Coalition of mothers march to memorial for slain female soldiers with demand to end war

A coalition of mothers marches leads a march to a site near the Gaza border memorializing female soldiers killed at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023, to launch a new movement aimed at stopping the war in Gaza and returning the remaining 50 hostages.

The women will camp for at least five days next to Kibbutz Sa’ad in southern Israel.

On the night between Thursday and Friday, Israel’s war in Gaza took a new turn, when the security cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take over the densely populated Gaza City.

The decision came in spite of warnings from the IDF that such an operation would risk the lives of the remaining hostages and Israeli soldiers, and would likely worsen the humanitarian situation for Gazan civilians.

Omer Steinmetz Haskel, from the women’s group, Building an Alternative, says the movement is inspired by the “Four Mothers” campaign launched in 1997 to bring the IDF out of southern Lebanon — something the Israeli leadership finally ordered in May 2000, with the Four Mothers earning much of the credit.

Orna Shimoni, one of the original Four Mothers, addresses Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, suggesting that he present the prime minister with additional alternatives that do not involve occupation.

Israel has already proposed a hostage deal, she says, which can be used to end the war. “We are one step away from a clearly illegal order that must not be carried out,” she states.

Steinitz Haskel says that the memorial for the fallen female soldiers marks not only the place where blood was shed, but where a line was also broken “between Israel and Gaza, between responsibility and lawlessness, between human life and moral loss.”

She continues, “On October 7, Israel entered the most just war there is. Our army fought bravely. It scored great military achievements. But almost two years have passed, and these achievements have not been translated into any diplomatic reality.”

“Instead of using this military power to bring about an agreement that will return the kidnapped and end the war, this government insists on continuing a political war.”

She charges that the government has chosen ” the ideology of eternal war and the death of soldiers over human lives.”

“We will be here until our leaders choose life, not death,” she pledges. “And we will remember, as the four mothers remembered then, that there is no victory without life, and no security without freedom. This struggle will not end until the last of the kidnapped men and women return home, alive.”

Sigal Price, whose daughter, Staff Sgt. Noa Price was killed on October 7, when Hamas terrorists overran the Nahal Oz military outpost, also addresses the crowd.

“Here at the memorial we erected in their memory, I, Sigal, mother of Noa Price, would like to express the pain of all the bereaved families, call for the return of the kidnapped and an end to the war, and pray for the safety of the regular and reserve soldiers who have been fighting bravely and with sacrifice for almost two years, and for the recovery of all those wounded in body and mind,” she says.