Tel Aviv, Israel —
The location of the ceremony was kept secret until the end. Additional screening locations were open only to registered participants due to fears of violence and harassment. Organizers say it was the only way to hold the event.
In a region torn by decades of conflict and more than two years of war, a group of Israelis and Palestinians came together both physically and virtually Monday night to do something increasingly unusual. It was about grieving together and recognizing each other’s grief and loss.
The annual Israeli-Palestinian joint memorial service, held on the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day, is now in its 21st year, connecting families on both sides of a conflict that shows no end in sight.
“The pain does not belong to one mother or one person,” said Kurd Hoshie from the Palestinian city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Hosier said one of his sons was killed by Israeli military gunfire in January 2023, and the second is in Israeli administrative detention.
“Despite all the losses, we chose the path to peace… because blood begets more blood,” she said in a video message.
The event is hosted by Parents Circle Families Forum and Combat for Peace, two grassroots Israeli-Palestinian organizations focused on dialogue and reconciliation. Organizers said about 1,000 Jewish and Palestinian Israelis attended the main rally in Tel Aviv, as well as a parallel ceremony in the West Bank city of Jericho, and screenings reached tens of thousands more in Israel and around the world.
“I am here today because there is hope here,” said Liora Eilon, 73, a Kfar Azha massacre survivor who lost her son Tal in a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. “This is a place that gives me the strength to believe that one day we will talk and we will come to an end.”
The ceremony was held in Hebrew and Arabic and featured bilingual songs, readings by Israeli poet Haim Nachman Bialik and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and personal testimonies. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, barred from entering and attending Israel in person, sent prerecorded video messages.
“We Palestinians are human beings like everyone else,” said Nahir Hanouna, a Gaza native who lost several family members in the war, in one such message. “We want to live in peace and freedom and raise our children without fear.”
That hope is a powerful expression of defiance in the face of the realities of war and widespread sentiment in Israeli and Palestinian public opinion. The October 7 attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza killed more than 72,000 Palestinians. The West Bank has also seen a surge in settler violence in recent months.
A March poll by Tel Aviv University found that only 26% of Jewish Israelis support negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and only 13% believe negotiations could lead to peace within a few years. In a Gallup poll conducted in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2025, only 23% of respondents said they believed there would be lasting peace with Israel.
Against this backdrop, the annual event is increasingly becoming a political flashpoint.
Organizers are currently holding Israeli rallies in private venues under tight security and broadcasting them to multiple sites for those who wish to participate remotely. Some of these places are subject to intimidation and violence.
This year, right-wing activists with ties to key figures in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government identified a screening venue in southern Tel Aviv, played loud music and chanted “Death to the Left”.
Meanwhile, Likud members demanded that public broadcaster run an ad promoting the ceremony as a “provocation disguised as reconciliation.”
Last year, right-wing demonstrators stormed the Reform Synagogue in Ra’anana, where a screening was being held, chanting “Death to the Arabs” and “May your villages burn.” Police intervened, but prosecutors did not file charges.
However, this year’s participants were undaunted and remained steadfast in their belief in dialogue, reconciliation and, one day, peace.
Ayala Metzger, whose relatives were abducted to Gaza on October 7 and whose father-in-law Yoram Metzger was later killed in Hamas captivity, said she chose to act “so that his death would not be in vain.”
Metzger, who was attending the ceremony for the first time, told CNN that he came to “amplify the voice of reason,” although he acknowledged that his opinion is currently one of a small minority.
“We can’t just continue to live here and die,” she said. “Returning to anger, hatred and revenge keeps us stuck in the same cycle. It solves nothing. What we need is a coalition of humans. People who want to live here, not hate each other.”
