Israel's Women in Black

By Flore de Preneuf, Salon. Posted April 11, 2002.

It's cold and muddy. Israeli soldiers have just fired tear gas and percussion grenades at a large crowd of peace activists gathered at the entrance of Ramallah to protest Israel's military operations in the West Bank. Aviva Weisgal, an Israeli mother of two, is doubled over, crouching between parked cars and trees, trying to escape the noxious cloud without giving in to panic.

"Now that's real bravery," she says between coughs, referring sarcastically to the soldiers' show of force against unarmed demonstrators. Nearby, an old Palestinian woman, overcome with stinging fumes, falls hard to the ground. People scream for a doctor, men and women share water and onions to recover their breath. A little boy watches and visibly shakes with fear.

Days earlier, in her home on a kibbutz just west of the city, pacifist Malka Tezmach takes a quiet, but equally provocative stand against the violence. Her son, Tal, was killed in his sleep by a Palestinian commando on March 19 while serving in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley. Malka, her voice infused with terrible grief, refuses to call for revenge. Instead, she makes statements that infuriate those who demand retaliation.

"We saw pictures on television of the terrorists who came [to the Israeli training camp where Tal was serving]," says Tzemach, a 49-year-old nurse with short red hair and a weary expression that reflects strength and exhaustion. "I know people who saw them. Many curse them. But I was so angry and I'm so angry still that I can't direct my anger at them specifically. I'm angry at the bad people on both sides. I'm angry at the situation.

"I don't understand how for so many years we've allowed people to be killed without doing anything to stop it," she goes on. "My fear now is that a friend of Tal's will be killed. I can't tolerate that even a friend of his friends will get killed. How will we keep on living through all the loss?"

Weisgal and Tzemach are members of Women in Black, a group of women who have held silent vigils for peace at major intersections around the country at the same hour every week for almost 15 years. In the past, the demonstrations have been uneventful, rarely marred by conflict more serious than name-calling. But in these chaotic times, marked by seemingly endless bloodshed on Israeli and Palestinian sides, women like Weisgal and Tzemach are coming out in greater -- and louder -- numbers, risking more than ever to voice opposition to what they see as a senseless war.

On Wednesday, Jewish and Israeli Arab women were supposed to march from Jerusalem to Kalandia, a checkpoint at the entrance of the West Bank city of Ramallah, to show solidarity with a Palestinian women's group stuck on the other side. But a special army roadblock kept the women away from the Kalandia checkpoint, and the peace rally became confrontational when it was hijacked by more aggressive male demonstrators and politicians.

Despite the setbacks, turnout for the march was impressive (more than 2,000 people showed up), and it emboldened women trying to throw a wrench into the Israeli-Palestinian war machine. "There's a growing number of women who are saying: 'Enough, I don't want to take part in this,'" says rally participant Magdalena Hefetz, a member of Women for Human Rights, an Israeli group founded last year that monitors the behavior of Israeli soldiers at checkpoints.

A growing number of Israeli pacifist women, many of them anxious mothers with draft-age children, are bringing their nonviolent message to bear on a bloody, testosterone-charged conflict. They are challenged by others, including Women in Green, a group based in a West Bank settlement that favors continued military response and retaliation. But as Israeli military and political figures have raised the volume on calls for more punitive strikes and wide-scale military actions, women against the war have responded with new vigor, publicly questioning the rationale of aggressive policies that carry a high cost in human lives.

It is difficult, at this point, to say exactly how many Israeli women are currently engaged in the fight for peace. Women in Black is not an organization of card-carrying members but rather a peace network that provides a framework for women wanting to express opposition to war and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The group was inspired by Argentinian "mothers of the disappeared" who have gathered every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires for more than two decades to demand news of their missing children. Women in Black now has chapters around the world -- in the U.S., England, Italy and also in Serbia, where women bravely protested against Belgrade's violent tactics.

Weisgal says she doesn't know how many women participate in vigils in Israel these days. At her particular intersection, on a secondary road south of Jerusalem, about nine women show up every Friday. But Weisgal believes the movement is gaining momentum. "After a gap of several years when we thought peace was on track, women are returning to the vigil [organized by Women in Black]," she says, in the minutes before tear gas breaks up the rally. "It's hard because every five minutes you hear about a new suicide attack, and people who used to drive by our signs saying 'Stupid women' are now much more aggressive towards us.

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