What do the parents from the Bereaved Families Forum talk about when they do school presentations? | Just Vision Skip to main content

What do the parents from the Bereaved Families Forum talk about when they do school presentations?

Ofer Shinar 14

What do the parents from the Bereaved Families Forum talk about when they do school presentations?

I think that the most important thing is that they are not working with the rational side. It's not the content. It's the feelings that they are able to evoke. They are able to allow people to relieve some of the pain that they feel, because both societies are hurting, it's very difficult to live here. It doesn't matter whether you are Israeli or Palestinian, and whether you are Israeli living in Jerusalem or in a village. People are frightened and people do not want to be frightened. People seek hope; it's human to search for hope. And in a way, when bereaved parents go to a high school and talk about their own pain, and talk about how his own pain allows him to think a little bit about the other side, and how he discovered that other people on the other side are not so different, there is hope, because people can talk, they don't have to be friends but they can talk and realize the other side does not want further suffering, at least many of them. That's a novel concept, and that allows for an emotional breakthrough. Getting back to what Daphna Golan Agnon is saying, it's not the knowledge that is missing. People know, people are aware, but people are frightened and they need something else, which is not knowledge.