‘Blood only brings more blood’: Israelis and Palestinians share grief under veil of secrecy

By Tal Shalev, CNN

Tel Aviv, Israel (CNN) — The location of the ceremony was kept secret until the last moment. Additional screening sites were disclosed only to registered participants, for fear of violence and harassment. It was, organizers said, the only way to hold the event at all.

In a region riven by decades of conflict and more than two years of war, a group of Israelis and Palestinians came together Monday evening – physically and virtually – to do something increasingly rare: mourn together and recognize each other’s grief and loss.

Held on the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day, the annual Israeli-Palestinian joint memorial ceremony, now in its 21st year, connects bereaved families from both sides of a conflict that shows no signs of ending.

“Pain does not belong to one mother or one people,” said Khuloud Hoshieh from the Palestinian city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Hoshieh says one of her sons was killed by Israeli military gunfire in January 2023, while a second is held in Israeli administrative detention.

“We have chosen the path of peace, despite all the losses… because blood only brings more blood,” she said in a video message.

The event is organized by two grassroots Israeli-Palestinian organizations focused on dialogue and reconciliation, the Parents Circle Families Forum and Combatants for Peace. Organizers say around 1,000 Jewish and Palestinian Israelis attended the main gathering in Tel Aviv alongside a parallel ceremony in the West Bank city of Jericho, while screenings in Israel and across the globe reached tens of thousands more.

“Today I am here because this is where hope is,” said Liora Eilon, 73, a survivor of the Kfar Aza massacre whose son Tal was killed in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. “This is a place that gives me the strength to believe that one day we will speak – and it will end.”

The ceremony was conducted in Hebrew and Arabic, with bilingual songs, readings from Israeli poet Haim Nahman Bialik and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and personal testimonies. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, barred from entering Israel and attending in person, sent prerecorded video messages.

“We Palestinians are human beings like everyone else,” Nahil Hanouna from Gaza, who lost multiple family members in the war, said in one such message. “We want to live in peace and freedom, to raise our children without fear.”

That hope is a powerful statement of defiance in the face of the realities of war and the broader sentiment in Israeli and Palestinian public opinion. The October 7 attacks killed more than 1,200 Israelis, while Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza killed more than 72,000 Palestinians. In recent months, settler violence has also surged in the West Bank.

A March survey by Tel Aviv University found that just 26% of Jewish Israelis support negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and only 13% believe talks could lead to peace in the coming years. A 2025 Gallup survey in the West Bank and East Jerusalem found that only 23% of respondents said permanent peace with Israel would ever be achieved.

Against that backdrop, the annual event has increasingly become a political flashpoint.

Organizers now hold the Israeli gathering at undisclosed venues and under tight security, broadcasting to multiple sites for those who wish to participate remotely. Some of these locations have faced threats and violence.

This year, right-wing activists linked to key figures in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government located a screening site in south Tel Aviv, blasting loud music and chanting “Death to leftists.”

Likud lawmakers, meanwhile, demanded that the public broadcaster pull a promotional advertisement for the ceremony, calling it “a provocation disguised as reconciliation.”

Last year, right-wing protesters broke into a reform synagogue in the city of Raanana hosting a screening, shouting “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn.” Police intervened, but prosecutors never filed indictments.

But participants this year remained undeterred, steadfast in their belief in dialogue, reconciliation, and – one day – peace.

Ayala Metzger, whose relatives were abducted to Gaza on October 7 and whose father-in-law, Yoram Metzger, was later killed in Hamas captivity, said she chose to act so that “his death will not be in vain.”

Attending the ceremony for the first time, Metzger told CNN she came to “amplify the voice of reason,” even as she acknowledged her view is right now one of a tiny minority.

“We cannot go on living here only by dying all the time,” she said. “Returning to anger, hatred and revenge keeps us in the same cycle. It doesn’t solve anything. What we need is a coalition of human beings – people who want to live here, not hate one another.”

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