Headline, February 02 2024/ ''' MOURNING STUDENTS MONUMENT '''

''' MOURNING STUDENTS

 MONUMENT '''

LIKE PM JACINDA ARDERN - PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, PM Mahathir, Prof Avi Shalaim [Oxford], Esteemed journalists : Karan Thapar, Najam Sethi, G ideon Levy, and Hassan Nisar, Hamid Mir, Sajida Basharat, Alamgir Khan.

LIKE Dr. M Jawad Khan, Rabo, Dee, Haleema, Hussain, Salar, Zilli, Juniper, Amina Fahim, Fahim Khan, Imran Khan [Europe], Sahar, Vishnu, Sannan, Haniya, Toby, Hamza, Sharayar, Zaeem, and millions by millions the world over.

! BY ANY AND - EVEN ALL MEASURES ! - VIVIAN SILVER WAS one of Humanity's greatest of daughters, as she went about an unrelenting build of Sand Castles for : '' A Hundred Ways To Peace ''.

SOMETIMES TRUTH could come from the mouths of young students. This time it came from Vivian Silver's two small, student sons.

They had made a friend of Nassar, a Palestinian labourer who worked at their kibbutz, and wondered why, after the second intifada, he wasn't working for them anymore.

She explained that he had no permit to come over now. '' Why not? '' one son wondered. '' Because there is a big conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.'' '' What is it over? '' '' Land,'' she told him.

In Hebrew the words for '' Earth '' and Land '' were the same. So her son went off, fetched a bucket, filled it with earth, and returned. '' Here,'' he said. '' Give to Nassar, so he can come back.''

How simple peace could be, she thought. How uncomplicated, if it were only a matter of talking, sharing and helping. She spent 50 years with the thought in her head, trying all the ways she could think of to bring neighbours together.

For neighbours they were, with only four and a half kilometers separating her kibbutz, Be'eri, from the Gaza Strip.

What was home to her was also home to them. No one intended to move anywhere. It made no sense to fight, only to live in mutual respect and freedom.

On the other side were women like herself, mothers and children, who wanted nothing more than to bring them up, happy, healthy and in peace.

She began to help the Bedouin she found camped almost in her front yard at Be'eri, as poor as if they were in some pocket of India and Africa. And she started to work with Palestinians in any way she could, because that gave peace more of a chance.

Her work burgeoned. She gave Palestinians jobs on the kibbutz, and founded a group called ''Creating Peace'' which encouraged cross-border links between traders and artisans.

In 1998 she became executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategic Studies of Peace and Development, later in partnership with Amal Elsana AIh'jooj, a Palestinian. In 2011 they won an international award. 

She spent a lot of time in Gaza in the late 1990s, making friends there ; it infuriated her when people said that Israel had '' no partner on the other side.''

The war with Gaza in 2014 was the worst. It lasted 50 days, the killing and maiming, the destruction and deep psychological damage on both sides.

Yet the idea that war would bring peace had been proved false time and time again. When were the two parties going to come to their senses and stop this?

She had never expected to become a peace activist, though she knew some cause would consume her. When she was younger, growing up in Canada and, for a while, in New York, women's rights were her chief passion.

To make sure her Palestinian workers, who now could not cross, were not destitute, she had to take their money to the checkpoint. She had to go there, too, to pick up the sick Palestinians she would then drive to hospitals in Jerusalem.

By 2014 she felt that nothing was working. It was time to turn to women power. She would help build up a movement of Israeli and Palestinian women who would work together if they could, and would also keep in the public eye by marching and appealing.

Her branch, the Israeli side, now with around 45,000 Jewish and Arab-Israeli women, was called Women Wage Peace. The Palestinian branch was called Women of the Sun.

In a mass rally on October 4th they gathered at the ''separation wall'' in Bethlehem, walked hand in hand to the Haas Promenade in Jerusalem and mustered on the shore of the Dead Sea, the WWP members in white shirts with turquoise ribbons and the slogan ''Peace is possible''.

At the Dead Sea beach, against a fence hung with peace quilts, sympathetic female diplomats and representatives of Israel, Palestine, the United States and several European countries sat at a round table to talk.

It was a symbolic, triumphant moment. The peace wagers dispersed with hugs and loud laughter.

What, an interviewer asked her son Yonatan later, would she have said about this new war, and the atrocities that had launched it? He knew the answer at once, without equivocation :  

'' That this is the outcome....... of not striving for peace.''

With deep mourning and sadness of this publishing. The World Students Society requests H.E. President Joe Biden to do, whatever he can, for an immediate end to this war and an equitable settlement. The World Students Society also thanks The Economist.

With most respectful dedication to the Leaders of the world and then Mankind, Students, Professors and Teachers. See You all on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world - wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless