Holding placards calling for “justice,” “trust” and “peace”, religious leaders led hundreds of peace activists, Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze in a march in Jerusalem on Monday. Source: OSV News.
The march came days after thousands of Israeli ultra-nationalists chanting racist slogans clashed with Palestinian residents in the Old City during the annual Jerusalem Day’s Flag Parade on May 14.
The interfaith march of the Forum for Human Rights, now in its fourth year, is organised by religious organisations as an alternative to the nationalist Flag Parade.
The Flag Parade has become increasingly violent, with mainly young settlers marching through the Muslim Quarter under heavy police presence and physically and verbally harassing the few Palestinian residents who have not locked their shops or remained at home.
Jerusalem Day commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem during the 1967 war, bringing Jordanian-held East Jerusalem under Israeli control together with West Jerusalem.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, co-chair of the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, is one of the interfaith march organisers.
“We march this evening out of a deep commitment to the sanctity of life. To the sanctity of every human life. To the ability to see an entire world within every woman, man and child,” Rabbi Lau-Lavie said at the opening of the march in the courtyard of the historic YMCA building just outside the Old City.
“Precisely in these days when it is so easy to become accustomed to pain, to fear and to the language that divides us, we seek to remind ourselves and those around us that life precedes every conflict, and that preserving our humanity is a spiritual, moral and courageous act.”
Women religious, priests and rabbis gathered on the grounds of the YMCA alongside young people with piercings, families and ultra-Orthodox Jews during the opening ceremony, which included a prayer asking for God’s mercy sung in Aramaic by Jerusalem Christian resident Nadeen Fanous.
Sr Monica Dullmann, a German Sister of St Joseph of the Apparition who has lived in Jerusalem for decades, said she was happy to see so many people marching for “peace, friendship and trust”.
“I believe in peace and justice, and it is nice to be together with others who feel the same way and together we will be stronger,” she said. “I have always believed peace is possible and I still believe it.”
FULL STORY
Interfaith peace march in Jerusalem counters rising violence and division (By Judith Sudilovsky, OSV News)
