I would like to endorse Remona Aly’s article on the need for women to be included in peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, as they were in the Good Friday agreement in Ireland (Violence rages in Gaza, but a meeting of Jewish and Muslim women has given me hope, 31 October). In fact, I seem to remember Irish women taking the initiative and insisting on stopping the war.
I commend Julie Siddiqi’s bridge-building efforts with the Nisa-Nisham network too. I also have friends and relatives who are Jews and Muslims, and don’t wish to see any of them get dragged into racist warfare.
The MP Layla Moran said several times recently that making peace is more difficult than making war – but this is not true. Making war requires vast effort and expenditure: building, deploying and using weapons, training whole generations to kill each other, laying waste property, land and lives – not only of people but of animals, crops, trees and the rest of God’s creation, brutalising our own souls in the process.
Have we learned nothing from all the terrible wars of the last century, and the colonial wars that went before them?
Harfiyah Ball Haleem
London
• Remona Aly’s observations on the group of Jewish and Muslim women meeting to rebuild relations in a safe space highlights the pressing need to reach out and feel the hurt of others during this time of heightened fury and tension. Women’s courage in taking a stand against violence, militarism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny and racism of all kinds has been evident for many decades, for example in the Black Sash movement founded in South Africa, and the Women In Black international network founded by Jewish and Palestinian women in Jerusalem and Haifa in 1988.
Women In Black continues to this day in the UK and internationally, holding one-hour women-only silent vigils calling for peace, justice and sustainable security in the Middle East, Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan and beyond.
The patriarchal violence and militarism that accompany these conflicts and wars are fuelled by the production, sale and trafficking of weapons by various governments and companies, undermining peace and violating human rights and humanitarian laws. Women In Black maintains that only dialogue, diplomacy and political solutions can bring sustainable security, with justice and peace.
Carola Addington
Teddington, London
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