Today on Twitter, Ambassador Majed Bamya, the Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, New York, wrote a personal plea on X:
A personal post
For the first time in my life, I am ashamed as I pronounce the word “peace”. As if we could just move on after all these massacres. As if the lives of our children were not sacred enough to warrant a response. Who ever asked the other side to “just turn the page”? How many times did someone explain to me “they had to respond”…and I stopped myself from screaming “are you sure you want to go down that path!”
I was not born a pacifist. I became one. Over time. It was not self-evident. My environment, my anger, my passion, even my reason coalesced against such a path. But I still found my steps always taking me back to it. And I have resisted for four months now the temptation to leave it even when everything was falling apart.
All this violence made me want to believe that hanging on to some sense of humanity, of decency, to keep faith that a different future was possible, would suffice. I debated with people justifying the mass murder of my people and never reciprocated. I saw them outraged for the pain they endured never the pain they inflicted and tried to convince myself that defending my cause while recognizing all the pain and converging all the hopes was the only way forward.
But my people are still being killed. Nothing seems to stop it.
I try to imagine how I would tell the people under the bombs that I believe in peace at a time where it is in shreds and they are the first victims. There are no bombs here, no famine, no tents, no children shivering from fear. Who am I to talk about peace? For the first time in my life I am ashamed of thinking that peace could stop this war. That peace could save us all. I feel delusional, naive, useless. I believed, for many reasons, that freedom and peace must be pursued with the same level of commitment for hope to prevail. I am trying now to remember the reasons in my own journey that shaped within me this belief in the first place to try and restore my faith. I hope and trust I will succeed. But tonight, I cannot.