French and Moroccan directors Hanna Assouline and Sonia Terrab, one Jewish, the other Muslim, signed “Resist for Peace”. A documentary that shows how Israeli and Palestinian peace activists maintain hope and continue their fight despite the current conflict.
On October 4, 2023, just hours before Hamas attacks in Israel, women from around the world marched for peace in Jerusalem. Among the participants in this peaceful march, Senegalese, Moroccan, Iranian, Ukrainian, Uighur and, of course, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians present to make their voices heard and call on leaders to put an end to the conflict which pits their two peoples against each other.
Screened in Geneva on November 13 and available online on the French platform Public Sénate, the documentary by Hanna Assouline and Sonia Terrab “Resist for Peace” opens with images of this October 4 march. During the same period, the directors also traveled the region for a week to meet activists on the ground, committed on a daily basis to peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.
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Before and after October 7
“We returned to faith nourished by the hope, resilience, strength and courage of all these activists, but also with a strong awareness of the issues and difficulties that these two peoples had already been experiencing for decades on this land” , indicates Hanna Assouline in the Forum show on November 13.
After the attacks of October 7, the two women returned to the field to find these tireless peace activists. “We were afraid to find them dejected, to see that they had lost hope, but on the contrary, they believed in it more than ever and had even more strength to fight,” testifies Sonia Terrab. Even if their pain is palpable, these people are driven by an extremely strong feeling of responsibility.
>> Listen to the interview with Hanna Assouline and Sonia Terrab:
Carry on despite the heartbreak
The film shows the testimony of Yonatan Zeigen who was committed to reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians after the death of his mother, Vivian Silver. This peace activist was killed during the October 7 attacks at her home in Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel. Yonatan found in himself the resilience and strength necessary to continue, against all odds, his mother’s fight.
“I asked myself what I was supposed to do with this helplessness. Maybe we can use this terrible way of losing a loved one to say that enough is enough and we don’t want to lose any more “, he testifies in the documentary.
>> Also see, the 7:30 p.m. topic dedicated to the documentary:
Maintain the dialogue
From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, from Ramallah to Bethlehem, “Resisting for Peace” shows that women and men continue, in the midst of chaos, to forge links between peoples. To help spread the message of peace, maintaining dialogue seems fundamental. “This war between Palestinians and Israelis has something catastrophic: the dehumanization of the other, the inability to put a name or a face to this other who we consider as an enemy or as a threat,” explains Hanna Assouline.
For her, there is a real need to create bridges between communities who, sometimes, live side by side, without ever meeting other than through a fantasy, a soldier, at a checkpoint or through the distant image of a Threatening Palestinian who would, inevitably, be behind Hamas.
Today, every Friday, thousands of people take to the streets of Tel Aviv to demand a ceasefire. “That’s also why we wanted to make this film (..). [Pour montrer] that these people exist, that they are there and that they act. It has become almost a duty to make them audible and carry their voice,” concludes Sonia Terrab.
Comments collected by Coralie Claude and Valentin Emery
Adaptation web: Melissa Härtel
