We, Belgian Jews and Jews living in Belgium,\nare shocked and pained by the violent escalation in Israel\/Palestine and the\nhundreds of lives lost in the last days. We mourn the deaths, wounds and\ninhuman suffer of family members, friends, fellow activists, and their loved\nones, in Israel and in Gaza. As the rabbis say in the Talmud, and as expressed\nin the Quran, each lost soul is an entire world, and saving a soul is like\nsaving an entire world. In these difficult times, we wish to stop this loss of\nlives and work for uprooting the causes of the current wave of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The events of the past days demonstrate a\nfailure of the Israeli years-long strategy to lock 2.3 million people in a\nbesieged territory surrounded by fences, surveillance mechanisms and snipers,\nregularly bombarded, and without any possibility to live dignified life. The\nroot of the violence that we see now is oppression: millions of Palestinians in\nGaza, as in other parts of the Occupied Palestinian territories, continue to\nlive for decades under the heel of the Israeli army, which determines almost\nevery aspect of their lives. While Biden, Netanyahu and Arab leaders are trying\nto strike diplomatic deals behind the back of the Palestinians and at their\nexpense, the unfolding events prove that any such \u2018deals\u2019 are bound to fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Israeli civilians who lost their lives in\nthe last days are the victims of these failed strategies and of the ongoing\noppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli governments and military forces.\nIntensifying the oppression and the violence will only bring more terror and\nhorror to Israelis and Palestinians alike. The only way to guarantee security\nand prosperity to citizens on both sides is to work tirelessly towards a future\nof real freedom and justice to all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We call for immediate de-escalation, an end\nto the bombing of civilian population and humanitarian infrastructures, a\nrelease of civilian prisoners, an exchange of prisoners of war, and direct\nnegotiations between Israel and the Gaza-based government and all fractions of\nthe Palestinian leadership. The Belgian government and the EU should put their\nefforts in this direction, in concrete action to push the Israeli government\ntowards a sustainable solution, instead of fueling the violence with\nirresponsible rhetoric and the continuation of their year-long negligence of\nthe real problems that are at stake in Israel\/Palestine. But more importantly,\nwe know that only dedicated work of civilians from both sides to dismantle the\nstructures of Apartheid and oppression could lead the way for the wounded land\nto heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We, Belgian Jews and Jews living in Belgium, are shocked and pained by the violent escalation in Israel\/Palestine and the hundreds of lives lost in the last days. We mourn the deaths, wounds and inhuman suffer of family members, friends, fellow activists, and their loved ones, in Israel and in Gaza. As the rabbis say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eajs.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}