Hamas killed my parents, but Israel’s war is not the answer

On the morning of October 7, I woke up around 7:30am to find a message on our family WhatsApp group from my parents explaining that they heard sirens and moved into their safe room. As they often face threats and hear sirens where they live, I wasn’t immediately worried.

I made my morning coffee and turned on the news. This is when I learned that Hamas was intruding on Israeli villages and became worried. I immediately called my father. It was 7:35am. He picked up and told me, “Yes, Maoz we are in the safe room. We hear them shooting. That’s it.”

I called them again 10 minutes later, just after 7:45am. Neither my father nor my mother picked up. I’ve not heard from them again.

Now, I am a peace activist.

Perhaps it was not what I was meant to be, but that’s what the death of my parents made me. There is an understanding in my family that we must keep our parents’ legacy.

My parents were people of peace. They did not care about anyone’s race, age or colour. They treated everyone equally, they treated everyone as they wanted to be treated. They were people of hope. So I became a peace activist to keep alive their legacy.

Today, Israel is repeating an old mistake it made many times in the last century. We must stop it. Revenge is not going to bring my parents back to life. It is not going to bring back other Israelis and Palestinians killed either.

It is going to do the opposite. It is going to cause more casualties. It is going to bring more death.

We must break the cycle.

Today, I am crying for everyone, every single human being suffering because of this bloody cycle.

I’m against blame games – I’m against efforts to determine who has more victims, who is suffering the most.

We are all suffering. Let’s focus on stopping the suffering.

Let’s stop this war.