Space Coast peace activists, community leaders struggle as Israeli-Hamas war continues

For Raed Alshaibi, the images from Gaza have been crushing and talk of peace, fleeting.

With each passing day of the Israel-Hamas war, the scenes of mothers mourning for bloodied children pulled out of bombed-out buildings and the dense cityscape illuminated by Israeli airstrikes have fed the fears of the Brevard community advocate that world governments would do little to stop the destruction.

Even with Israel and Hamas agreeing to a brief pause in fighting, Alshaibi, a former president of Space Coast Progressive Alliance, worries that war will march on, not only in the Holy Land but in the battle-scarred hearts and minds of supporters of either side.

“Many people today wonder how the world could have allowed monumental catastrophes of violence like the Holocaust to occur during their lifetime,” said Alshaibi, a Palestinian whose family roots are in the West Bank city of Nablus. He calls what's happening in Gaza, with nearly 12,000 dead, "a genocide."

"And a world that is saying that that's OK," he said.

On Oct. 7, a coordinated terrorist attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel left nearly 1,500 Israelis dead and more than 200 kidnapped. The dead and kidnapped include mothers, children, young people and grandmothers. That triggered the Israeli response.

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"More light is needed now than ever," said 17-year-old Ethan Bergman of Temple Beth Sholom in Melbourne, speaking to an attentive crowd about Jewish values centered on peace at a recent gathering. For peace advocates, the war and the lingering contentions between those living in Israel and Palestine remains especially painful to navigate.

In Brevard, prayers for peace from Alshaibi and other Space Coast peace advocates this Thanksgiving are bracketed by the reality of the war and the increase of anti-Israel slogans, even violence among protesters on American college campuses and streets.

“Peacemakers are those who actively work to bring about reconciliation, we need to become instruments of peace,” Pastor Haywood Davidson of Greater Mount Olive A.M.E. Church in Merritt Island said during a somber reading during the United in Thanksgiving Service livestreamed Tuesday night at Suntree United Methodist Church.

The United in Thanksgiving event's message: A lasting peace could end the recriminations and bitter clashes over a land deemed holy by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It could bring true healing. Several of the speakers spoke of their empathy for those killed and their demand for justice and peace.

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Rabbi Patricia Hickman, one of the cofounders of Interfaith United, the group sponsoring the event, said working for peace and tearing down the walls of division must continue.

“I’m praying for peace and actively trying to bring about peace,” said Hickman, who over the years as rabbi with Temple Israel has organized prayer rallies with Muslims, Jews and others calling for peace and healing.

The images out of Israel remain difficult to bear, Hickman said, from the constant rocket fire by militants out of Lebanon and Gaza to horrific reports from Israeli medical examiners and police of Israelis being raped, burned and shot to death or paraded through the streets with cheering crowds looking on.

Even the peacemakers were targeted, Hickman pointed out.

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One of the victims on Oct. 7 was a 74-year-old Canadian Israeli peace activist,  Vivian Silver, who co-founded the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation. Silver was killed by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri, a small enclave a short distance on the border with Gaza, according to reports out of Israel.

“I’m devastated from it, especially with Vivian being killed on her kibbutz right outside of Gaza. She was the epitome of bridge builder and was a peace activist,” Hickman said. “She had so many friends in Gaza. At her funeral were Palestinian and Israeli women."

At the same time, Hickman is concerned about the growing antisemitism that has sprung up in the wake of pro-Palestinian rallies crowding the streets of London, Paris, Turkey, Yemen, New York and other sites worldwide.

There are death threats and online trolling of Jewish students. Posters of women, babies and others kidnapped by Hamas have been torn down on college campuses and along city streets as documented by a number of viral videos and police reports.

"I personally don't feel safe here anymore. And I guess I had that illusion that we could go to Israel and be safe there, but no more. As Jews we are horrified that here in the U.S., our home, that we see so much hatred," Hickman said.

The messages are striking, with some calling Israel — with ties to the land stretching back over 3,000 years — occupiers and colonialists in Jerusalem and Judea, now known as the West Bank.

Hickman pointed to the history of how antisemitism fueled hatred against the Jews and ultimately led to Jewish communities being exiled from European, Arab and North African nations along with massacres and the Holocaust in Germany where six million Jews were killed as part of Hitler’s genocidal, ‘‘final solution.

Then there is the long history of the Jewish state battling back efforts by its Arab neighbors to destroy the nation, from the time that Israel formed in 1948 to the 1973 Yom Kippur. The war with Hamas is the latest to embroil the area over 75 years, displacing Palestinians, including many who left their homes for refugee camps and a diaspora that left for surrounding nations. Gaza's border with Egypt and Israel remains closed as a matter of security, both nations say.

Today, antisemitism continues to rise in the U.S. as the Palestinian cause reaches a new generation through unfiltered, non-fact-checked TikTok videos and other social media posts.

“I want my Israel to survive and I want there to be a place for Palestine,” Hickman said.

In Brevard, the pro-Palestinian protests have been muted, but the concerns remain. Some with ties to the Palestinian territories also talk of death threats, with one restaurateur sharing a story of how the window to their restaurant was shattered with a brick.

Alshaibi traces his family history back seven generations in the Holy Land, living just north of Jerusalem in Palestinian territory. He says he still owns 10 acres of land that borders an Israeli community that he cannot freely walk to. But the greater problem remains: what he says is Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its history of large-scale retaliation that only hardens the resolve of groups like Hamas.

“The Israeli philosophy has been that to deter Palestinians from fighting back, we must hit them harder and harder. And each time that they have done that, the Palestinian fighters in Gaza have demonstrated greater capabilities,” Alshaibi said.

“At the same time, Palestinians have not become less opposed to what Israel is doing to them. They’ve only become more opposed. So there is something fundamentally broken here."

He said to achieve a true peace, an understanding of conditions for Palestinians is needed. Alshaibi says 70% of the Gazan people are refugees, forced out of their homes in 1948 as Arab nations rose to oppose the formation of Israel.  Most are still living in refugee camps.

“To be honest, I don’t want to debate. I want to sit down with people on the other side and reach common ground. Where do we end all of this?” said Alshaibi, who grew up in the neighboring nation of Jordan, where nearly half the population is made up of Palestinians.

“People like me are lost in the middle of the extremes. But peace can’t truly be reached until we take the extremes and reach the middle. We have to deal with each other because people are dying left and right.”

He still has a dream, however.

“That is that we can live on one land, with equal rights for everyone, all over, West Bank, Israel," he said."It’s a longshot dream, but with peace, I think it’s going to happen one day. We’ve got to live together.”

J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jgallop@floridatoday.com. X/Twitter: @JDGallop.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Space Coast activists crushed by violence in Israel-Hamas war