Photo: Nimrod Kerrett.

Not only abroad, but also within his own country, Israels’ Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is finally facing growing and substantial protests against his war in Gaza. After he broke the ceasefire on March 18 and launched a new attack on Gaza, a number of women took the initiative to set up ‘Action for Children’.

“We woke up to the horrifying news that over 100 children had been killed in Gaza that very night. The four of us—myself, Amit, Alma, and Danielle—were devastated. We couldn’t stop crying. We felt we had to do something. We, Israeli Jews are also against this terror and this oppression. This matters. The memory of Shoah is alive for us and Never Again also means Never Again for the Palestinians as well” says Neora Shem (71).

Together with Amit Shiloh, Alma Beck, and Danielle Cantor she took the initiative to a silent protest against the killing of Palestinian children. The idea of children being “forcibly involved”—a term borrowed from The Daily Page—anchors the group’s message. “The Israeli military and media often describe victims as ‘uninvolved,’” Shem says, “it means that the children, and other civilians, who die can’t choose whether they are involved. But their deaths involve them! This challenges the rhetoric of dividing people to combatantsand uninvolved, so often used in the Israeli media. When a child dies, they are involved, because we’ve involved them. A child is a child is a child.”

How did your protest started?

“We printed the photos of the dead children, sourced from The Daily Page, a website maintained by Adi Argov who has been documenting child deaths in the Israel-Palestine conflict for over four years. We used our home printers, and stood in silence the next day, holding the images and candles. No megaphones, no chants, no signs, no slogans, no flags, no political parties. Just our silent bodies. We came together in grief. Protesters wear plain clothes, hold images of killed children, and light memorial candles. The simplicity is key.”

How........

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