A coalition of political, faith and civil society leaders is attempting to bridge divisions over the Israel-Gaza war that are threatening community cohesion, according to its co-founder, Brendan Cox.
Together for Humanity is organising a mass vigil on 3 December, bringing together people who have lost family in Gaza with people who have lost loved ones in Israel in an acknowledgment of the pain and grief on both sides of the conflict.
Faith and community leaders will also address the vigil in London. Organisers hope that thousands of members of the public will attend. No placards or flags are allowed at the event.
“The hurt and pain on both sides of this [war] is so overwhelming that people are not able to acknowledge a shared sense of grief and suffering,” said Cox. “And then there are people who are willing to exploit the situation to peddle antisemitism or Islamophobia. The most extreme voices are dominating the conversation.”
Most people feel empathy for the parents who have lost their child in Israel or Gaza, he said.
“But a relatively small group of people on either end of the spectrum who are very vociferously supporting Israel or the Palestinian cause are dominating debate and also saying: ‘You’re either with us or against us. It’s a binary choice’.
“And then you have a ramping-up of tension; extremists using people’s emotion and grief to power their own hatred. The risk with that – and the reason that I feel it so viscerally – is that it makes extreme people more likely to do extreme things. So the risk of attacks, whether on MPs, or members of the public, or a synagogue or a mosque, is heightened.”
Cox’s wife, the Labour MP Jo Cox, was murdered by a rightwing extremist during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016. Cox has since campaigned for community cohesion through Together, a coalition chaired by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury.
Together for Humanity was the result of “very strong and very positive” responses to a post by Cox on X, formerly Twitter, asking if there was interest in “trying to draw together people who want to safeguard our shared humanity, who wants to be really clear that even if you’ve got very strong views for one side or another, it doesn’t mean the other side is evil”.
Its first event was a small vigil in Downing Street on 17 November, at which Magen Inon, a London-based teacher whose parents were killed by Hamas on 7 October, said: “I pray that no more innocent lives are lost, for the hostages to be safely back home and for the war, all wars, to end.”
Layla Moran, a Lib Dem MP of Palestinian heritage, spoke of her grief at hearing shortly before the vigil that a family member in Gaza had died after being unable to access hospital treatment. She added: “I feel closer to those in Israel who have also lost loved ones in this tragedy.”
Cox said that many people felt “paralysed because they’re scared they’re going to be called antisemitic or Islamophobic, or pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, or just get it wrong in some way”. Together for Humanity aspired to become a national movement, offering support, speakers and background material to local groups that want to bridge divides, he said.
