Meanwhile, retribution in Gaza was about to commence. Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant closed Gaza off to everything from food to electricity. He incited the Israeli public with the nefarious comment, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." Netanyahu's rallying cry was, "Total victory over Hamas."
Now it was the turn of the Israelis to call their Palestinian companions to find out how they were and if they were safe. There are images of dead Palestinian children and babies, as well as limb extremities partially exposed from under the rubble of destroyed construction. A widely disseminated clip that had circulated on American news media shows a Palestinian man with his hands lifted to the sky. He asks repeatedly in despair, "Where is the humanity?"
Nothing was more visceral than seeing Palestinian bodies wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, lined up in a ditch, then covered with dirt pushed forward by a bulldozer. It was impossible not to visualize the parallel of dead European Jews in shallow graves.
Six days after October 7, CFP decided to do a group Zoom. It wasn't easy.
Iris Gur, an educator and former school principal, had an opening request: "Recognize my pain now."
There was fragmentation within the group. They lost people. Some went to the army , a "red line" in CFP. Suliman Khatib, who spoke of his allegiance to the core values of CFP, said, "You can't step away from peace when it gets more difficult." He referenced his ongoing suffering from checkpoints, arrests, and stolen land.
Two weeks later, thirty CFP members met for an entire weekend. They openly shared their rawest emotions from the "very first hours and moments of October 7". The question, "How can we continue together?" was the top concern. There was anger, grief, fighting, and "being human together". But it was "words, not bullets".
"You acknowledge the pain," Iris Gur stated. "Then you move forward."
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