenty years that I have lived in Israel, I have experienced numerous wars, terrorism, and fires; we have had everything.

However, this latest war is unlike any we have known so far: it appears to be a final and apocalyptic war in scope, extent, and severity.

I am still in shock, but I will try to share my testimony and my message.

Last Saturday, October 7, we celebrated the Feast of the Joy of Torah (Simchat Torah). Since it was a holiday and Shabbat, we turned off all electronic devices, including cell phones.

We woke up in the morning to the sound of war sirens and missile explosions raining down all over the country.

Many people continued to pray and dance throughout the day of celebration, despite the fact that missiles continued to fall in profusion.

Then, in less than an hour, the deafening flights of fighter-bombers overhead began, day and night. We plunged into a nightmare, a real hell.

But beyond describing the horror of war, I would like to send a message.

During these years in Israel, I realized for the first time that at the international level, not only is there no interest in ending the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but that, on the contrary, making it last serves too many vested interests, on both sides.

This fratricidal war suits too many people.
Otherwise, a diplomatic solution could have been found a long time ago
War is a big black hole that swallows up everything and everyone.
And the violence that fuels it is a drug that leads to serfdom* and demands ever greater doses. *Serfdom: State of dependence, deprivation of liberty.

Over the years, I have observed that Palestinians and Israelis are addicted to the violence of war: after a few months without killing each other, they fall into a crisis of mutual withdrawal. It becomes a collective pattern, a broken record that people almost need to repeat and repeat obsessively, each time with greater intensity. It is the spiral of human violence and wars.

In these tragic hours when an unprecedented massacre of human lives is taking place, it is truly an unbearable and distressing spectacle to see conspiracy theorists who think they know everything about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, living thousands of kilometers from each other, compete with each other to develop the craziest anti-Semitic theories there are.

It is to these people that I want to say:
Your hatred for one side or the other only adds fuel to the fire.

Every time we are “biased”, every time we side with one of the two factions, we contribute to the conflict which pits one against the other in a dualistic way; i.e. we are helping to fuel the hatred that has generated this horrible war.

On the other hand, war is the last stage of human hatred, but it begins much earlier.

The threat of war begins in the family, in our interpersonal relationships: every dualistic conflict against someone, every division, every internal struggle, every personal hatred, every hatred for a group, for a human category, is the beginning of war .

When a war breaks out, it is now too late.

The flame of hatred must be extinguished beforehand, from its first manifestation. Here is my call:

And if we want to do something to help extinguish it, it is not enough to pray: that each of us go today to make peace with the member of his family against whom he is in conflict, with the friend to whom he no longer speaks, with the neighbor against whom he fought for years.

Only these actions can reverse the frequency of hatred.

Only by maintaining harmonious relations can we avoid giving strength to the hatred that fuels war.

When people ask me: whose side are you on? On the side of Israel or Palestine?

I answer that I am on the side of Peace, that is to say on the side of the Jews and the Muslims, all children of the Patriarch Abraham. I am on the side of Life and Harmony between human beings.

War is an endless horror for everyone. There are no winners in a war, there are only losers and at different levels.

We are all defeated, all of humanity is defeated.

Finally, I would like to share today’s beautiful message from a very dear Palestinian friend.

Perhaps it will give you an idea of the deep bonds that have been forged over the years between so many Israeli and Palestinian women like us.

Message from a Palestinian “sister”

“Thank you, sister, thank you, I am heartbroken too. So much crying, so much pain on both sides. We couldn’t have imagined what happened on Saturday, but we also don’t know where we might end up… people killed, babies, families grieving, my heart is broken… I can’t stop crying. I had dreams, so many dreams of peace and closeness… now where has humanity gone? Where has humanity gone? I have no words, there are no words. You are my dear sister, very dear to my heart, Dea, I love you very much, habibi [Translator’s note: Habibi is an Arabic word that can be translated as “my darling”], I love you very much. »

Dea


Temporary poster for the film Gli strati del muro. Photo credit: Dea

Dea also works as an artist and across different fields of expression, including experimental cinema, as a director and screenwriter.

Gli strati del muro (translated: The layers in the wall) is one of her current projects. A film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for which Dea is seeking funding.

In this film project, Dea uses a new cinematic language that she theorized and defined as quantum cinema, which shows events in a unified vision that breaks and supplants our usual linear and unidirectional perception of time.

The artist thus hopes to make the viewer aware of the root causes which caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its perpetuation over time until today.

Full article: https://www.deaofficial.com/2023/10/15/in-guerra-non-ci-sono-vincitori/ Dea official website:
https://www.deaofficial.com