By Andrea Tucci,
Among the hundreds of women who blocked the street in Jerusalem’s Beit Hakerem neighborhood there were the mothers of hostages. Niva Wenkert, Omer’s mother, Idit Ohel, Alon’s mother, Ayelet Levy and Naama’s mother. Clusters of silent women, all dressed in white. There was was a thunderous silence, a silence expressing the feeling that everything has already been said.
One of the women said: “We’re out of words, we spoke, we shouted, we, we cried, we prayed and nothing helped us. Now we will sit quietly, but we are not giving up.”
The protest movement is called The “Shift 101” which is being led by women mother and other relatives of the 101 hostages who remain in Gaza. The element of surprise has become an important factor in the protest of these quiet women in white. The organisers comunicate about the location of the protest last second in order to avoid that the police to set up roadblocks in advance. When the police arrive and declare the sit-in unlawful, the rule is to keep seated, because the main “headline” of our action is blockage and disobedience, but no violence, one of the mother explain.
“This is a place of unity and uniformity. There is a desire to keep our action as pure as possible. To mute the background noise. There is a dimension of storm in quiet. The message is the “While Mothers” is clear: “We want our children back home..“
One of the silent sitters is Ayelet Levy, mother of Naama Levy, 20, an army spotter at the Gaza border who was abducted by Hamas on October 7, says:
“We’ve tried everything private meetings with politicians, efforts to increase public pressure, to influence world public opinion. We understand that in the end they won’t bring the hostages back home, and that’s because the prime minister isn’t willing to bear the consequences of this decision.
“It’s tragic. We are living a nightmare just because of the very fact that our children are hostages in Gaza, and on top of that there are people that are against us” continue Levy, “I don’t have the strength to shout anymore, so it’s actually preferable for me to sit quietly,” she says, But inside I want to scream that I am ashamed, because of the abandonment of the hostages and because of what we are doing in Gaza and in the West Bank. Because fascism is taking over!!
Last Monday, the women of Shift 101 decided to hold a silent protest inside the Knesset building and even the toughest cops in Jerusalem couldn’t stand up to these brave women, “because they have mothers too, the “Shift 101″ said. The word ‘mother’ plays on every person’s soul and they are not calling for any civil revolt or a general strike. They have one only demand: ” Free our children, because if they won’t return home It will be a disgrace for all eternity.”
