Controversial Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event draws crowd in Tel Aviv
Following an Israeli High Court ruling that Israel must grant permits to 100 Palestinian Authority residents to attend a joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony, some 9,000 Israelis and a few dozen Palestinians took part in a memorial event on Tuesday night at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv.
Palestinians and Israelis attend what has become a controversial ceremony for the families of Israeli and Palestinian victims as part of a joint memorial day event in Tel Aviv in 2015. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90.
Called “Sharing Sorrow, Bringing Hope,” the event was funded by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle-Families Forum. Both organizations are funded by the New Israel Fund, as well as German, Swiss and other European Union donors. The controversial event has taken place annually since 2006.
Detractors say the event equates fallen Israeli soldiers with the terrorists who attacked them and minimizes the struggle for Israel’s survival. Proponents say the event is meant to allow Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost loved ones to find common ground through their loss.
“There is no place for a memorial ceremony likening the blood of our people and that of terrorists,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter. “That is why I refused to allow for the entry of the ceremony’s participants, and I think the High Court should not have intervened in my decision.”
On Wednesday, Natan Landau of Combatants for Peace told Hadashot TV news that the families of terrorists who were killed were welcome as long as they expressed their opposition to terrorism.
“If a family says, ‘We are against those acts, and we believe in achieving peace through nonviolent means,’ I believe it has a place,” he said.
Dozens of pro-Israel activists protested at the event. Police were on hand to maintain order.
JNS
In over-riding Israel’s PM to bar “Palestinian” from Memorial Day commemorations, the High Court not only displayed its political bias but showed its contempt for Israelis who were grieving for loved ones who had been victims of persecution and blind hate. It does not matter if the “Palestinians” who attended truly rejected terror (and I have my doubts), but the fact that they were there just increased the pain of those who remembered and mourned. Its like having a pack of concentration camp guards attending shul on Kol Nidrei.
The victims of terror are not the same as the terrorists wiped out as anyone without the arrogance of a law degree would know. The judges should also have asked is what have those “Palestinians” done for peace? Have they protested the PA’s pay-for-slay policies, the lawfare that the PA wages on Israel, the hate messages and attacks by Hamas? If they haven’t then it is just for show and another way of hurting Jews.
The judges must have known all of this and they were therefore complicit in another act of anti-Semitism. For that they should be dismissed and barred from the practice of law for life.