In Jerusalem, 5,000 Israelis to rebuild a movement for peace – Liberation

« War must stop now. » A thunderous applause welcomes this still taboo sentence in Israel on Friday morning. The large room in the Binyanei Hauma Congress Center in Jerusalem is full: it is undoubtedly the largest gathering for peace in Israel since the last century. 5,000 people came, at the call of a coalition of 60 organizations, around a simple slogan: the time has come.

In the large entrance hall, a constant hubbub would almost cover the oriental flights of musicians who follow one another in one of the rooms. All around, there are mandalas for peace, Bedouin embroidery to live together, an installation of testimonies from former soldiers. There are whole bookstores of radical literature. There are workshops to imagine possible future. Others where small groups speak of racism and work, education, history, Jerusalem and the peace process in Ireland. It is impossible to see everything, to listen to everything. But that is not the essential: « This is not what happened today that counts, it is what will happen tomorrow », Said with a smile, at the end of the day, the activist Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed and their bodies burned in their house in the village of Netiv Haasara on October 7.

The Congress Center is a stone’s throw from the central station in Jerusalem, where the soldiers abound. Oddly, despite the violent activism of the Israeli far right